Women, Body, Illness: Space and Identity in the Everyday Lives of Women with Chronic Illness

by Pamela Moss University of Victoria, Isabel Dyck

Overview

This provocative and moving work explores concepts of body and space to better understand the daily lives and struggles of women with chronic illness. Moss and Dyck show how such women—coping with associated notions of illness, health, and being female—restructure their physical and social environments through the strategies they choose to accommodate disabling illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome, multiple sclerosis, or rheumatoid arthritis. Strategies might include disclosing or concealing illness from employers and friends; seeking or rejecting emotional support through old friends and new contacts; and pursuing or resisting specific diagnoses from the biomedical community. Featuring a wealth of original research and personal stories, Women, Body, Illness tells the tales of chronically ill women forging networks of support, redefining themselves, and challenging what it is to be ill.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781461647324
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	04/14/2003
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	236
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Pamela Moss is a feminist geographer in the faculty of human and social development at the University of Victoria.

Isabel Dyck is a social geographer in the School of Rehabilitation Sciences and a faculty associate in women's studies at the University of British Columbia.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Prologue: Living with Chronic Illness
Chapter 2 Setting Out Some Issues
Chapter 3 Working through Theories of the Body
Chapter 4 Conceptualizing Chronic Illness with Space
Chapter 5 Making Sense of Chronic Illness
Chapter 6 Approaching Analysis and the "Interpretive Act"
Chapter 7 Destabilization of the Material Body: Onset, Diagnosis, Inscription
Chapter 8 Limits to the Body: Inscription, Income Issues, Borders
Chapter 9 Absence of Presence/ Presence of Absence: Borders, Identity, Everyday Life
Chapter 10 Disciplining the Environment through Re-learning the Body: Everyday Life, Minutiae, Daily Living
Chapter 11 Connections

Editorial Reviews

Moss (feminist geographer, U. of Victoria, Canada) and Dyck (rehabilitation sciences and women's studies, U. of British Columbia) introduce readers to Patience, a composite fictitious character who exemplifies a women with chronic illness, and drop in on her from time to time to illustrate the problems and triumphs of her day-to-day life. Otherwise they examine such topics as theories of the body, conceptualizing chronic illness, and disciplining the environment through re-learning the body. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

This is an exciting book that proposes a radical body politics. The authors combine a critical analysis of women's health with rich empirical material to rethink our embodiment. Written in an imaginative and accessible way, this book makes an important contribution to feminist theory.

Gill Valentine

In that combination of scholarship and intimacy, this is a surprising book, a welcome and a needed book.

Metapsychology Online

A unique and original book, Women, Body, Illness is the first attempt on this scale to synthesize women's health issues, feminist theory, spatial approaches, and work on the body. It is much needed and will fill a major gap in the literature on the geography of women's health.

Wilbert M. Gesler

In that combination of scholarship and intimacy, this is a surprising book, a welcome and a needed book.

Metapsychology Online Reviews