/ News, Research
New Publication by Piet van Eeuwijk
Social Life of Chronic Living
Abstract
Old-age related health conditions evolve into both a dynamic and an inert chronicity which, in the end, produces a particular quality of life when growing old: the chronification of uncertainty, insecurity, and unpredictability (Manderson, Cartwright & Hardon 2016; Eeuwijk 2020). The fragility and volatility of individual biologies cascades older persons not only into new bodily affections (Manderson & Warren 2016), but also into new social dynamics and fluidity that very often lead to experiences of multiple deteriorating transformations in the sphere of social lives (Manderson & Smith-Morris 2010). The understanding of “social life/lives” alludes to the concepts of Appadurai (1986; on value and commodities) and Kopytoff (1986; on objects and people) as well as of Whyte, Geest and Hardon (2002: 13-14; on pharmaceuticals): “Things have biographies. […] They are lived in relation to problems and contexts.” Basically, “social life” means the activities one does with other people. In particular, the context of “chronic living” delineates the specific lives and social relations that chronic illnesses impose on people and between people. Furthermore, such an understanding of “social life/lives” has much to do with conflicting norms, rules, values, choices, meanings, expectations, imaginations, and politics by reason of varying ways of interpretation within society and of different modes of social practice and its effects.