MacArtney, John I.
(2011)
Healing ourselves: ethical subjectivity in the stories of
complementary self-help users with cancer.
PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.
Abstract
This thesis explores conceptualisations of ethical subjectivity in the stories of people
who have, or have had, cancer and who use complementary therapies and self-help
(complementary self-health). In England the increasing emphasis on individual
responsibility and choice in healthcare means that those with cancer are now in the
position where they have to make many of their own decisions about their treatment.
For the people with cancer in this research this included choosing complementary
self-health.
The thesis explores the stories and experiences of people with cancer who used
complementary self-health. The aim of the thesis is to document and make visible the
many original ways people come to understand themselves as able to ‘heal’ their
health, self and life. The thesis also reflects on the highly unusual position of the
author, who was himself diagnosed with cancer mid-way through his fieldwork. The
problems and challenges to the research are explored in the thesis, which became a
story in itself.
The thesis finds the ‘price that is paid’ for the way that the interviewees came to
think of their selves in their subjectivity. The interviewees told open and ongoing
stories of ‘balanced living’ and how they found ways to listen to their ‘embodied
guides’. They also described how understanding ‘cancer as an opportunity for
change’ helped to transform and transcend their previous ways of living. In doing so
they provided themselves with new narratives of the past and future, which were
situated by ‘living in the now’. The thesis explores the ethico-political repercussions
of these new formations of subjectivity. In doing so it argues that the ‘spiritual’
component of the stories remains unaccounted for and under conceptualised in
contemporary sociological theory of health. It concludes with suggestions of how to
move contemporary analysis beyond its present ethical concerns with the subject.
Actions (login required)
 |
Record administration - authorised staff only |
Download statistics
Download statistics