Time, space, and everyday life with chronic illness: A qualitative case study of chronic kidney disease in Australia

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Copyright: McQuoid, Julia
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Abstract
This thesis investigates experiences of time, alongside space, in negotiating everyday life with chronic illness. In countries like Australia, increasingly large portions of populations spend many years of life living with and managing ill health. This financially burdens nations, challenges health care system design and the traditional patient role, and alters the health profile of the labour pool and available caregivers. On the individual level, chronic illness instigates a fundamental shift in how life is experienced and navigated. Research on place and health has relied primarily on traditional, Euclidian conceptualisations of space and place. Many health geographers have worked beyond these, providing rich accounts of chronically ill individuals’ everyday experiences with place. The temporal dimension of chronic illness, however, has received far less attention. Time, as well as space, likely plays an important role in how individuals negotiate different parts of everyday life given the long-term, permeating, and fluctuating nature of chronic illness. I draw from a qualitative case study of 26 individuals living with chronic kidney disease in the Australian Capital Territory and nearby New South Wales communities in Australia. My space-time geographical approach embraces multiple senses of time and space, and recognises the entangled relationship between the two – conceptualised as space-time. Attention to social practices illuminates how different senses of space-time shape, and are shaped by, everyday activities. The concept of habit reveals how mutual transformation occurs between individuals and their environments over time. Participants recorded travel and activity diaries and an illness management inventory over two sample days. In-depth interviews followed in which participants ‘led’ me through their sample days. I examine interactions between the spatio-temporal characteristics of four areas of participants’ everyday lives: self-management of chronic illness, paid work, caregiving, and leisure. Findings show that a unique dimension of living with chronic illness is the negotiation of the spatio-temporal characteristics of chronic illness symptoms and their management. These characteristics weave through, and sometimes clash with, those of other pressing areas of everyday life. When logistical or rhythmic incompatibilities arise, everyday activities become more difficult. In conclusion, health status is an important factor shaping spatio-temporal organisation of everyday activities and space-time accessibility, and rhythms circulating within everyday contexts influence the level of effort required to perform everyday activities. Efforts to increase quality of life and social inclusion for individuals with chronic illness should target the reduction of spatio-temporal conflicts within individuals’ everyday lives.
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Author(s)
McQuoid, Julia
Supervisor(s)
Griffin, Amy L
Sharpe, Scott
Banwell, Cathy
Strazdins, Lyndall
Doran, Bruce
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Publication Year
2016
Resource Type
Thesis
Degree Type
PhD Doctorate
UNSW Faculty
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