ABSTRACT
A number of scholars have identified the disruptive impact of illness, noting how illness disrupts or disturbs physical capacities, personal biographies, social identities, relationships, and routines (Bury, 1982; 1991; Charmaz, 1983 1987; 1991; Dingwall, 2001; Kelly and Field, 1996; Lawton, 2003; Mathieson and Stam, 1995; Pierret, 2003; Williams, 1984; Williams, 2000). Bury (1982) considers the onset of chronic illness as a ‘critical situation’ (Giddens, 1979) and biographical disruption in which the taken-for-granted quality of everyday life, structures of knowledge, and social relations are disrupted. Bury’s model of biographical disruption emphasizes, especially, the potential that illness has to fracture the social and cultural fabric of a person’s life, effecting a loss of control and threats to bodily existence, social identity, and self-worth (Bury, 1991; Charmaz, 1983).
