Download or read book Conversations about Illness written by Wayne A. Beach and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The grandmother-granddaughter conversation examined in this book makes explicit what the detailed study of interaction reveals about two social problems--'bulumia' and 'grandparent caregiving.' For the first time, systematic attentions is given to interactional activities through which family members display ordinary yet contradictory concerns about health and illness. Through analysis of a single audio-recorded and transcribed conversation, the altogether pervasive and often troubled co-existence of family medical predicaments is revealed by treating families as primordial institutional systems whose talk about real or idealized medical concerns is little understood--including attempts to impose and disregard constraints regarding health behavior as displays of institutional orientations and priorities.