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Sociology Of Medicine For Whom?: Feminist Perspectives In A Multi-Paradigmatic Sociology Of Medicine, Juanne Nancarrow Clarke

Sociology Faculty Publications

My mother was a nurse, always called on when the neighbor’s child fell out of a high chair, woke up with spots or red eyes or had a fever. But, like others with whom I’ve talked whose parents offer health care services, I learned to feel that sickness was a weakness. I grew to feel ashamed of being sick; to have to rationalize and justify my own indisposition or to ignore or hide it. Through this, I learned that sickness and health were not biological events only but were constructed out of a web of social relations and meanings. And …