Starting from the observation that many unconventional health practices can be characterized as reactions against biomedicine’s dualistic logic, this article analyses the claim that ‘holistic’ medicine tends to be socially and politically progressive. After using feminist theory to argue that conceptual dualism is inherently associated with social oppression, I note several recent challenges to the dualism which has been implicit within biomedical practice. Three patterns for ‘holistic’ medicine are then described; each of these patterns is analysed in relation to the problems of conceptual dualism and of clinical medicine’s capacity to reinforce social power. These forms of medicine, I argue, are only partially successful in addressing the problems associated with the development of an anti-oppressive medical practice. In each case, dualistic divisions tend to shift position or to change shape, rather than to disappear entirely.
Achterberg, J. (1985). Imagery in healing: shamanism and modern medicine. Boston: Shambhala.
2.
Armstrong, D. (1995). The rise of surveillance medicine. Sociology of Health and Illness, 17(3), 393–404.
3.
Berlin, I. (1969). Two concepts of liberty. In I. Berlin, Four essays on liberty. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
4.
Berman, M. (1990). The cybernetic dream of the 21st century. In J. Clark (Ed.), Renewing the earth. London: Greenprint.
5.
Bordo, S. (1987). The flight to objectivity: essays on Cartesianism and culture. Albany: State University of New York Press.
6.
Bordo, S. (1993). Unbearable weight: feminism, western culture and the body. London: University of California Press.
7.
Cant, S. and Sharma, U. (1996). Introduction. In S. Cant and U. Sharma (Eds.), Complementary and alternative medicines: knowledge in practice. London: Free Association.
8.
Castel, R. (1991). From dangerousness to risk. In G. Burchell, C. Gordon and P. Miller (Eds.), The Foucault effect: studies in governmentality. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
9.
Castro, M. (1993). Power in the consulting room. The Homoeopath, 13(1), 44–46.
10.
Cheney, J. (1989). The neo-stoicism of radical environmentalism. Environmental Ethics, 11(4), 293–325.
11.
Chopra, D. (1989). Quantum healing: exploring the frontiers of mind/body medicine. New York: Bantam.
12.
Comaroff, J. (1982). Medicine: symbol and ideology. In P. Wright and A. Treacher (Eds.), The problem of medical knowledge. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
13.
Coulter, H. (1988). The origins of modern western medicine: J.B. Van Helmont to Claude Bernard. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books.
14.
Coward, R. (1989). The whole truth: the myth of alternative health. London: Faber & Faber.
15.
Crawford, R. (1980). Healthism and the medicalization of everyday life. International Journal of Health Services, 10(3), 365–388.
16.
Danciger, E. (1987). The emergence of homoeopathy: alchemy into medicine. London: Century Hutchinson.
17.
Davidoff, L. (1995). Worlds between: historical perspectives on gender and class. Cambridge: Polity Press.
18.
de Beauvoir, S. (1949[1972]). The second sex. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
19.
Doore, G. (Ed.) (1988). Shaman’s path: healing, personal growth, and empowerment. Boston: Shambhala.
20.
Doyal, L. (1995). What makes women sick?: gender and the political economy of health. London: Macmillan.
21.
Eagle, B.M. (1989). The circle of healing. In R. Carlson and B. Shield (Eds.), Healers on healing. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons.
22.
Ehrenreich, B. and Ehrenreich, J. (1978). Medicine and social control. In J. Ehrenreich (Ed.), The cultural crisis of modern medicine. London: Monthly Review Press.
23.
Ehrenreich, B. and English, D. (1979). For her own good: 150 years of the experts’ advice to women. London: Pluto Press.
24.
Ettore, E. (1994). What can she depend on?: substance abuse and women’s health. In S. Wilkinson and C. Kitzinger (Eds.), Women and health: feminist perspectives. London: Taylor & Francis.
25.
Frank, A. (1991). For a sociology of the body: an analytical review. In M. Featherstone et al. (Eds.), The body: social process and cultural theory. London: Sage.
26.
Goodison, L. (1992). Moving heaven and earth: sexuality, spirituality and social change. London: Pandora.
27.
Gordon, D. (1988). Tenacious assumptions in western medicine. In M. Lock and D. Gordon (Eds.), Biomedicine examined. London: Kluwer.
28.
