The different facets of 'experiential knowledge' in Swedish women's claims about systemic side effects of the copper intrauterine device

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2250236
AutoresLena Gunnarsson (0000-0002-7766-8696, School of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences Örebro University Örebro Sweden, autor correspondente), Maria Wemrell (0000-0002-3186-9054, Department of Social Work Linnaeus University Växjö Sweden)
Ano2023
Volume45
Fascículo7
Páginas1483-1501
Data de publicação2023-09-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoSociology of Health & Illness (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0141-9889 • E-ISSN: 1467-9566
EditoraWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/1467-9566.13643
PMID37051639
OpenAlexW4365443854
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas9
Referências citadas62

Experiential knowledge' has been identified as a key epistemic resource used by lay people to contest medical authorities and build new knowledge related to health. The Internet has created unprecedented opportunities for such experience-based epistemic projects. This article contributes to understandings of the as yet under-theorised concept of experiential knowledge by analysing accounts of a group of Swedish women who claim that their use of contraceptive copper IUDs has led to systemic side effects not recognised by health care providers. Based on digital group interviews and written essays, we distinguish between three components or stages of experiential knowledge at work in the women's use of experience as an epistemic resource: somatic knowing, collective validation and self-experimentation. Drawing on a critical realist framework, we defend a notion of experiential knowledge as crucially, while only partially, based on a bodily and practical access to aspects of reality organised by extra-discursive principles. By providing theoretical complexity to the notion of experiential knowledge, we contribute resources for discriminating between and evaluating various experience-based claims, something that is particularly needed in the current 'post-truth' era where experience-based knowledge claims pointing in divergent directions flourish

Business · Copper · Experiential learning · Metallurgy · Pedagogy · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy · Materials Science · Psychology · Reproductive Health and Contraception · Reproductive Health and Technologies