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Accepted Paper:
Return to normal? Visual impairments and everyday habits
Maria Bäckman
(Stockholm university)
How do people cope with things when life changes and takes on a new path? With this question, I have returned to the ethnographic material from an ongoing study of persons with visual impairments. In my presentation I will discuss the re-orientations that takes place within the interviews, and consequently also in the informants’ everyday lives.
Paper long abstract:
How do people cope with things when life changes and takes on a new path? How do they carry on with previously well-known habits and routines when they are no longer able to fulfill them with the same easiness as earlier? What will one do when the sheer reality, embedded in the body and its fading senses, is working against the everyday habits that up to this point were the backbone of the day? Starting from this kind of questions I have returned to the ethnographic material from an ongoing study of the white cane as an aid for persons with visual impairments.
In the interviews my informants are frequently telling me about how they perceive, and try to handle, the loss of former capacities. Often these narratives are closely related to their anxiety towards an even more troublesome future. This is particularly true in connection with those persons who are suffering from r.p. (retinitis pigmentosa). They know that their still existing visual abilities will gradually become more limited and hence also a greater threat towards ordinary life. In my presentation I will discuss the obstacles and re-orientations that takes place within the interviews, and consequently also in the informants’ everyday lives. Additionally, I will also shed light onto which new everyday habits and routines they are positioning themselves towards. As life will carry on, one way or another.