Today, medications are central to both formal and familial healthcare systems. This article examines medications as ingrained and socio-culturally significant features of domestic landscapes. We consider the everyday medicative practices of four mothers who care for their chronically ill children in the home. Our analysis examines how these mothers navigate an information-rich environment to make decisions on what medications their children will consume. We document how participants develop expertise, research and administer medications, monitor their children’s reactions to medications and revise their efforts to care accordingly. Ideas about gifting provide new insights into the appropriation and transformation of medications within familial caregiving practices.
BajcarJ (2006) Task analysis of patients' medication-taking practice and the role of making sense: A grounded theory study. Research in Social and Administrative Pharmacy2(1): 59–82.
2.
BellS (2004) Intensive performances of mothering: A sociological perspective. Qualitative Research4(1): 45–75.
3.
BlaxterM (1983) The causes of disease: Women talking. Social Science and Medicine17(2): 56–69.
4.
BlokAJensenT (2011) Bruno Latour: Hyrbid Thoughts in a Hybrid World, London and New York: Routledge.
BrowneP (2010) The dialectics of health and social care: Toward a conceptual framework. Theoretical Sociology39(5): 575–591.
7.
BussingRGaryFA (2001) Practice guidelines and parental ADHD treatment evaluations: Friends or foes?Harvard Review of Psychiatry9(5): 223–233.
8.
CarrierJG (1995) Gifts and Commodities: Exchange and Western Capitalism since 1700, New York: Routledge.
9.
CohenDMcCubbinMCollinJ (2001) Medications as social phenomena. Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine5(4): 441–469.
10.
de CerteauM (1984) The Practice of Everyday Life (Rendall S trans), Berkeley, CA: University of California.
11.
GunnarssonNHydénLC (2009) Organizing allergy and being a ‘good’ parent: Parents’ narratives about their children’s emerging problems. Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine13(2): 157–174.
12.
HalkierBKatz-GerroTMartensL (2011) Applying practice theory to the study of consumption: Theoretical and methodological considerations. Journalism of Consumer Culture11(3): 3–13.
13.
HargreavesT (2011) Practice-ing behavior change: Applying social practice theory to pro-environmental behaviour change. Journal of Consumer Culture11(1): 79–99.
14.
HighmoreB (2002) The Everyday Life Reader, London: Routledge.
15.
HodgettsDChamberlainK (2007) Special issue: Media and health. Journal of Health Psychology11(2): 171–174.
16.
HodgettsDChamberlainKGabeJ (2011b) Emplacement and everyday use of medications in domestic dwellings. Health and Place17(1): 353–360.
17.
HodgettsDNikoraLWRuaM (2011a) Maori men and the indirect procurement and sharing of prescription medications. AlterNative7(2): 152–162.
18.
Hodgetts D and Stolte O (2012) Editorial: Case-based Research in Community and Social Psychology. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology 22(5): 379–389.
19.
LauverLS (2008) Parenting foster children with chronic illness and complex medical needs. Journal of Family Nursing14(1): 74–96.
20.
LayneL (1999) Transformative motherhood: On Giving and Getting in a Consumer Culture, New York: New York University.
21.
LefebvreH (1947/1958/1991) Critique of Everyday Life (Moore J trans), London: Verso.
22.
MaussM (1950) The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, London: Routledge.
23.
NettletonSBurrowsR (2003) ‘E-scaped medicine? Information, reflexivity and health. Critical Social Policy23(2): 165–185.
24.
PorterR (1985) The patient's view: Doing medical history from below. Theory and Society14(2): 175–198.
25.
PoundPBrittenNMorganM (2005) Resisting medications: A synthesis of qualitative studies of medicine taking. Social Science and Medicine61(1): 133–155.
26.
RadleyA (2009) Works of Illness: Narrative, Picturing and the Social Response to Serious Disease, Leicestershire, London: InkerMen.
27.
Reynolds WhyteSvan der GeestSHardonA (2002) Social Lives of Medicines, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
28.
SheringhamM (2006) Everyday Life: Theories and Practices from Surrealism to the Present, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
29.
ThompsonC (2011) Understanding consumption as political and moral practice: Introduction to the special issue. Journal of Consumer Culture11(2): 139–144.
30.
van der GeestSWhyteSRHardonA (1996) The anthropology of pharmaceuticals: A biographical approach. Annual Review of Anthropology25: 153–178.
31.
WoodwardI (2011) Towards an object-relations theory of consumerism: The aesthetic of desire and the unfolding materiality of social life. Journal of Consumer Culture11(3): 366–384.
32.
WozniakD (1999) Gifts and burdens: The social and familial context of foster mothering. In: LayneL (ed.) Transformative Motherhood: On Giving and Getting in a Consumer Culture, New York: New York University, pp. 89–131.
33.
ZelizerV (2005) The Purchase of Intimacy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University.
