Class, Capital, and Chronic Illness: A Dispositionalist Approach to Long Covid Management

• In Event: 41021 - Student Forum Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Roundtable 10: Health and Illness

Abstract

Chronic illness research has extensively explored biographical disruptions and identity reconstruction but has often overlooked the role of social background in illness management. This study investigates how class-related attributes shape the ways individuals cope with chronic conditions by examining Long Covid as a case study. Drawing on Bourdieu and Darmon’s sociology of socialization and Wacquant’s (2024) “thick construction” methodology, this research shifts from interpretive approaches toward a materialist perspective on illness as a socially differentiated experience. Based on 25 biographical interviews with Long Covid patients and additional ethnographic observations in a rehabilitation service, this study highlights three key findings. First, individuals must re-socialize with their own bodies, learning to manage energy levels and symptoms—yet this process is unequally accessible depending on their embodied capitals. Second, illness deepens economic and social inequalities, forcing patients into dependence on family support, state assistance, or personal capital—resources that are unequally distributed. Finally, social class significantly structures illness management, with access to economic, social, and cultural capital shaping individuals’ abilities to navigate chronic conditions and mitigate their long-term impact. By emphasizing socialization processes and material constraints, this research reframes Long Covid not only as a medical condition but as a site of social differentiation. It argues that illness management is not purely an individual struggle but a socially structured process, shaped by prior socialization and the uneven distribution of resources in the social world.

Author

• Mattéo Lanoë, Sciences Po