Kristin Kay Barker
Biographic Data
| ID | 245242 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kristin Kay Barker |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kristin Kay |
| FAMILY NAME | Barker |
| SIGNATURE | BARKER K K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of New Mexico |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5882-3099 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 416 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1991 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
The neuro-fiction of addiction immunizations
Suffering without Remedy: The Medically Unexplained Symptoms of Fibromyalgia Syndrome and Long Covid
The term “Medically Unexplained Symptoms” (MUS) describes chronic symptoms for which medical investigations fail to reveal a specific pathology or biomarker. Even as MUS are among the most prevalent chronic health problems in the global north, patients who experience them reside in a nebulous space. Such nebulousness is heightened for women patients. Moreover, women report MUS at higher rates than men. In this review essay, we analyze the medical…
The long tail of Covid and the tale of long Covid: Diagnostic construction and the management of ignorance
We bring together insights from the sociology of diagnosis and the sociology of ignorance to examine the early diagnostic unfolding of 'Long COVID' (LC). Originally described by patient activists, researchers set out to ponder its unwieldy clinical boundaries. Using a scoping review method in tandem with qualitative content analytic techniques, we analyse medicine's initial struggles to construct a LC diagnosis. Paying attention to the dynamics o…
Variation in intervention stigma among medications for opioid use disorder
Despite a substantial evidence base for effectiveness, medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) are often stigmatized. Even healthcare professionals working in substance use treatment may describe these medications as undesirable forms of medical intervention. Many argue they prefer an “abstinence-based” approach to treatment, free of pharmacotherapy. Nonetheless, between the three evidence-based U.S. treatment medications, which include methad…
Wrong versus Right(eous): Online Reader Comments as Scientific Boundary‐Work
We bring a science‐as‐rhetoric framework, which has been used to study the claims of scientists, to examine lay claims about science. Using qualitative content analysis, we scrutinize the rhetoric of science in online reader comments sent in response to New York Times articles covering two recent measles outbreaks. Pro‐vaccine commenters use a variety of rhetorical tactics that simultaneously venerate science and denounce the antivaccination stan…
Uncertain and under Quarantine: Toward a Sociology of Medical Ignorance
At the center of the COVID-19 pandemic lies a ubiquitous feature of medicine. Medicine is permeated with ignorance. Seizing this moment to assess the current state of medical sociology, this article articulates a sociology of medical ignorance. We join insights from earlier medical sociological scholarship on uncertainty with emerging research in the sociology of ignorance to help make sense of the omnipresent but sometimes invisible dynamics rel…
Criminalizing the brain: Neurocriminology and the production of strategic ignorance
Lay Pharmacovigilance and the Dramatization of Risk: Fluoroquinolone Harm on YouTube
Sociologists have documented how the pharmaceutical industry has corrupted pharmacovigilance (PV), defined as the practices devoted to detecting and preventing adverse drug reactions (ADRs). In this article, I juxtapose the official postmarketing system of PV with firsthand accounts of ADRs as found in 60 YouTube vlogs created by 29 individuals who recount debilitating reactions to fluoroquinolones, a common class of antibiotics. Whereas official…
Mindfulness meditation: Do-it-yourself medicalization of every moment
Listening to Lyrica: Contested Illnesses and Pharmaceutical Determinism
Dead by 50: Lay expertise and breast cancer screening
The Social Construction of Illness: Key Insights and Policy Implications
The social construction of illness is a major research perspective in medical sociology. This article traces the roots of this perspective and presents three overarching constructionist findings. First, some illnesses are particularly embedded with cultural meaning-which is not directly derived from the nature of the condition-that shapes how society responds to those afflicted and influences the experience of that illness. Second, all illnesses …
Electronic Support Groups, Patient-Consumers, and Medicalization: The Case of Contested Illness
This article illustrates the role electronic support groups play in consumer-driven medicalization. The analysis is based on an observational study of a year in the life of an electronic support group for sufferers of the contested illness fibromyalgia syndrome. The analysis builds on and extends scholarship concerning the growing influence of lay expertise in the context of medical uncertainty by showing how the dominant beliefs and routine prac…
Self-Help Literature and the Making of an Illness Identity: The Case of Fibromyalgia Syndrome (FMS)
Journal Article Self-Help Literature and the Making of an Illness Identity: The Case of Fibromyalgia Syndrome (FMS) Get access Kristin Barker Kristin Barker Linfield College Please direct all correspondence to Kristin Barker, Dept. of Sociology and Anthropology, Linfield College, McMinnville, OR 97128. E-mail: [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Social Problems, Volume 49, Issue 3, …
A ship upon a stormy sea: The medicalization of pregnancy
Women Physicians and the Gendered System of Professions: An Analysis of the Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921
