Gluten-free entrepreneurship and the management of celiac

Abstract

Celiac, an incurable autoimmune disease, affecting roughly 1% of the US population, requires an unusually high level of vigilance with respect to diet and food preparation in order to keep foods and the environments of their preparation gluten-free. Compliance with this strict regimen, while alleviating many long-term side effects such as cancer and osteoporosis, often leads to other problems such as social anxiety, depression, and eating disorders, according to a variety of studies. My research, conducted with gluten-free business owners from around the United States, who identify as having celiac, looks at the role these businesses play with respect to the management of celiac. It asks if these businesses are a means of forming “biosocial groups” like those that have formed around other genetic conditions. While these business's websites and physical spaces have functioned to some extent, in the past, as locations in which informal support groups have formed and have been hubs for the dissemination of relatively complex knowledge about diet and aspects of this disease, at present they offer other benefits, including the revaluation of the celiac suffer and have become a means of linking those with celiac to those who do not have this disease. This research fits within contemporary disability research in that it looks at the creative ways that disease and disability are met with innovative practices to construct inhabitable worlds.