Bates, C.Vital Bodies: Living with Illness. Bristol: Policy Press. 2019. 113 pp £75.00 (hdbk) £21.99 (pbk) £21.99 (ebk) ISBN 978‐1‐4473‐3506‐1

Abstract

Over the last two decades sociological debates around the body and embodiment have gained momentum, not the least in answer to predominant figures calling for the body to be brought into the focus of research. In her book “Vital Bodies: Living with Illness” Charlotte Bates seeks to add to these discourses by analysing the lived experience of illness in everyday life. The book is the result of a 1-year-long ethnographic research with twelve participants who were all navigating their everyday life experiences under the influence of a chronic condition. The conditions, which participants had been diagnosed with, ranged from asthma, bipolar disorder, depression, type 1 diabetes, epilepsy and joint hypermobility syndrome to muscular dystrophy and rheumatoid arthritis. The author highlights that despite this wide range of illness experiences, there are commonalities in individuals’ narratives and in how these participants navigated their everyday lives. For Bates, the aim of the book was not to mull over negative experiences, but to describe how individuals manage and indeed triumph over difficult situations. Bates emphasises how for chronically ill individuals the body is never truly “absent” as Leder (1990) describes, but becomes the focus of attention in situations that would not warrant any thoughts among non-ill individuals. To demonstrate the extraordinary impact mundane activities may have, the book's first three chapters focus on these mundane everyday experiences: 1 Eat, 2 Exercise and 3 Sleep. These three chapters are followed by an insert of 41 pages of images produced, co-produced and supplied by the participants. The subsequent chapters discuss wider bodily functions in 4 Genes and organs, 5 Feet and legs and 6 Hands and hearts. The introduction and conclusion bring together the key themes from all chapters into one coherent narrative. An additional 14-page appendix outlines Bates's approach towards the methodology and methods in the research she describes in the book. The book makes for fascinating reading around the ill body and everyday activities that would otherwise not be considered as worthy of research and relevant enough to be discussed. For example, for some individuals eating is no longer satisfying hunger or a social event as it would be for the general population. For Bates's participants, eating becomes a way to monitor health as weight-loss or weight-gain may be an indication for a progressing illness and to manage symptoms, especially where specific food groups are considered to exacerbate or even trigger pain responses. Similarly, exercise and sleep are also tightly organised endeavours. The routines around eating, exercising and sleeping therefore take on an entirely new meaning. On the other hand, the internal and external bodily functions described in chapters 4–6 allow the reader to understand empathically how in-tune with their bodies and their environment these twelve ill individuals are. For example, Bates explains that losing muscular strengths in legs not only results in individuals’ appearances changing outwardly, but also in adjusting everyday activities and distances. Not having the usual strength means participants need to know whether they can cope to walk to their local shops and amenities or not; they therefore gain an unusually in-depth understanding of their living environments. Throughout the book Bates seeks to highlight the longitudinal aspect of her work, which, for many participants, meant a deterioration of their initial health status. During the process of writing up her book, which was 7 years after the original study, Bates decided to contact her participants to follow up on their experiences. In each chapter Bates is able to add an update on some participants’ journeys, which indicates the personal relationship Bates would have developed with her participants whilst in the field. It is this emerging personal relationship and the methodological approach to embodied and sensory research that would have made this book an outstanding contribution to the field. As it stands, the book feels like an attempt to reconcile what is assumed to be an academic book on bodies, embodiment and the sociology of health and illness with what must have been an emotional, transformative and exciting research endeavour. The presentation of the image insertions, the appendix and the ad-hoc updates render the book somewhat disjointed. That being said, the rich detail of raw data enables the reader to engage with the illness narratives at an experiential level that conventional sociological treatises of the body may lack. Overall, the book provides an exceptional insight into the psyche and everyday negotiations of individuals with illnesses by truly encapsulating what it means to live with an illness, and as such presents an important contribution to the sociology of health and illness.