Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Striving for self-improvement: alternative medicine considered as technologies of enhancement

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Social Theory & Health Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The notion of medical enhancement technologies has drawn attention to optimization techniques within the health area. However, this notion has evolved at the level of governmental programmes, with very little attention directed towards people’s own practices. Using a social scientific body of knowledge about enhancement technologies and a Foucauldian analytical framework, this article explores how users engage with alternative medicine. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Danish users and observations of their treatment sessions, the article demonstrates how they embark on a voyage of discovery with the body to enhance their own selves and bodily resources. The discussion centres on Rose’s approach to medical enhancement technologies and Foucault’s notion of ‘technologies of the self’. A wider field of tension is outlined in which embodied alternative treatment practices play a role in various modalities of transforming and controlling bodies and selves. It is argued that such practices can be conceived of as enhancement technologies at the users’ level by showing how they not only concentrate on treatment and body maintenance, but also foster the enabling processes of changing habits, preferences, and attitudes, and creating a subjective sense of their bodies.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Alternative medicine is here defined as treatments not usually offered within biomedicine and without official support or control, but offered on a fee-for-service basis by non-authorized, self-regulated practitioners with varying types of training and certification. This definition is used both in Danish law and in the national Health Interview Surveys in Denmark, and our study, herein our selection of clinics and practitioners participating, is based on that. ‘Biomedicine’ refers to the science-based Western medical system.

  2. The empirical research was carried out from 2006-07 in Copenhagen and adjoining municipalities in cooperation with C. Baarts, R. Stelter, and M. Høybye-Mortensen. For more details on the methods, see Baarts and Pedersen, 2009.

  3. Alternative medicine has been criticized (e.g. Coward 1989; Sered and Agigian 2008) for fostering conservative or neoliberal ideologies of personal responsibility for health, as well as for medicalizing discomforts that may be better regarded as essential parts of normal human experience—exactly as a consequence of drawing on holism but also on illness narratives within Western discourse about the perfectibility of the body.

  4. The tendencies summed up in the term Somatopia can be seen as following in the wake of the narcissistic trends described, for example, in Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism (1980), and with concepts such as ‘healthism’ (Crawford 1980) or the ‘control society’ (Deleuze 2002), or processes such as the fitness wave (Glassner 1989): tendencies that co-constitute the so-called ‘bodily turn’.

References

  • Baarts, C., and I.K. Pedersen. 2009. Derivative benefits: Exploring the body through complementary and alternative medicine. Sociology of Health & Illness 31 (5): 719–733.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barry, C.A. 2006. The role of evidence in alternative medicine: Contrasting biomedical and anthropological approaches. Social Science and Medicine 62 (11): 2646–2657.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Charmaz, K. 2000. Grounded theory. Objectivist and constructivist methods. In Handbook of qualitative research, ed. N.K. Denzin, and Y.S. Lincoln, 509–535. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chrysanthou, M. 2002. Transparency and selfhood: Utopia and the informed body. Social Science and Medicine 54 (3): 469–479.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Coward, R. 1989. The whole truth: The myth of alternative health. London: Faber.

    Google Scholar 

  • Crawford, R. 1980. Healthism and the medicalization of everyday life. International Journal of Health Services 10 (3): 365–388.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Crossley, N. 2001. The social body. Habit, identity and desire. London: Sage Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Deleuze, G. 2002. Postscript on Control Societies. In Ctrl [Space]: Rhetorics of surveillance from Bentham to big brother, ed. T. Levin, U. Frohne, and P. Weibel, 316–321. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ekholm, O., A.I. Christensen, M. Davidsen, and K. Juel. 2015. Alternativ behandling. Resultater fra Sundheds- og Sygelighedsundersøgelsen. Copenhagen: SIF, Syddansk Universitet.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ekholm, O., and M. Kjøller. 2007. Brugen af alternative behandling i Danmark: resultater fra den nationalt repræsentative Sundheds- og sygelighedsundersøgelse 2005. Tidsskrift for Forskning i Sygdom og Samfund 6: 15–24.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ernst, E. 2000. Prevalence of use of complementary/alternative medicine: A systematic review. Bulletin of the World Health Organization 78 (2): 252–257.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fadlon, J. 2004. Meridians, chakras and psycho-neuro-immunology: The dematerializing body and the domestication of alternative medicine. Body and Society 10 (4): 69–86.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. 1988. Technologies of the Self. In Technologies of the self: A seminar with Michel Foucault, ed. L.H. Martin, H. Gutman, and P.H. Hutton, 16–49. London: Tavistock.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. 1990 [1984]. The care of the self. London: Penguin Books.

