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To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9566.2007.00499.x Byline: Alan Radley (1), Susan E. Bell (2) Keywords: activism; art; breast cancer; photography; social movements; social practices; visual images; visual sociology Abstract: Abstract This article discusses the role of 'artworks' produced by women with breast cancer in the context of breast cancer activism. We argue that such works play a key role in making visible and collective the ideological issues surrounding this disease. They do this through their potential for anchoring social practices relating to its treatment and what might be done about it (Klawiter 2004, Swidler 2001). The article focuses upon the work of two women artists diagnosed with breast cancer - the British photographer Jo Spence, and Martha Hall, an American who made artist's books. We examine specific works from these collections, and the context of their production. In this way we show how and why artworks are important in establishing visual and discursive space related to social practices associated with disease regimes, and how they provide emancipatory potential for women living with breast cancer. We argue that artworks work through and on bodies to enable a redemptive and emancipatory potential. As mediators of representations of illness, they deserve attention from sociologists researching social movements, the sharing of illness experience and strategies for survival. Author Affiliation: (1)Department of Social Sciences, Loughborough University (2)Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Bowdoin College, USA Article note: Address for correspondence: Alan Radley, Department of Social Sciences, Loughborough University, Loughborough, Leics. LE 11 3 TU, e-mail: A.R.Radley@lboro.ac.uk

Hilde Lindemann Nelson. Damaged Identities: Narrative Repair. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2001. xv + 288 pp. ISBN 0-801-43665-6, $42.50 (cloth); 0-801-48740-4, $19.95 (paper). To what degree is scope for action premised […]

Issues regarding first-person accounts of terminal illness as giving the authors a sense of freedom and understanding of their suffering are discussed. The horrors integral to such accounts are basic to the author's symbolisation of an illness-world and use myth to understand suffering.

The attitudes and practice of individuals who make charitable contributions were explored. Interviews about preferred methods of giving, kinds of causes and the role of charity in society were conducted with 49 British givers. Analysis of the data centered on two main themes: the types of experiences individuals have had with needy people and the formal or informal organization of giving within social institutions. A conceptual framework based on these themes was developed. It demonstrated that charitable giving is a reflection of differences in the relationship of individuals to the community they consider themselves to be a part of. This interpretation is a departure from other explanations, which treats charity as a reflection of individual motive, social norms or the context.