This is a textual investigation of the battle between the American Medical Association and the American Medical Women's Association over the 1921 Act for the Promotion of the Welfare and Hygiene of Maternity and Infancy-popularly called the Sheppard-Towner Act. Based on the rhetorical debate between these two groups as revealed in their respective medical journals, the author outlines how the trajectory, content, and demise of Sheppard-Towner wer…
Fallen Women, Problem Girls: Unmarried Mothers and the Professionalization of Social Work, 1890-1945. Regina G. Kunzel
Mother-Infant Bonding: A Scientific Fiction. Diane E. Eyer
Women and Social Welfare: A Feminist Analysis. Dorothy C. Miller
The Social Construction of Illness: Key Insights and Policy Implications
The social construction of illness is a major research perspective in medical sociology. This article traces the roots of this perspective and presents three overarching constructionist findings. First, some illnesses are particularly embedded with cultural meaning-which is not directly derived from the nature of the condition-that shapes how society responds to those afflicted and influences the experience of that illness. Second, all illnesses …
Electronic Support Groups, Patient-Consumers, and Medicalization: The Case of Contested Illness
This article illustrates the role electronic support groups play in consumer-driven medicalization. The analysis is based on an observational study of a year in the life of an electronic support group for sufferers of the contested illness fibromyalgia syndrome. The analysis builds on and extends scholarship concerning the growing influence of lay expertise in the context of medical uncertainty by showing how the dominant beliefs and routine prac…
A ship upon a stormy sea: The medicalization of pregnancy
Self-Help Literature and the Making of an Illness Identity: The Case of Fibromyalgia Syndrome (FMS)
Journal Article Self-Help Literature and the Making of an Illness Identity: The Case of Fibromyalgia Syndrome (FMS) Get access Kristin Barker Kristin Barker Linfield College Please direct all correspondence to Kristin Barker, Dept. of Sociology and Anthropology, Linfield College, McMinnville, OR 97128. E-mail: [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Social Problems, Volume 49, Issue 3, …
Mindfulness meditation: Do-it-yourself medicalization of every moment
Listening to Lyrica: Contested Illnesses and Pharmaceutical Determinism
Dead by 50: Lay expertise and breast cancer screening
Uncertain and under Quarantine: Toward a Sociology of Medical Ignorance
At the center of the COVID-19 pandemic lies a ubiquitous feature of medicine. Medicine is permeated with ignorance. Seizing this moment to assess the current state of medical sociology, this article articulates a sociology of medical ignorance. We join insights from earlier medical sociological scholarship on uncertainty with emerging research in the sociology of ignorance to help make sense of the omnipresent but sometimes invisible dynamics rel…
Lay Pharmacovigilance and the Dramatization of Risk: Fluoroquinolone Harm on YouTube
Sociologists have documented how the pharmaceutical industry has corrupted pharmacovigilance (PV), defined as the practices devoted to detecting and preventing adverse drug reactions (ADRs). In this article, I juxtapose the official postmarketing system of PV with firsthand accounts of ADRs as found in 60 YouTube vlogs created by 29 individuals who recount debilitating reactions to fluoroquinolones, a common class of antibiotics. Whereas official…
Women Physicians and the Gendered System of Professions: An Analysis of the Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921
This is a textual investigation of the battle between the American Medical Association and the American Medical Women's Association over the 1921 Act for the Promotion of the Welfare and Hygiene of Maternity and Infancy-popularly called the Sheppard-Towner Act. Based on the rhetorical debate between these two groups as revealed in their respective medical journals, the author outlines how the trajectory, content, and demise of Sheppard-Towner wer…
The long tail of Covid and the tale of long Covid: Diagnostic construction and the management of ignorance
We bring together insights from the sociology of diagnosis and the sociology of ignorance to examine the early diagnostic unfolding of 'Long COVID' (LC). Originally described by patient activists, researchers set out to ponder its unwieldy clinical boundaries. Using a scoping review method in tandem with qualitative content analytic techniques, we analyse medicine's initial struggles to construct a LC diagnosis. Paying attention to the dynamics o…
Wrong versus Right(eous): Online Reader Comments as Scientific Boundary‐Work
We bring a science‐as‐rhetoric framework, which has been used to study the claims of scientists, to examine lay claims about science. Using qualitative content analysis, we scrutinize the rhetoric of science in online reader comments sent in response to New York Times articles covering two recent measles outbreaks. Pro‐vaccine commenters use a variety of rhetorical tactics that simultaneously venerate science and denounce the antivaccination stan…
Women and Social Welfare: A Feminist Analysis. Dorothy C. Miller
Mother-Infant Bonding: A Scientific Fiction. Diane E. Eyer
Fallen Women, Problem Girls: Unmarried Mothers and the Professionalization of Social Work, 1890-1945. Regina G. Kunzel
A ship upon a stormy sea: The medicalization of pregnancy
Women Physicians and the Gendered System of Professions: An Analysis of the Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921
