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

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 s...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Public understanding of science (Bristol, England) England), 2020-07, Vol.29 (5), p.508-523
Main Authors: Vuolanto, Pia, Bergroth, Harley, Nurmi, Johanna, Salmenniemi, Suvi
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Activities of daily living
Digital mapping
Ethnography
Humans
Knowledge
Knowledge bases (artificial intelligence)
Medicine
Self Care
Vaccines
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Summary: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.
ISSN:0963-6625
1361-6609
DOI:10.1177/0963662520934752