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Abstract The concept of biographical disruption has now enjoyed nearly 40 years of use in medical sociology. This paper argues that taking an embodied approach to biographical disruption helps to explain the concept's enduring efficacy. Drawing on the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and contemporary theories of embodiment inspired by his phenomenology, this paper advances that biographical disruption involves, in the first instance, a disruption to the ability to enact an embodied orientation towards the world. Biographical disruption does not, from this perspective, result from illness as such, but from the ways that illness impinges on one's physical ability to engage with daily life. This paper examines the experiences of solid organ transplant recipients for the purpose of shedding light on the conditions under which biographical disruption arises in experience. The analysis includes interviews with 36 post-operative solid organ transplant recipients (heart, liver, lung, and kidney) living in British Columbia or Ontario, Canada. These participants exhibit a wide range of illness experiences, some of which manifest as biographical disruption and others that do not. Tracing the contours of these experiences, this paper argues that the efficacy of biographical disruption for describing the illness experience depends not only on the illness experience but also, fundamentally, on the content of embodiment prior to the onset of that experience. Highlights • The embodiment perspective improves the efficacy of biographical disruption. • The embodied context of an experience structures the illness experience. • Organ transplant recipients present variable experiences of biographical disruption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing from a qualitative case study in rural British Columbia, Canada, this paper examines the discourse of kidney scarcity and its impact on renal care policies and practices. Our findings suggest that at different levels of care, there are different discourses and treatment foci. We have identified three distinct scarcity discourses at work. At the macro policy level, the scarcity of transplantable kidneys is the dominant discourse. At the meso health care institution level, we witnessed a discourse regarding the scarcity of health care and human resources . At the micro community level, there was a discourse of the scarcity of health and life-sustaining resources . For each form of scarcity, particular responses are encouraged. At the macro level, renal care and transplant organizations emphasize the benefits of kidney transplantation and procuring more donors. At the meso level, participants from the regional health care system increasingly encourage home hemodialysis and patient-led care. At the micro level, community health care professionals push for rural renal patients to attend dialysis and maintain their care plans. This work contributes to critical, interdisciplinary organ transfer discourse by contextualizing kidney scarcity. It reveals the tension between these discourses and the implications of pursuing kidney donations without addressing the conditions in which individuals experience kidney failure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]