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Cited by 674

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 79 of the 79 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Chronic illness as biographical disruption or biographical disruption as chronic illness? Reflections on a core concept

Open access
Williams, Simon·2000·Sociology of Health & Illness

Abstract

Taking as its point of departure Bury’s (1982) concept of chronic illness as biographical disruption, this paper provides a critical assessment of its fortunes since that time. Having ‘rescued’ the concept from recent postmodern and disability critiques, the paper provides a series of further reflections on its strengths and weaknesses, including the notion of ‘normal illness’; the importance of timing and context; the significance of continuity as well as loss; and the role of biographical disruption itself in the aetiology of illness. This, in turn, provides the basis for a broader set of reflections on the vicissitudes of the biographically embodied self in conditions of late modernity: a situation of chronic reflexivity in which our bodies/selves are continually problematised if not pathologised. The paper concludes, given this ‘balance sheet’, with a discussion of some potentially fruitful lines of future research, including links with the life‐events and inequalities literature.

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Crossref · 10.1111/1467-9566.00191

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Metadata

Authors
Williams, S.
Venue
Sociology of Health & Illness
Publisher
Wiley
Published
2000-01
Volume
22
Issue
1
Pages
40-67
ISSN
  • 0141-9889 (ISSN-L)
  • 1467-9566
OpenAlex
W2110450278
Cited by
674
References
79
FWCI
44.93
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
bronze

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Chronic illness as biographical disruption or biographical disruption as chronic illness? Reflections on a core concept. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1111/1467-9566.00191
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Williams, S. (2000). Chronic illness as biographical disruption or biographical disruption as chronic illness? Reflections on a core concept. Sociology of Health & Illness. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.00191

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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.