Sickness as a dominant symbol in life course transitions: an illustrated theoretical framework

The paper examines how sickness as a cultural performance might be analysed as a dominant symbol within life course transitions. The concept of dominant symbol is taken from Victor Turner's framework for Symbolic Processual Analysis in ritual and pilgrimage and is used to interrogate data collected in an ethnographic study of sickness absence in an English primary school. It is suggested that sickness played a central part in the construction of meaning around the transition from primary to secondary school. The performance of sickness seemed to condense ideological features (especially those of gender and work discipline) and to express modulations in the meaning of the transition in its different phases. The concept of dominant symbol (and the related notion of liminality) illuminate these data but need modification to take account of the unritualised and fragmented character of many life course transitions in contemporary Western societies. It is suggested that with modification these concepts might be applied to the meaning of sickness in other life course transitions.