I’m in a hotel bar in Glasgow, having fled the disco that ritually follows the conference meal at MedSoc. This is the province of the ageless Rose Barbour and Richard Compton, and long may it continue. For decades I’ve kept my own dancing under wraps (in fact it comprises a nostalgic and postmodern admix of all previously known dance formats, but others are unlikely to witness it during my lifetime).
Now, over a glass or two of white wine I’m reflecting on an excellent conference which concludes tomorrow. The organizational capabilities of the MedSoc Committee astonish me, principally because I have always lacked precisely those capabilities, or at least the will to acquire them. These people’s preparatory work makes it possible for those of us speaking and listening to participate. The fact that my daughter Sasha is a co-convenor just augments the pride I have long had in her scholarship and communicative skills. But she is one of several to whom the rest of use are indebted.
I have reached the stage where I attend fewer papers and talk more to old and new colleagues over coffee. Important here is the regular contingent from Norway, whom I now know well and for whom I have great fondness and respect. My attendances? The first was a meeting set up by Nicky Britten to address the transition from work to retirement and to ask about the value and plausibility of maintaining contact via an established network, virtual or actual, and of mentoring younger colleagues. Co-attendees tended to be colleagues I know well ‘of a certain age’. What impressed most was the heterogeneity of opinions; the financial insecurity felt by some women – either from working-class backgrounds or with interrupted careers – as they approach retirement; and, most surprisingly perhaps, levels of anxiety at the prospect of (eventually) entering the fourth age. I acknowledged my personal ‘unsociable’ fondness for working/writing in isolation, that is, outside of networks. I’m not sure therefore that I’m a good candidate for networking (though I enjoy meeting old friends and colleagues).
Lesley Doyal has long been an academic for whom I have great respect. Her The Political Economy of Health in particularly was path-breaking and, disappointingly, has not been the catalyst that it should have been. Cliches about globalisation are no substitute for building on the foundations she provided. Her globally oriented talk on HIV/AIDS re-affirmed the need for a global sociology, and an interdisciplinarity, that is more than and different from the extension of occidental theory and practice.
I had agreed to contribute to a plenary panel on health inequalities, focusing on class while Ellen Annendale talked on gender and Hannah Bradby on race. I spoke last and had been impressed by Ellen and Hannah’s presentations, not least because they clearly possessed a technical competence in the construction of their slides that has so far eluded me (I still miss shuffling acetate sheets). I did my bit and there were quite a few follow-up questions, not only about class but about the constraints on younger academics and scholars that prevented them developing their own agendas. I’ve always argued that one has to take out sufficient insurance by satisfying line managers to win the space to do what one thinks ‘really’ important; but the trouble now in the increasing cost of the insurance. Don’t give in, I pleaded, and don’t be afraid to be bloody-minded!
Impromtu conversations at conferences can hit home. I had a coffee with Kath Maguire and Josephine Ocloo, activists as well as academics for whom I have great respect. Josephine probably felt more of a conference ‘outsider’ than Kath, but both lamented the absence of a (funded) ‘space’ for activists who were not BSA members. I said I would take this up, and I will. My view is that MedSoc might beneficially be less inward- and more outward looking (a tad less exclusive, a tad more inclusive). But any initiative toward this end should be formally recognised and ‘institutionalised’. How about seeking funding to incorporate an annual activist workshop into the conference? Do we collectively seek to ‘make a difference’, to ‘enact justice’, or are we (merely) an expedient career-advancing talking shop for academics? (I acknowledge here that I’m a retired babyboomer and it’s easy for me to talk this way!)
Jon Gabe did the plenary lecture on the final day. He provided a thoughtful and comprehensive mapping of sociology’s coverage of pharmaceuticals, ending with an intriguing discussion of the concepts of medicalisation versus pharmaceuticalisation. Predictably, John Abrahams occupied the space left for questions.
Jon did well, not only in chairing the plenary I participated in but in giving his own lecture. He had been a close friend of Gareth Williams for something like 40 years, and Gareth’s death occurred during the conference. Like others close to the family his death affected me deeply too. I had been in touch with Eva and their two daughters and son as well as with close friends and colleagues like Jennie Popay and had been aware that Gareth was desperately ill, indeed that the end was very close. But you can never be fully prepared. And he was only 63. I valued him as a friend and as a supportive and exceptionally talented colleague. Tributes that do his achievements justice will undoubtedly follow, and I will only append a few remarks here.
Gareth peaked early as a medical sociologist via his influential concept of ‘narrative reconstruction’, but his subsequent work – principally on long-term illness, disability, health inequalities and health and health care interventions – maintained this high standard. When in an earlier blog I listed him among my ten favourite medical sociologists I stressed his eloquence (as Jon mentioned to me in passing, he was an essayist after the manner of Phil Strong). But he was as eloquent in speech as in print. Moreover he was – to my mind – impressively independent-minded, unafraid to speak out whenever he judged it necessary. He also, like Eva (utilising her background as a philosopher) and Jennie Popay, covered more of the sociological bases than most others (and certainly more than me). By this I mean that he was a theoretician (with a commendably light touch), an empirical researcher, a teacher and a politically committed interventionist. In January of 2013 I included him in a blog of my dozen favourite medical sociologists. I wrote:
Gareth Williams’ work impacts on a number of different fronts. His writings in the 1980s spawned the concept of ‘narrative reconstruction’ (sibling to Bury’s ‘biographical disruption’, Charmaz’ ‘loss of self’ and my own ‘felt’ and ‘enacted stigma’). His current, longstanding programme of empirical research into ‘lay knowledge’ and action in the health domain, much of it conducted with Jennie Popay, is (a) independent-minded and innovative; (b) theoretically informed, albeit with a light and subtle touch; and (c) oriented to promoting and implementing effective policy change. A feature of this work is its use of qualitative methods to investigate phenomena like health inequalities; and he and Jennie have ploughed a lonely furrow. He is engaged too with the Welsh communities he studies. Like Jennie, is among the few in medical sociology to visit each of Burawoy’s four sociologies (even dipping a toe into a fifth, what I have called ‘action sociology’). Moreover he writes so elegantly.
He was a generous man. When I retired from UCL he travelled from Cardiff to contribute a witty discourse on the ‘Scambler’ name to a farewell ‘do’ organised by Paul Higgs. I didn’t know until Eva told me later that he was already seriously ill. It was far from the last time that he was to defy the odds.
But that’s enough until I and others can do him proper justice. The fact that he left us during MedSoc was perhaps fitting. Yes it was awful news, even if some of us were forewarned. But it allowed all 300+ conference attenders – at Cathy Pope’s beautifully judged request – to come together to recall him to mind and to celebrate his legacy. I appreciate all that Ian Rees Jones, David Hughes and others at SHI did for Gareth when it mattered most. Others will articulate this better in due course, but what matters now is that we extend love and sympathy to Eva, Alun, Sian and Catrin. First and foremost Gareth was a husband and a dad.