Fibromyalgia Story

Kristin K. Barker is Associate Professor of Sociology at Oregon State University.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. The Diagnostic Making of Fibromyalgia Syndrome2. The Woman Problem and the Feminization of Fibromyalgia Syndrome3. Similar-but-Different: The Fibromyalgia Syndrome Illness Experience4. The Symptomatic Self and the Life World5. In Search of Meaning6. Diagnostic Transformations7. Self-Help and the Making of a Fibromyalgia Syndrome Illness Identity8. Ties That Bind and the Problem That Had No NameConclusionAppendix A. The Fibromyalgia Syndrome Biomedical LiteratureAppendix B. The InterviewsNotesBibliography/Works CitedIndex

"Kristin Barker presents us with one of those rare sociological studies of the experience of illness by examining how women manage a common but contested pain syndrome called fibromyalgia. Based on in-depth interviews with sufferers and an analysis of medical and non-medical literature, Barker increases our understanding of the gendered construction of the disorder and how sufferers manage their symptoms, seek legitimacy, and develop an illness identity in the context of a doubting medical world. This book should interest medical sociologists and practitioners as well as people with fibromyalgia and their families."-Peter Conrad, Harry Coplan Professor of Social Sciences, Brandeis University "Barker tells a story of the interface between the biomedical community and the fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) community. In giving voice to women who are suffering from FMS, she shows how the facts of how women live their lives are often obscured by physicians and researchers in a drive to adapt FMS to a biomedical model where it clearly does not fit well. This failing has led to the development and perpetuation of an institutionalized FMS community of sufferers, with both positive and negative consequences. Ultimately, Barker provides insight into the failings of biomedicine thus far to improve FMS-related quality of life that should guide researchers towards integrating social and cultural factors into the study of FMS physiology."-Leslie J. Crofford, M.D., Gloria W. Singletary Professor, Department of Internal Medicine, Chief, Division of Rheumatology, Director, Center for the Advancement of Women's Health, University of Kentucky "The Fibromyalgia Story authoritatively explores the roles doctors and patients played in 'discovering' fibromyalgia; explains why, overwhelmingly, fibromyalgia affects white working-class women; and analyzes why doctors have ignored this basic demographic fact. Written with an amazingly evenhanded approach, it is an important contribution to scholarship on medicalization; illness experience; identity construction; and the intersections of race, class, and gender."-Rose Weitz, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies, Arizona State University, and author of Life With AIDS and Rapunzel's Daughters: What Women's Hair Tells Us About Women's Lives