Reconfiguring health knowledges? Contemporary modes of self-care as 'everyday fringe medicine'

Public Underst Sci. 2020 Jul;29(5):508-523. doi: 10.1177/0963662520934752. Epub 2020 Jun 27.

Abstract

The contestation of expertise is perhaps nowhere more pronounced than in the field of health and well-being, on which this article focuses. A multitude of practices and communities that stand in contentious relationships with established forms of medical expertise and promote personalised modes of self-care have proliferated across Euro-American societies. Drawing on multi-sited ethnography in three domains - body-mind-spirit therapies, vaccine hesitancy and consumer-grade digital self-tracking - we map such practices through the concept of 'everyday fringe medicine'. The concept of everyday fringe medicine enables us to bring together various critical health and well-being practices and to unravel the complex modes of contestation and appreciation of the medical establishment that are articulated within them. We find three critiques of the medical establishment - critiques of medical knowledge production, professional practices and the knowledge base - which make visible the complexities related to public understandings of science within everyday fringe medicine.

Keywords: health and new technologies; lay expertise; patients; public understanding of science; science experts; studies of science and technology.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Humans
  • Knowledge*
  • Self Care*