People with MS perceive that their bodily performance and impression management is being judged in interpersonal encounters. Being ignored or perceiving that MS is overemphasized indicates the dilemma of managing stigma in social networks. Consequently, during interaction and in social relationships, people with MS experience a sense of 'feeling more ill'. This paper describes strategies of networking to affirm self and identity.

MS sufferers apply a tactic of protective disclosure by which they seek to guard their sense of self. The strategy of preventive disclosure is employed to obtain assistance from others. Furthermore, the strategy of concealing MS is conducted purposefully to prevent the sufferer being deprived of social belonging, especially with regard to work.

Ethnographic research was conducted in the thoracic ward of a Norwegian university hospital in order to study collaborative medical problem solving. As a general principle, evidence-based medicine is supposed to lead the process of medical problem solving. However, medical problem solving also requires evidence of a different kind. This is the more concrete form of evidence, such as X rays and other representations, that guides medical practice and makes sure that decisions are grounded in sound empirical facts and knowledge. In medicine, 'evidence' is on the one hand an abstract category; on the other hand, it is a tool that is practically enacted during the problem-solving work. Medical evidence does not 'show itself'. As such it has an emergent quality. Medical evidence has to be established and made practically useful in the collaborative settings by the participants in order to make conclusions about diagnoses and treatment. Hence, evidence is an interactional product; it is discursively generated and its applicability requires discourse. In addition, the production of medical evidence requires more than medical discourse and professional considerations. This paper looks at the production processes and use of medical evidence and the ambiguous meaning of this term in practical medicine.

MS sufferers apply a tactic of protective disclosure by which they seek to guard their sense of self. The strategy of preventive disclosure is employed to obtain assistance from others. Furthermore, the strategy of concealing MS is conducted purposefully to prevent the sufferer being deprived of social belonging, especially with regard to work.

This article focuses on respiratory physiological examinations conducted in the respiratory physiological lab of a Norwegian hospital ward. The examinations were aimed at producing exact and objective measures of patients' respiratory functions or capacities. The quality of the examinations depended on correct use of technology and adequate body work by professionals and patients. The concept of 'body work' has several meanings. The professionals' body work was not direct hands-on work. Their contact with the patient was communicative and informed or guided by technical devices. Although the patient's objective body constituted the focus of examination, it necessitated an active and compliant patient. The concrete outcome of the examination was a textual artefact that in the examination situation counted as the accurate and objective representation of the patient's respiratory physiological status. These examinations represented a mutually constitutive process between various agents, bodies and bodily modes required for and aimed at by the examination; different articulations of body work were essential for these processes. The objective of the article is to examine the kinds of body work that are conducted, paying particular attention to the conceptions of bodies that are practically generated during these examinations.