Abstract:Drawing on a research project using arts workshops to explore pain communication, we develop a methodological reflection on the significance of the liveness of arts-based methods. We discuss how liveness informed the design of workshops to provoke novel forms of communication; how it produced uncontrollable and unpredictable workshops, whose unfolding we theorize as ÔimprographyÕ. It also constituted affective and collective experiences of Ôbeing thereÕ as important but difficult-to-record parts of the data, which raises challenges to current understandings of what constitutes data, particularly in the context of team research and in light of directives for archiving and reuse. We explore the implications of liveness for methodological practice.(107 words)
Abstract:In this paper we analyse chronic pain narratives on Flickr and Tumblr. We focus on how, by incorporating visual and multimodal elements, chronic pain expressions in social media significantly extend and challenge the logic, function and effects of traditional 'illness narratives'.We examine a sample of images and blogs related to chronic pain and formulate a typology of chronic pain expressions on these sites. Flickr brings a form of narrative immediacy, making the pain experience visible, eliciting empathy, and marking chronicity. Tumblr lends itself to more networked forms of interaction through the circulation of multimodal memes, and support communities are built through humour and social criticism. We argue that new forms of mediation and social media dynamics transform pain narratives. This has implications for our understandings of the forms and formats of pain communication and offers new possibilities for communicating pain within and beyond clinical contexts.
Article ences so far apart that across these experiences the effects of pain become polarized, its "accomplishment" diffused. 3 From this perspective, pain takes no object, and no referent, since the very process of communication inevitably entails the dissolution of pain experience. However, multiple clinical studies of language-based clinical communication (Biro
Pain is difficult to communicate and translate into language, yet most social research on pain experience uses questionnaires and semi-structured interviews that rely on words. In addition to the mind/body dualism prevalent in pain medicine in these studies pain communication is characterised by further value-laden binaries such as real/unreal, visible/invisible, and psychological/physical. Starting from the position that research methods play a role in constituting their object, this article examines the potential of participatory arts workshops for developing different versions of pain communication. Twenty-two participants were involved in workshops using drawing, digital photography, sound and physical theatre to explore pain communication. The use of arts materials made pain tangible. By manipulating pain-related objects, participants could consider alternative relationships to their pain. Pain's sociality was also explored, with relations with clinicians and others emerging as potentially cooperative rather than adversarial. Discussions considered whether pain felt internal or external, and whether it was possible to conceive of a self without pain. We argue that the socio-material context of participatory arts workshops enabled these alternative versions of pain. Such methods are a useful addition to medical sociology's heavy reliance on qualitative interviewing.
This article explores the challenges and opportunities of social media health activisms to shape public participation in the digital future of healthcare. As health becomes ever more entangled with digital technologies, a growing ecology of digital health services promise greater individual autonomy to learn about and managing medical conditions, as well as accessing health services and engaging in forms of self-care. Cautioning against optimist visions of digital health and their promise of empowerment and autonomy, the article explores how health activisms on social media are reclaiming visions of healthcare that move beyond individual and depoliticised models of health technologies. The notion of cosmopolitics is employed to conceptualise relations between technology and health that implicate human and non-human interests in entanglements between health, morality and technology.
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