Title: Practising care elsewhere: Men, chronic illness, and technologies of care

Amanda Karlsson, Aarhus University<br/>Title: Practising care elsewhere: Men, chronic illness, and technologies of care<br/>Based on 17 individual in-depth interviews with men living with chronic illness, this paper explores how care and self-care (Fischer &amp; Tronto, 1990; Bellacasa, 2017) are practised and communicated in ways and places beyond designated peer-driven health communities on social media. Research has shown that peer-driven communities on social media can serve as central sites for care, support, and knowledge exchange among individuals living with chronic illnesses (Kingod et al., 2017; McCosker, 2018; Tucker and Goodings, 2017). These spaces are often characterised by emotionally expressive, verbally articulated, and explicitly caring interactions. However, this dominant framing risks overlooking forms of care that do not centre illness talk or emotional disclosure and that may therefore remain less visible within existing understandings of peer support. <br/>Rather than centring illness narratives, the men in this study often engage in care through other forms of shared activities, both online and offline, allowing support to emerge without explicit vulnerability. Care is practised through practices of “doing rather than telling” and engaging in activities that are not necessarily framed as health-related or otherwise connected to their chronic conditions. These practices enable forms of connection and mutual support while avoiding modes of communication that require overt emotional expression or the explicit articulation of illness experiences. As such, care is present, but it is enacted in indirect, situational, and often understated ways. <br/>These practices contrast with the emotionally expressive care strategies commonly found in women-dominated health communities on social media, where sharing personal experiences, emotions, and bodily vulnerabilities is often central. The paper does not suggest that men reject care or self-care; rather, it shows how care is reconfigured in ways that align with men’s understandings of themselves and their social relations while living with various chronic conditions. Care is thus shaped by ongoing negotiations of masculinity, where expectations of strength, autonomy, and emotional restraint coexist with the need for support and connection (Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005; Bridges &amp; Pascoe, 2014). <br/>The paper argues that these negotiations produce ambivalent forms of connection that both enable care and constrain its articulation. While such practices make care possible without threatening masculine identities, they also limit what can be named, shared, or recognised as care by the men themselves. By foregrounding these less visible practices, the paper contributes to a broader understanding of care among men living with chronic illness. It shows that care does indeed exist, but often in forms and spaces that fall outside normative, women-dominated models of care, and therefore risks remaining unrecognised within current frameworks for peer support and health-related care.<br/>References<br/>Bellacasa, M. P. de la (2017). Matters of care: Speculative ethics in more than human worlds. University of Minnesota Press.<br/>Bridges, T. S., &amp; Pascoe, C. J. (2014). Hybrid masculinities: New directions in the sociology of men and masculinities. Sociology Compass, 8(3), 246–258. https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12134<br/>Connell, R. W., &amp; Messerschmidt, J. W. (2005). Hegemonic masculinity: Rethinking the concept. Gender &amp; Society, 19(6), 829–859. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243205278639<br/>Fisher, B., &amp; Tronto, J. C. (1990). Toward a feminist theory of caring. In E. K. Abel &amp; M. K. Nelson (Eds.), Circles of care: Work and identity in women’s lives (pp. 35–62). State University of New York Press.<br/>Kingod, N., Cleal, B., Wahlberg, A., &amp; Husted, G. R. (2017). Online peer-to-peer communities in the daily lives of people with chronic illness: A qualitative systematic review. Qualitative Health Research, 27(1), 89–99. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732316680203<br/>McCosker, A. (2018). Intensive media: Aversive affect and visual culture. Routledge.<br/>Quaglia, V. (2023). Wounded masculinities: Men, trauma, and the negotiation of vulnerability. Men and Masculinities, 26(2), 271–289. https://doi.org/10.1177/1097184X221132845<br/>Tucker, I. M., &amp; Goodings, L. (2017). Digital atmospheres: Affective practices of care in online mental health support. Emotion, Space and Society, 24, 18–25. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2017.06.002<br/>