Institutions, Agency, and Illness in the Making of Tourette Syndrome

Bibliographic Data

ID19004013
AuthorsAndrew Buckser (Purdue University West Lafayette, corresponding author)
Year2009
Volume68
Issue3
Pages293-306
Publication date2009-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHuman Organization (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0018-7259 • E-ISSN: 1938-3517
PublisherSociety for Applied Anthropology (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.17730/humo.68.3.6u38g015964754vp
OpenAlexW2018183545
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited60

Medical anthropology has increasingly emphasized the importance of agency in the experience of illness. As sick people rethink and contest social constructions of their symptoms, they influence both the course of their own illnesses and the larger cultural models within which they exist. By shaping the ability of people to exercise such agency, institutions play a powerful role in the making of illness. This paper explores this process in the neurological disorder Tourette Syndrome, based on fieldwork among adults with Tourette in Indiana. Institutional constraints on time, space, and movement can profoundly affect the ability of individuals with Tourette to manage perceptions of their symptoms. As a result, different institutional settings can produce radically different experiences of the disease. We can improve our understanding of the making of illness by incorporating such institutional structures into our models. In addition, understanding the interactions among institutions, agency, and illness suggests implications for more accommodating and humane institutional design

Affect (linguistics) · Agency (philosophy) · CONTEST · Disease · Health care · Perception · Political science · Psychiatry · Social science · Sociology · Sociology of health and illness · Tourette syndrome · Law · Medicine · Obsessive-Compulsive Spectrum Disorders · Psychology · Social and Cultural Dynamics