Anthropology of new chronicities: illness experiences under the promise of medical innovation as long-term treatment.

Abstract

In the introduction to the special issue, Greco and Graber discuss the concept of chronicity and the ways it is used in the contributions to the special issue. Historians have shown that the concept of chronic disease has its origins in policy and has always been fluid and vague; however, the classic literature in sociology and nursing has focused on modelling the evolution of chronic disease rather than on examining the concept itself. In the introduction, chronicity is explored in the ways in which it is transformed by medical innovation. Innovations in biomedicine promise to turn terminal and acute conditions in chronic and to render chronic conditions curable. Even when such promises are not fulfilled, they change the context of the illness and the experiences of patients. In such a context a specific work is required from patients, in terms of adherence to the treatments, but also in terms of pursuing experimental treatments that could make their condition chronic. The introduction offers a critical exploration of the concept of chronicity, highlighting both its fluid definition and the changes linked to medical innovation, and the ways in which it shapes the temporalities and experiences of illness in complex ways that cannot be reduced to simplified schemas and trajectories.