Class, Social Suffering, and Health Consumerism

ABSTRACT

In recent years an extensive social gradient in cancer outcome has attracted much attention, with late diagnosis proposed as one important reason for this. Whereas earlier research has investigated health care seeking among cancer patients, these social differences may be better understood by looking at health care seeking practices among people who are not diagnosed with cancer. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork among two different social classes in Denmark, our aim in this article is to explore the relevance of class to health care seeking practices and illness concerns. In the higher middle class, we predominantly encountered health care seeking resembling notions of health consumerism, practices sanctioned and encouraged by the health care system. However, among people in the lower working class, health care seeking was often shaped by the inseparability of physical, political, and social dimensions of discomfort, making these practices difficult for the health care system to accommodate.

KEYWORDS:

• Cancer
• Denmark
• health care seeking
• health consumerism
• social suffering

Funding

This article was funded by the Danish Cancer Society, the Novo Nordisk Foundation and the Faculty of Health, Aarhus University.

Additional information

Funding

This article was funded by the Danish Cancer Society, the Novo Nordisk Foundation and the Faculty of Health, Aarhus University.

Notes on contributors

Camilla Hoffmann Merrild

Camilla Hoffmann Merrild is a PhD fellow at Research Unit for General Practice, Research Centre for Cancer Diagnosis in Primary Care, Aarhus University. Her research centers on social inequality and social differences in perception and management of the body.

Mette Bech Risør

Mette Bech Risør is a professor of anthropology. Her research has primarily focused on functional disorders, but her work also extends to other areas of symptom and illness perceptions and practices.

Peter Vedsted

Peter Vedsted is a professor of Primary Care at The Research Unit for General Practice, Professor of Innovative Patient Pathways at Silkeborg Diagnostic Centre, and Director of the Research Centre for Cancer Diagnosis in Primary Care, Aarhus University. He has published extensively on early diagnosis of cancer.

Rikke Sand Andersen

Rikke Sand Andersen is an associate professor. Her research primarily focuses on health care seeking, cancer diagnosis and the organization of primary care.