TY - JOUR
T1 - The clinic and elsewhere
T2 - Illness, sexuality, and social experience among young African American men in Baltimore, Maryland
AU - Meyers, Todd
AU - Leonard, Lori
AU - Ellen, Jonathan M.
N1 - Funding Information:
The research reported here is supported in part by a grant from the National Institutes of Health (5 RO1 AI36986; Principle Investigator, Jonathan M. Ellen, M.D.) and a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, OASIS Project—Reinventing Surveillance Systems for Communicable Disease Prevention: Linking Morbidity, Risk Behaviors, and Reproductive Health Outcomes (H25/CCH 304322-10; Principal Investigator, Jonathan M. Ellen, M.D.). Support during the period of revision came in the form of a summer research grant from the Johns Hopkins University Program for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality.
Copyright:
Copyright 2008 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2004/3
Y1 - 2004/3
N2 - This paper is concerned with how disclosure becomes self-production for young adults within the setting of the sexually transmitted disease (STD) clinic. The STD clinic is a special medical environment where the process of disclosure is not just a way of accessing treatment; it is also a process through which illness, sexuality, and social experience become entangled in telling. Illness according to medical categories is reshaped in the social world, bringing a different set of criteria to bear on the definition of illness. The concern we raise regards how meaning is secured simultaneously through the experience of illness and social relations. Using data from a series of clinic-based ethnographic interviews, we examine the narratives of three young men. Together, the narratives demonstrate the interrelatedness of illness and self-production in various forms. In one case the tension between interpersonal violence and self-preservation is central. In another, the place of knowledge in family relationships renders the entire picture of the social unstable. The paper signals a number of issues absent in clinical and epidemiological depictions of vulnerability, particularly in the context of the urban United States.
AB - This paper is concerned with how disclosure becomes self-production for young adults within the setting of the sexually transmitted disease (STD) clinic. The STD clinic is a special medical environment where the process of disclosure is not just a way of accessing treatment; it is also a process through which illness, sexuality, and social experience become entangled in telling. Illness according to medical categories is reshaped in the social world, bringing a different set of criteria to bear on the definition of illness. The concern we raise regards how meaning is secured simultaneously through the experience of illness and social relations. Using data from a series of clinic-based ethnographic interviews, we examine the narratives of three young men. Together, the narratives demonstrate the interrelatedness of illness and self-production in various forms. In one case the tension between interpersonal violence and self-preservation is central. In another, the place of knowledge in family relationships renders the entire picture of the social unstable. The paper signals a number of issues absent in clinical and epidemiological depictions of vulnerability, particularly in the context of the urban United States.
KW - Illness
KW - Production of the self
KW - Social experience
KW - Urban United States
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U2 - 10.1023/B:MEDI.0000018098.97210.f9
DO - 10.1023/B:MEDI.0000018098.97210.f9
M3 - Review article
C2 - 15074551
AN - SCOPUS:3142594447
SN - 0165-005X
VL - 28
SP - 67
EP - 86
JO - Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry
JF - Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry
IS - 1
ER -