Survivorship as Craft and Conviction: Reflections on Research in Progress

Abstract

The choice of some illness survivors to engage in service to other ill people, and thus to focus their lives on illness longer than their own treatment requires, is not self-evident. The author describes alternative cultural narratives of survivorship, proposes an understanding of survivorship as a form of craft, and considers the societal morality that is reflected in survivors' accounts of their service work.