10.2190/SH.6.1.c 98L1433820801GT0 3 Reframing Dementia in Swedish Self-Help Group Conversations: Constructing Citizenship 9 41 20120123 20120123 20120123 20120123 98L1433820801GT0.pdf http://baywood.metapress.com/link.asp?target=contribution&id=98L1433820801GT0 1 Linda Örulv Center for Dementia Research (CEDER), Department of Medical and Health Sciences, Division of Health and Society, Linköping University, Sweden This study explores on a micro-level the activity of a self-help group for persons with dementia in Swedish municipal care, based on audio-recordings from 18 months' ethnographic fieldwork. The study focuses on the discursive construction of a shared meaning perspective and its inherent possibilities for liberation. Applying a citizenship perspective, the study approaches people with dementia as vulnerable to marginalization while at the same time capable of agency within the boundaries of their condition. The findings paint a complex picture involving opportunities and limitations of experiential knowledge, issues of double stigmatization, and constructs of being interrelated with other people and with the surrounding society. In the center is the overarching struggle of retaining citizenship in the face of the evolving disease. dementia citizenship self-help groups mutual support meaning perspective experiential knowledge discourse Sweden

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