This research explores how race, class arid gerider act together in constructing black women's experiences of managing health arid everyday life. The methodology takes a feminist perspective, rendering the women interviewed subjects rather than objects. This is central for acknowledging and countering our different experiences of race arid class. One finding was that for women, health is inseparable from everyday life. Maintaining health is integral to the emotional arid material reproductiors of the family. In this management of everyday life the women Interact with a range of 'resources' which are themselves historically structured. This led to a consideration of the theoreti cal nature of resources. Following Giddens, 'resource' is used to provide a conceptual bridge between individual arid social structure. Resources are differentially distributed along the lines of race, class arid gender arid are the media through which power is exercised arid structures of domination reproduced. Resources may, however, be both enabling arid constraining. This use of resources avoids a deterministic view of r-ace, class and gender, allows a dynamic coriceptualisatior, of culture, arid refutes the labelling of the black family as 'pathological'. Rather, black family or-garsisatiori enables the coristructiori of black women's ideology of emotional and material independence. Then detailed are the women's childhood and migration experiences. Also consider-ed as resources for managing everyday life are sever-al areas of health care. These are Caribbean systems, home remedies, OPs arid hospitals. The analysis of these experiences provides a framework for- exploring their- relation to private medicine. Finally, a brief overview is giver, of the wider areas of everyday life which the women felt integral to their- accounts of managing health. The research concludes by suggesting that these women's experiences illustrates both the way in which resources are differentially structured by race, class and gender and how this constructs their experience of managing health and daily life.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:294136 |
| Date | January 1988 |
| Creators | Thorogood, Nicki |
| Publisher | University of London |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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