Embodied risk: My body, myself?

doi:10.1016/S0277-9536(97)00188-3

Social Science & Medicine

Volume 46, Issue 3, February 1998, Pages 437-444

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-9536(97)00188-3 Get rights and content

Abstract

Risk has become a dominant way to interpret who gets sick and why. A distinction has been drawn between two categories of risk: those arising from the environment, and those resulting from an individual's lifestyle. We identify a third category that might be called corporeal or embodied risk which has received little scholarly attention. Embodied risks are so called because they are located in the body of the person said to be “at risk”. Environmental risks are due to something that happens to a person; lifestyle risks occur because of something a person does or does not do, while embodied risks say something about who the person is. To investigate how people experience health risks—especially risks identified as characteristics of their bodies—we conducted detailed interviews with 29 women who were told they had an abnormal Pap smear. All health risks pose problems for people who are diagnosed as “at risk”: They must translate probabilistic statements about populations into terms that have personal meaning; they must cope with uncertainty; they must consider what it means to be in danger of developing an illness even though most have no symptoms; and they must mobilise appropriate surveillance and perhaps risk reduction. However, limiting attention to environmental and lifestyle risk (and the distinction between them) neglects the additional challenges posed by corporeal risks: the simultaneous presence of disease now and the possibility of more consequential disease in the future; the necessity to submit to ongoing medical surveillance; a tendency to exacerbate the cartesian split between body and self; and the absence of medical or popular discourses through which to interpret and respond to embodied risk. We call upon medicine and public health practitioners to work together with people who are at risk to formulate languages and approaches that can reflect both scientific accuracy (as it is currently understood), and the needs of people to integrate health threats into their daily personal lives.

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Embodied risk: My body, myself?

Abstract

Social Science & Medicine

Social Science & Medicine

Journal of Chronic Diseases

Lancet

American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology

Gynecologic Oncology

Social Science & Medicine

Lancet

Australian Capital Territory in Focus 1993

Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity

Inflammatory atypia on cervical smears: a diagnostic dilemma for the gynecologist

Journal of Reproductive Medicine

Psychosexual trauma of an abnormal smear

British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology

Routine colposcopic survey of patients with squamous atypia

Acta Cytologica

Psychological costs and benefits of predictive testing for Huntington's Disease

American Journal of Medical Genetics

Lay epidemiology and the prevention paradox: the implication of coronary candidicay for health education

Sociology of Health and Illness

Risk as a forensic resource

Daedalus

Health, medicine and risk: the need for a sociological approach

The meaning of lumps: case studies in the ambiguities of risk

Researching cervical cancer: compromises, practices and beliefs

Journal of Advances in Health and Nursing Care

The Taming of Chance

Increased absenteeism from work after detection and labeling of hypertensive patients

New England Journal of Medicine