Graham, H. (1994). Surviving by smoking. In S. Wilkinson and C. Kitzinger (Eds.), Women and health: feminist perspectives. London: Taylor & Francis.
29.
Gray, R.E. (1998). Four perspectives on unconventional therapies. Health, 2(1), 55–74.
30.
Griscom, J. (1981). On healing the nature/history split in feminist thought. Heresies, 13(1), 4–9.
31.
Grossinger, R. (1990). Planet medicine: from stone age shamanism to post-industrial healing (5th edn). Berkeley: North Atlantic Books.
32.
Haraway, D. (1991). Cyborgs at large: interview with Donna Haraway. In C. Penley and A. Ross (Eds.), Technoculture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Harrington, A. (1996). Unmasking suffering’s masks: reflections on old and new memories of Nazi medicine. Dædalus, 125(1), 181–205.
35.
Hastie, N. , Porch, S. and Brown, L. (1995). Doing it ourselves: promoting women’s health as feminist action. In G. Griffin (Ed.), Feminist activism in the 1990s. London: Taylor & Francis.
36.
Hekman, S. (1991). Reconstituting the subject: feminism, modernism, and postmodernism. Hypatia, 6(2), 44–63.
37.
hooks, b. (1984). Feminist theory: from margin to centre. Boston: South End Press.
38.
Jay, N. (1981). Gender and dichotomy. Feminist Studies, 7, 138–156.
39.
Johannessen, H. (1996). Individualized knowledge: reflexologists, biopaths and kinesiologists in Denmark. In S. Cant and U. Sharma (Eds.), Complementary and alternative medicines: knowledge in practice. London: Free Association.
40.
Kaufman-Osborn, T. (1993). Teasing feminist sense from experience. Hypatia, 8(2), 124–144.
41.
Kelly, M. and Field, D. (1996). Medical sociology, chronic illness and the body. Sociology of Health and Illness, 18(2), 241–257.
42.
King, S. (1988). Seeing is believing: the four worlds of a shaman. In G. Doore (Ed.), Shaman’s path: healing, personal growth, and empowerment. Boston: Shambhala.
43.
King, Y. (1989). Healing the wounds: feminism, ecology, and nature/culture dualism. In A. Jaggar and S. Bordo (Eds.), Gender/body/knowledge: feminist reconstructions of being and knowing. London: Rutgers University Press.
44.
Kirmayer, L. (1988). Mind and body as metaphors: hidden values in biomedicine. In M. Lock and D. Gordon (Eds.), Biomedicine examined. London: Kluwer.
45.
Kleinman, A. (1984). Indigenous systems of healing: questions for professional, popular and folk care. In J.W. Salmon (Ed.), Alternative medicines: popular and policy perspectives. London: Tavistock.
46.
Leder, D. (1990). The absent body. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
47.
Lerner, M. (1994). Choices in healing. London: MIT Press.
48.
Lloyd, G. (1984). The man of reason: ‘male’ and ‘female’ in western philosophy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
49.
Lowenberg, J. (1989). Caring and responsibility: the crossroads between holistic practice and traditional medicine. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
50.
Lowenberg, J. and Davis, F. (1994). Beyond medicalisation-demedicalisation: the case of holistic health. Sociology of Health and Illness, 16(5), 579–599.
51.
Lupton, D. (1995). The imperative of health: public health and the regulated body. London: Sage.
52.
McKee, J. (1988). Holistic health and the critique of western medicine. Social Science and Medicine, 26(8), 775–784.
53.
MacLeod, R.M. (1967). Law, medicine and public opinion: the resistance to compulsory health legislation, 1870–1907. Public Law, 107–128, 189–211.
54.
MacPherson, C.B. (1962). The political theory of possessive individualism: Hobbes to Locke. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
55.
Martin, E. (1989). The woman in the body: a cultural analysis of reproduction. Buckingham: Open University Press.
56.
Melucci, A. (1989). Nomads of the present: social movements and individual needs in contemporary society. J. Keane and P. Mier (Eds.), London: Hutchinson Radius.
57.
Merchant, C. (1980). The death of nature: women, ecology and the scientific revolution. London: Harper & Row.
58.
Mercier, C. (1899). Vice, crime and insanity. In T.C. Allbutt (Ed.), A system of medicine, vol. 8. London.
59.
Miles, M. (1992). Homoeopathy and human evolution. London: Winter Press.
