Curating ‘the good story’: Care as representative performance in Danish veteran rehabilitation

Eva Graae Krause*, Ulla Christensen, Mette N. Svendsen

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

Abstract

In this article, we explore the intricacies of veteran care and show how care practices come to incorporate veterans’ ‘self-performances’ to raise political attention and funding for future rehabilitation activities. By bringing into dialogue theories of care and theories of performance and representation, we illustrate how a seemingly classic form of care—veteran rehabilitation—takes the form of representative performance. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with the Danish Invictus Games team, we demonstrate how politics, research and TV documentaries are integrated into veteran care practices. Through this integration, mentally wounded veterans, while performing ‘themselves’ for shifting audiences with shifting agendas, come to assume the roles of both caregivers and care receivers. Crucially, we highlight that wounded veterans, while undertaking their personal rehabilitation journey, are curated into and (un)willingly positioned as representatives of others. By showing how caring for wounded veterans goes hand in hand with caring for fictive, future wounded veterans and for political, research and media agendas, this article offers new ways of thinking of and with care.

Original languageEnglish
JournalSociology of Health and Illness
ISSN0141-9889
DOIs
Publication statusAccepted/In press - 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Author(s). Sociology of Health & Illness published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness.

Keywords

  • care
  • Denmark
  • rehabilitation
  • representation
  • veterans

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