Legitimate Pain: Gender, Race, Class and Moral Discourse in Fibromyalgia Sufferers Disability Claims

• In Event: 568 - Section on Altruism, Morality and Social Solidarity Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 02. Spirituality, Pain, and Emotions

Abstract

As fibromyalgia sufferers confront the skepticism of doctors, employers, coworkers, Social Security Disability courts, family and friends, they engage in moral boundary work to legitimate claims of pain and disability. In this paper, I interrogate how subjective claims to pain are socially understood through cultural and political discourses around gender, race, class, morality, and disability in the United States. Through the analysis of semi-structured interviews conducted with women fibromyalgia sufferers who had applied for disability benefits, I argue that social performances of pain serve as the situations in which these women navigate cultural ideologies and institutional resources, attempting to prove their moral worthiness as legitimate pain sufferers and disabled citizens. I find that the gender, race, and class of fibromyalgia sufferers affect how these women claim to be read as legitimate sufferers, deserving of cultural recognition and state benefits. This research seeks to extend previous work in the sociology of the body, medical sociology, the sociology of race, and cultural sociology to account for the social processes of pain performance and legitimation.

Author

• Jane Pryma, Northwestern University