Joseph W. Schneider

In the Closet with Illness: Epilepsy, Stigma Potential and Information Control

In this paper we extend and modity the metaphor of being in or out of the closet to analyze how people manage information to control the stigma potential of epilepsy. Based on 80 depth interviews, our analysis offers an “insiders” perception of stigma. We demonstrate how concealment strategies can be learned from coaches, that strategies for concealment vary, and that rather than simply indicating a situation one is in or out of, the closet of epilepsy has a revolving door. We also find, paradoxically, that both “instrumental telling” and concealing can be means to the same ends. We conclude by discussing how being in the closet with illness doubly isolates individuals from one another.

Deviant Drinking as Disease: Alcoholism as a Social Accomplishment

This paper presents a brief social history of the claim (hat certain forms of deviant drinking behavior should be defined as disease, and that their authors ought to receive medical treatment rather than moral scorn and punishment. It provides a case example of the medicalization of deviant behavior. The concern is then with the viability rather than the validity of this claim. The almost two hundred year history of the medicalization of repeated and disruptive alcohol intoxication is reviewed. The twentieth century “success” of the disease concept is linked to three developments: the scientific Yale Center on alcohol Studies, Alcoholics Anonymous, and the Jellinek formulation. The symbolic endorsement by the American Medical Association is seen as a product rather than a cause of these developments. I concluded that rather than an achievement of medical science, the disease concept of alcoholism is understood best as a social and political accomplishment.

Medical and sociological typologies: the case of epilepsy.

Abstract The dominance of the medical model and the categories that derive from it have inhibited the development of more independently sociological perspectives on illness. Using the case of epilepsy, this paper compares the standard medical typology of characteristic seizure patterns (grand mal, petit mal, psychomotor, etc.) to a sociological typology that emerges from our depth interviews with 80 people who have epilepsy. Our preliminary analysis yields a typology of characteristic ways of dealing with epilepsy based on how the condition is experienced by those who have it. Grounded types of adaptation are presented in terms of “adjusted” (including “pragmatic”, “secret” and “quasi-liberated”) and “unadjusted” (including “debilitated”) reactions. Comparison allows us to examine toward what ends typologies are constructed and highlights the different insights of medical and sociological perspectives on epilepsy. A sociological typology constructed independent of and complementary to the medical one illuminates the social experience of illness in a new way.

Studies in the Sociology of Social Problems.

This collection contributes data and analysis to the current sate of work in social problems sociology. The chapters are drawn together based on the social definitional or social constructionist view that social problems are not conditions but rather the definitional activities of people making claims and responses to such conditions. The emphasis is on social problems sociology as the distinct subfield of the discipline that addresses this kind of social conduct. The chapters seek to expand upon and elaborate various elements of this general theme.

Looking at levels of medicalization: A comment on strong's critique of the thesis of medical imperialism

Abstract-In a recent issue of this journal, P. M. Strong presented a critique of the thesis of medical imperialism. We find his conceptualization of medical “imperialism” problematic and his view of medicalization unnecessarily narrow. Medicalization occurs not only on the level of doctor-patient interactions, but on conceptual and institutional levels as well. Strongs critique is marred by an irrelevant and unconvincing argument positing a thesis of sociological imperialism. While we concur with some of Strongs points, we challenge others in an attempt to clarify some of the misunderstood aspects of the medicalization thesis.

Reflexive/Diffractive Ethnography

This article calls attention to the productive intersection of various postcriticisms of knowledge production and the critique of ethnography as a writing technology for producing scientific knowledge about others. In particular, poststructural and deconstructive criticism, cultural studies, feminist science studies, postcolonial theory, and queer theory are seen to have focused disruptive and useful attention on the ethnographic I/eye, both inside and outside the professional academic texts of human science. A radical or full reflexivity is seen to be particularly useful in this attention to the one who sees, knows, and writes, but this reflexivity has been criticized by feminist technoscience critic Donna Haraway for being in fact too timid. A consideration of Haraways preferred strategy based on the metaphor of diffraction, which seeks to effect difference patterns in the local worlds where ethnography is done, closes the article.

Deviants: Victims or Victimizers.

Andrew Karmen Introduction Deviance and Victimology Andrew Karmen Deviants as Victimizers Charles Winick Addicts and Alcoholics as Victimizers Robert J Kelly Addicts and Alcoholics as Victims David Sternberg Prostitutes as Victimizers Debra K Boyer and Jennifer James Prostitutes as

Home care for the chronically ill elderly in China: The family sickbed in Tianjin

Official documents and data from a 10-month field study are used to examine caregiving practices for sick and elderly people at home in the north China city of Tianjin. Using the research site of the family sickbed, 17 sample families were obtained from a general hospital and a senior cadres sanatorium. The paper describes the development of the family sickbed in China and in Tianjin, and summarizes family caregiving practices by spouse-caregivers, adult children and relatives, neighbors and friends. Care support from work units is also described. Implications of changes in home caregiving in the future are discussed.

The case of the “unfair” review: Ethical issues from an editor’s file

This narrative traces the life and fate of a paper submitted to the journalSocial Problems and ultimately rejected, with the author claiming that the review was “unfair.” It is an editor’s story and seeks to specify various “ethical” dilemmas that help to define such work.

Bruno LatourBruno Latour, by de VriesGerard. Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2016. 221 pp.

indeed a natural solidarity among workers distorted by parties. Empirically, while the details of the Chicago case study are impressive, de Leon makes tantalizing references to differences between the Midwest and Northeast (e.g., p. 42) that beg for a more thoroughgoing comparative analysis. Finally, if the overarching theme of The Origins of Right to Work is the contingency of political coalition-building, I would have liked to have seen the overarching dialectic between individualism and collectivism in workers’ rights, which is introduced in the Epilogue, more fully developed. These points are hardly expressions of reservation, however. Instead, they point to the deep and wide-ranging themes that de Leon has put on the table for discussion, and The Origins of Right to Work is a book that we will indeed be discussing for some time to come.