This article explores how healthcare-seeking practices and the transformation of bodily sensations into symptoms are embedded in what we term a ‘moral sensescape’ of everyday life. Based on fieldwork in a suburban middle-class neighbourhood in Denmark, we discuss how a moral relation between the Danish welfare state and the middle-class population is embodied in a responsibility for individual health. Overall, we identify a striving to be a ‘good citizen’; this entails conflicting moral possibilities in relation to experiencing, interpreting and acting on bodily sensations. We examine how people meet the conflicting moral possibilities of complying with current public health rhetoric on proper healthcare seeking, including timely presentation of symptoms, and simultaneously try to avoid misusing the healthcare system and be characterised as overly worried or even as a hypochondriac; this challenge constitutes complex navigational routes through the moral sensescape of the Danish middle class.
Sara Marie Hebsgaard Offersen is an anthropologist and PhD candidate at the Research Unit for General Practice at the Faculty of Health, Aarhus University. She is part of an interdisciplinary research group exploring early diagnosis in cancer. Her main research interests include sensations, symptoms and health practices in everyday life contexts. E-mail: sara.offersen@ph.au.dk
Peter Vedsted is Professor of Primary Care at The Research Unit for General Practice, and Professor of Innovative Patient Pathways at Silkeborg Diagnostic Centre, Aarhus University, Denmark. He is the director of a research group for cancer diagnosis investigating the pathway from symptom to treatment of cancer. E-mail: p.vedsted@ph.au.dk
Rikke Sand Andersen is associate professor at the Research Unit for General Practice at the Faculty of Health and Department of Anthropology at the Faculty of Arts, Aarhus University. She is part of an interdisciplinary research group conducting research related to cancer diagnostics and general practice, and heads an anthropological group of researchers within this field. E-mail: rsa@feap.dk