This is a textual investigation of the battle between the American Medical Association and the American Medical Women's Association over the 1921 Act for the Promotion of the Welfare and Hygiene of Maternity and Infancy-popularly called the Sheppard-Towner Act. Based on the rhetorical debate between these two groups as revealed in their respective medical journals, the author outlines how the trajectory, content, and demise of Sheppard-Towner wer…
Self-Help Literature and the Making of an Illness Identity: The Case of Fibromyalgia Syndrome (FMS)
Journal Article Self-Help Literature and the Making of an Illness Identity: The Case of Fibromyalgia Syndrome (FMS) Get access Kristin Barker Kristin Barker Linfield College Please direct all correspondence to Kristin Barker, Dept. of Sociology and Anthropology, Linfield College, McMinnville, OR 97128. E-mail: [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Social Problems, Volume 49, Issue 3, …
Electronic Support Groups, Patient-Consumers, and Medicalization: The Case of Contested Illness
This article illustrates the role electronic support groups play in consumer-driven medicalization. The analysis is based on an observational study of a year in the life of an electronic support group for sufferers of the contested illness fibromyalgia syndrome. The analysis builds on and extends scholarship concerning the growing influence of lay expertise in the context of medical uncertainty by showing how the dominant beliefs and routine prac…
The Social Construction of Illness: Key Insights and Policy Implications
The social construction of illness is a major research perspective in medical sociology. This article traces the roots of this perspective and presents three overarching constructionist findings. First, some illnesses are particularly embedded with cultural meaning-which is not directly derived from the nature of the condition-that shapes how society responds to those afflicted and influences the experience of that illness. Second, all illnesses …
Listening to Lyrica: Contested Illnesses and Pharmaceutical Determinism
Dead by 50: Lay expertise and breast cancer screening
Mindfulness meditation: Do-it-yourself medicalization of every moment
Criminalizing the brain: Neurocriminology and the production of strategic ignorance
Lay Pharmacovigilance and the Dramatization of Risk: Fluoroquinolone Harm on YouTube
Sociologists have documented how the pharmaceutical industry has corrupted pharmacovigilance (PV), defined as the practices devoted to detecting and preventing adverse drug reactions (ADRs). In this article, I juxtapose the official postmarketing system of PV with firsthand accounts of ADRs as found in 60 YouTube vlogs created by 29 individuals who recount debilitating reactions to fluoroquinolones, a common class of antibiotics. Whereas official…
Wrong versus Right(eous): Online Reader Comments as Scientific Boundary‐Work
We bring a science‐as‐rhetoric framework, which has been used to study the claims of scientists, to examine lay claims about science. Using qualitative content analysis, we scrutinize the rhetoric of science in online reader comments sent in response to New York Times articles covering two recent measles outbreaks. Pro‐vaccine commenters use a variety of rhetorical tactics that simultaneously venerate science and denounce the antivaccination stan…
Uncertain and under Quarantine: Toward a Sociology of Medical Ignorance
At the center of the COVID-19 pandemic lies a ubiquitous feature of medicine. Medicine is permeated with ignorance. Seizing this moment to assess the current state of medical sociology, this article articulates a sociology of medical ignorance. We join insights from earlier medical sociological scholarship on uncertainty with emerging research in the sociology of ignorance to help make sense of the omnipresent but sometimes invisible dynamics rel…
Variation in intervention stigma among medications for opioid use disorder
Despite a substantial evidence base for effectiveness, medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) are often stigmatized. Even healthcare professionals working in substance use treatment may describe these medications as undesirable forms of medical intervention. Many argue they prefer an “abstinence-based” approach to treatment, free of pharmacotherapy. Nonetheless, between the three evidence-based U.S. treatment medications, which include methad…
Suffering without Remedy: The Medically Unexplained Symptoms of Fibromyalgia Syndrome and Long Covid
The term “Medically Unexplained Symptoms” (MUS) describes chronic symptoms for which medical investigations fail to reveal a specific pathology or biomarker. Even as MUS are among the most prevalent chronic health problems in the global north, patients who experience them reside in a nebulous space. Such nebulousness is heightened for women patients. Moreover, women report MUS at higher rates than men. In this review essay, we analyze the medical…
The long tail of Covid and the tale of long Covid: Diagnostic construction and the management of ignorance
We bring together insights from the sociology of diagnosis and the sociology of ignorance to examine the early diagnostic unfolding of 'Long COVID' (LC). Originally described by patient activists, researchers set out to ponder its unwieldy clinical boundaries. Using a scoping review method in tandem with qualitative content analytic techniques, we analyse medicine's initial struggles to construct a LC diagnosis. Paying attention to the dynamics o…
The neuro-fiction of addiction immunizations
Sociology (14 works) · Political science (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Medicine (9 works) · Psychology (9 works) · Epistemology (7 works) · Psychiatry (7 works) · Medicalization (6 works) · Social science (6 works) · Public health (5 works)