© Blackwell Publishers Ltd/Editorial Board 1996

Chronic Illness and the Body 243

vide for the means of 'doing' the sodal construction and mediation

(Armstrong 1983, Foucault 1973, Shilling 1993, Turner 1992).

It is probably the case that these tendencies have been reinforced in

medical sociology from Parsons onwards (Parsons 1951a 1951b) by the

influence of accounts of psychological illness. Parsons* insistence on treating

illness as a form of deviance took the sick role into a moral realm.

Indeed in his discussion of the sick role in The Social System (1951a) he

was strongly influenced by his interests in psychoanalysis. During the

1960s and 1970s many other writers were also fascinated by psychiatric

problems as an arena in which to do medical sociology (Goffman 1970,

Lemert 1962, Rose 1962, SchefF 1966). More recently, as medical sociology

has expanded its range of interests, the disorders which have

attracted particular attention have not infrequently been the more exotic

ones (Conrad 1976, Conrad and Schneider 1980). Epilepsy has received a

great deal of attention for example (Jacoby 1994, Scambler and Hopkins

1986, Scambler 1989, West 1986). Intractable illnesses about which medicine

can do little by way of alleviation have also been prominent in medical

sociology. In this latter respect terminal illness (Field 1989, Hockey

1990) and espedally cancer (Glaser and Strauss 1965, Mclntosh 1977,

Schou 1993), rheumatoid arthritis (Locker 1983, Wiener 1975, Williams

1984), multiple sclerosis (Robinson, 1988), and Parkinson's disease

(Pinder, 1990) spring to mind. Conversely, common illnesses which in

terms of incidence, prevalence and caseload are those which preoccupy

most general medical practitioners are less well represented in the sociological

cannon. For example, in recent years disorders like gall bladder

disease, ulcers, back pain, stroke, and bronchitis pale into significance

sociologically, compared to studies of AIDS/HIV (Field and Woodman

1990, Barbour and Van TeijHngen 1994). Even where writers have

focused on the apparently physical, as in the case of pain, it is the cognitive

mediation and interpretation of pain (Bendelow 1993, Kotarba 1983)

or the ways in which professionals make sense of it (Baszanger 1992)

which is of sociological interest, rather than the bodily experience of pain

itself. That is, the meanings of pain are given precedence over its physical

restrictions and discomforts - even though it is precisely these which have

greatest weight in shaping interpretations and the attribution of meaning

by sufferers.

Biological contingencies and human sociality

The neglect of the physical or 'lived' body by medical sociologists reflects

the widespread lack of attention to normal bodily experiences in everyday

life by sociology more generally. The purpose of this section is to outline

some of the considerable amount of relevant literature in order to ground

our subsequent discussion and to indicate our starting points. The

e BlackweU Publishers Ltd/Editorial Board 1996