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Complementary and Alternative Medicine pp 273–294Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Shaping of ‘Embodied Expertise’ in Alternative Medicine

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Abstract

By exploring ‘embodied expertise’ in alternative treatments, this chapter endeavours to help us to account for the popularity of alternative medicine. Embodied expertise has been a much-neglected area in healthcare research for alternative medicine compared with ‘negative’ explanations such as studies of practitioners’ (lack of) education, treatment effects and effectiveness, or users’ dissatisfaction with conventional healthcare. Drawing on a concept of expertise different from ‘expert’ and ‘profession’ allows us to identify dimensions such as skills, knowledge, and spatiality developed not only by practitioners but also in the practitioner-user encounter. Based on a study of three of the most popular forms of alternative medicine in Denmark, we demonstrate how these dimensions are central to developing relationships between (1) expert and lay, (2) experience and evidence-based knowledge, and (3) clinic and home. We argue that such relationships develop the embodied expertise of practitioners, as well as that of users of alternative medicine.

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Authors and Affiliations

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

    Inge Kryger Pedersen & Charlotte Andreas Baarts

Authors
  1. Inge Kryger Pedersen
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  2. Charlotte Andreas Baarts
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Humanities and Social Science, University of Newcastle, Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia

    Caragh Brosnan

  2. School of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland

    Pia Vuolanto

  3. Department of Sociology, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden

    Jenny-Ann Brodin Danell

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Pedersen, I.K., Baarts, C.A. (2018). Shaping of ‘Embodied Expertise’ in Alternative Medicine. In: Brosnan, C., Vuolanto, P., Danell, JA. (eds) Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Health, Technology and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73939-7_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73939-7_11

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