Elevated Cholesterol as Biographical Work – Expanding the Concept of ‘Biographical Disruption’

Lina Hoel Felde

doi:10.18778/1733-8077.07.2.05

Authors

Lina Hoel Felde University of Southern Denmark, Denmark

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.07.2.05

Keywords:

Analytic Bracketing, Biographical Work, Biographical Disruption, Compliance, Ethnomethodology, Medical Sociology

Abstract

The concept of ‘biographical disruption’ has been a leading framework for studies of the experience of chronic illness. A symptomless chronic condition – bereft of bodily signs ‒ does not similarly present biographical disruption. People with elevated cholesterol are healthy at the same time as medical regimens signal sickness. The empirical material presented in this article, based on interviews with people with elevated cholesterol, suggests that a more appropriate metaphor could be ‘biographical work’ in such instances. The aim of this article is to discuss how people with the symptomless condition of elevated cholesterol continually construct elevated cholesterol in everyday life doing biographical work along shifting contexts. The vocabulary of biographical work constructs a subject who is continually working on building situationally-appropriate identities embedded in the shifting contexts of being sick or not sick. The article shows how people ongoingly ‘do’ elevated cholesterol, creating a mother-cholesterol-identity, a guest-cholesterol-identity et cetera, navigating the dilemma of absence of bodily signs (signaling healthiness) and medical regimens (indicating sickness) against shifting rhythms of biographical particulars in everyday life. Linkages of medical regimens with the rhythms of mothering, vacationing, being a guest et cetera create contexts – ever-emerging ‘cholesterol-biographical rhythms’ ‒ for accomplishing and stretching the cholesterol identity from situation to situation, being adequately compliant with medical regimens.

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Author Biography

Lina Hoel Felde, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark

Lina Hoel Felde conducts research at the University of Southern Denmark. Her research interests include people‟s identity work (as an analytic vocabulary) within discursive tensions particularly related to medical environments. This interest works in step with a tight focus on methodological issues, for example, methodological discussions of the applicability of certain analytic vocabularies in order to critically discuss empirical, analytic points. This interplay of methodological discussions and empirical points reveals in her PhD dissertation within medical sociology called Identity Work among People with Elevated Cholesterol – The Everyday Elasticity of Compliance with Medical Regimens, which demonstrates a reflexive critique of the medical concept of compliance. She is trained as a Sociologist and MD.

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