  • Foucault, M. 1997 [1982]. Technologies of the self. In Michel Foucault. Ethics: Subjectivity and truth, essential works of Foucault 1954-1984, ed. P. Rabinow, 225–251. New York: The New Press.

  • Gendlin, E.T. 1997 [1962]. Experiencing and the creation of meaning. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

  • Glassner, B. 1989. Fitness and the postmodern self. Journal of Health and Social Behaviour 30: 180–191.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hansen, B., S. Grimsgaard, L. Launsø, V. Fønnebø, T. Falkenberg, and N.K. Rasmussen. 2005. Use of complementary and alternative medicine in the Scandinavian countries. Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care 23 (1): 57–62.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heyes, C.J. 2007. Self-transformations—Foucault, ethics, and normalized bodies. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Johannessen, H. 1994. Komplekse kroppe. Alternativ behandling i antropologisk perspektiv. København: Akademisk Forlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kelner, M., and B. Wellman. 1997. Health care and consumer choice: Medical and alternative therapies. Social Science and Medicine 45 (2): 203–212.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Larsen, L.T., and D. Stone. 2015. Governing health care through free choice. Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 40 (5): 941–970.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lasch, C. 1980. The culture of Narcissism: American life in an age of diminishing expectations. London: Sphere Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • MacArtney, J.I., and A. Wahlberg. 2014. The problem of complementary and alternative medicine use today: eyes half closed. Qualitative Health Research 24 (1): 114–123.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pedersen, I.K. 2012. Kampen med kroppen. Alternativ behandling i et bruger- og samfundsperspektiv. Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pedersen, I.K. 2013. ’It can do no harm’: Body maintenance and modification in alternative medicine acknowledged as a non-risk health regimen. Social Science and Medicine 90: 56–62.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pedersen, I.K., and C. Baarts. 2010. ‘Fantastic hands’—But no evidence: The construction of expertise by users of CAM. Social Science and Medicine 71 (6): 1068–1075.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Peirce, C. 1934. Pragmatism and pragmaticism. In Collected papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vol. 5, ed. C. Hartshorne, and P. Weiss. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Race, K. 2008. The use of pleasure in harm reduction: Perspectives from the history of sexuality. International Journal of Drug Policy 19 (5): 417–423.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rose, N. 1996. Authority and the genealogy of subjectivity. In Detraditionalization: critical reflections on authority and identity, ed. P. Heelas, S. Lash, and P. Morris, 294–327. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rose, N. 2001. The politics of life itself. Theory, Culture and Society 18 (6): 1–30.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Salomonsen, L.J., L. Skovgaard, S. la Cour, L. Nyborg, L. Launsø, and V. Fønnebø. 2011. Use of complementary and alternative medicine at Norwegian and Danish Hospitals. BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine 11 (4): 1–8.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sered, S., and A. Agigian. 2008. Holistic sickening: breast cancer and the discursive worlds of complementary and alternative practitioners. Sociology of Health & Illness 30 (4): 616–631.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thualagant, N. 2016. Body management and the quest for performative health. Social Theory & Health 14 (2): 189–206.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Villadsen, K., and A. Wahlberg. 2015. The government of life: managing populations, health and scarcity. Economy and Society 44 (1): 1–17.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wahlberg, A., and N. Rose. 2015. The governmentalization of living: calculating global health. Economy and Society 44 (1): 60–90.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ziguras, C. 2004. Self-Care. Embodiment, Personal Autonomy and the Shaping of Health Consciousness. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

Support for this work was provided by The Danish Council for Independent Research/Social Sciences (FSE) under grant number 0602-00951B. I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their excellent comments and advice on earlier drafts of this article.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Inge Kryger Pedersen

Authors
  1. Inge Kryger Pedersen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Inge Kryger Pedersen.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Pedersen, I.K. Striving for self-improvement: alternative medicine considered as technologies of enhancement. Soc Theory Health 16, 209–223 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41285-017-0052-3

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41285-017-0052-3

Keywords

Search

Navigation