60.
Morris, J. (1991). Pride against prejudice: transforming attitudes to disability. London: Women’s Press.
61.
Nettleton, S. (1996). Women and the new paradigm of health and medicine. Critical Social Policy, 16(3), 33–53.
62.
O’Conner, B. (1995). Healing traditions: alternative medicine and the health professions. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
63.
Oliver, M. (1990). The politics of disablement. London: Macmillan.
64.
O’Sullivan, S. (Ed.) (1987). Women’s health: a Spare Rib reader. London: Pandora.
65.
Ots, T. (1994). The silenced body: the expressive leib: on the dialectic of mind and life in Chinese cathartic healing. In T. Csordas (Ed.), Embodiment and experience: the existential ground of culture and self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
66.
Pateman, C. (1988). The sexual contract. Cambridge: Polity Press.
67.
Phillips, A. and Rakusen, J. (1978). Our bodies, ourselves. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
68.
Plumwood, V. (1993). Feminism and the mastery of nature. London: Routledge.
69.
Power, R. (1991). Ideologies of holism in health care. Complementary Medical Research, 5(3), 151–159.
70.
Rich, A. (1977). Of woman born: motherhood as experience and institution. London: Virago.
71.
Riessman, C. (1983). Women and medicalization: a new perspective. Social Policy, 14(1), 3–18.
72.
Ross, A. (1992). New age technoculture. In L. Grossberg, C. Nelson and P. Treichler (Eds.), Cultural studies. London: Routledge.
73.
Scott, A. (1996). Embodied politics: emancipatory epistemologies and vitalistic ontologies within feminist alternative medicine. PhD thesis, University of Bradford.
74.
Scott, A. (1998). Homoeopathy as a feminist form of medicine. Sociology of Health and Illness20(2), 191–214.
75.
Shaw, R. (1994). Literature review of somatisation. British Osteopathic Journal, 13, 28–31.
76.
Shorter, E. (1994). From the mind to the body: the cultural origins of psychosomatic symptoms. New York: Free Press.
77.
Söö, M. (1992). New age and Armageddon: the goddess or the gurus?: towards a feminist vision of the future. London: Women’s Press.
78.
Smith, F.B. (1979). The people’s health, 1830–1910. London: Croom Helm.
79.
Sontag, S. (1977). Illness as metaphor. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
80.
Stacey, J. (1994). High anxiety: investigating cultural taboo or the ‘C’ word and the ‘L’ word. Paper presented at the BSA Conference, March, Lancaster.
81.
Tansley, D. (1980). Radionics and the subtle anatomy of man. Essex: Health Science Press.
82.
Taussig, M. (1980). Reification and the consciousness of the patient. Social Science and Medicine, 14B, 3–13.
83.
Taylor, R. (1984). Alternative medicine and the medical encounter in Britain and the United States. In J.W. Salmon (Ed.), Alternative medicines: popular and policy perspectives. London: Tavistock.
84.
Torkington, P. (1987). The racist and sexist delivery of the NHS: the experience of black women. In S. O’Sullivan (Ed.), Women’s health: a Spare Rib reader. London: Pandora.
85.
Walkowitz, J. (1980). Prostitution and Victorian society: women, class and the state. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
86.
Warren, K. (1990). The power and the promise of ecological feminism. Environmental Ethics, 12(2), 125–146.
87.
Wauters, A. (1993). Ambika’s guide to healing and wholeness: the energetic path to the chakras and colour. London: Judy Piatkus.
88.
Weedon, C. (1987). Feminist practice and poststructuralist theory. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
89.
West, W. (1988). Amethyst days: some notes on healing and psychic development. Leeds: privately published.
90.
Whitmont, E. (1993). The alchemy of healing. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books.
91.
Williams, G. (1984). The genesis of chronic illness: narrative reconstruction. Sociology of Health and Illness, 6, 175–200.
92.
Williams, S. (1996). The vicissitudes of embodiment across the chronic illness trajectory. Body & Society, 2(2), 23–47.
93.
Worcester, N. (1983). The politics of women’s health. In L. Caldecott and S. Leland (Eds.), Reclaim the earth: women speak out for life on earth. London: Women’s Press.
94.
Zola, I.K. (1972). Medicine as an institution of social control. Sociological Review, 20, 487–504.
