Mike Bury: Biographical Disruption and Long-Term and Other Health Conditions

Abstract

The insight that a diagnosis of chronic illness disrupted the structure of everyday life came to Mike Bury during his late 1970s fieldwork with people diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis (Bury 1982). His analysis draws attention to the way illness interrupts ‘the expectations and plans that individuals hold for the future’, requiring ‘a fundamental rethinking of the person’s biography and self-concept’ (Bury 1982:169). Always alert to the effects of socio-economic circumstances, Bury (1982:177) explores how people may engage in a process of mobilising their resources to ‘normalise in the face of disruption’. Below we provide a summary of this initial elaboration of the concept, in the context of other contemporary work tending towards similar ideas about the impact of chronic illness: notably Strauss and Glaser on chronic illness (1975), Anthony Giddens on ‘critical situations’ (1979) and Kathy Charmaz (1983) on ‘loss of self. The concept of biographical disruption has proved durable and continues to inspire and challenge. We examine its legacy in four ways:

• how Bury himself developed and refined his original work;

• how other theorists have applied and adapted the concept in the field of chronic illness, including the recognition that biographical disruption may sometimes cause chronic illness;

• challenges to the assumption of biographical disruption, including notions of biographical flow, continuity and reinforcement, ‘narratives of unconcern’, and the suggestion that disrupted and normal identities may co-exist; and

• the extension of biographical disruption to a wider range of conditions and topics (including acute or se If-limiting conditions, terminal illness and cancer, and the experiences of family members).