Fibromyalgia and the moral economy of pain

Abstract

This article seeks to reflect anthropologically on the contours of the social experience of fibromyalgia. It is based on ongoing ethnographic research that has been developed from health services by observing interactions between health professionals and users in the clinical setting and in (self)healthcare, in addition to open interviews and document analysis in Rio Grande do Norte. It is analyzed that people living with fibromyalgia experience a moral dynamic so that pain is socially recognized, because the biomedical parameter requires the existence of observable physical signs despite people’s reports to signal the disease and that this is not always possible to verify in fibromyalgia. Thus, the article seeks to analyze and describe the rationalities and practices produced within the scope of social relations that allow someone who is ill to prove that the pain they feel and describe is real and requires physiological intervention. To this end, the argument goes on to highlight the biological origin and existence of pain and reject, as an idea seen as diametrically opposed, causal explanations of a psychological nature. The article focuses on the moral dynamics involved in generating support for and intensifying long-term suffering, a crucial part of societal recognition and the call for collective interventions for care and treatment.