The heroes of ALS: The social structure of the triumphalist discourses of overcoming and celebrating a patient and legitimizing a disease
Abstract
Objective: This article aims to understand the social conditions of production or social structure of discourses or ideologies of the patient as hero. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of position-taking and positions in social space, special emphasis is given to whether the rule of law and welfare state play a role in the production of these discourses and whether other types of discourses, especially religious ones, emerge when the state is weak or non-existent.
Method: For this purpose, a database was created using 1,068 responses of 1,068 individuals who responded on Twitter to a tweet from a person with a legitimatized disease such as ALS. Through several analyses (qualitative thematic content analysis, multiple correspondence analysis, and agglomerative hierarchical clustering) it was possible to build the social structure of the heroic discourses.
Results: Twelve types of responses divided into two large groups were obtained: overcoming or heroic discourses and religious discourses about the disease.
Conclusion: A clear relationship was found between the type of welfare and rule-oflaw state (more or less weak) and type of discourse. Specifically, in environments with relatively stronger welfare and rule-of-law states (such as Spain), discourses or ideologies of the patient as hero were predominant, while in those with weaker welfare states (such as Venezuela), religion monopolized the discourse and ideologies through which the social image of the patient was constructed.
Keywords
capital of experiencing the disease, heroic discourse, disease, welfare states, religionReferences
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