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Reflexive Biomedicalization and Alternative Healing Systems

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Abstract

The utilization of alternative medical therapies and practitioners has increased dramatically in the U.S. in the last two to three decades. This trend seems paradoxical when one considers the rapid advances taking place in biomedical knowledge and technology during this same time period. Observers both inside and outside of the medical profession have attempted to explain the rising popularity of alternative medicine by proposing that it signals a growing sense of dissatisfaction and disenchantment with professional biomedical practices on the part of the lay public. This paper challenges this thesis and offers an alternative explanation, arguing that the rise of alternative medicine is a consequence of the success and expanding influence of biomedicine rather than its failure and declining authority. The argument presented draws primarily on Ulrich Beck’s “risk society” perspective and theory of “reflexive modernization,” with specific attention to his analysis of the “reflexive scientization” process. The application of this perspective allows us to understand the emergence and development of alternative medicine as an unanticipated consequence of the process of reflexive biomedicalization in the late modern era.

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Notes

  1. The terms “risk” and “uncertainty” refer to different types of outcomes, the former applying to decisions whose possible outcomes and probabilities are known, the latter applying to outcomes that are not known or knowable (Knight 1921; Luce and Raiffa 1958, cited in Goffman 1967).

  2. Beck (1992, 158−159) sees this practice as characteristic of primary scientization, when contradictions, ambiguities, etc. “need not imply any loss in the credibility of scientific rationality claims so long as the sciences can succeed in handling the mistakes, errors and criticism of their practical consequences essentially within science”.

  3. Support for this latter possibility can be found in two sources. First, Paul Starr’s (1982) study of the historical development of professional allopathic medicine in the U.S. reveals that the popularity of sectarian medical approaches peaked when they were subjected to the most intense attacks by the regular profession and declined during the period of “convergence and accommodation” between the regulars and sectarians that began at the beginning of the twentieth century. Second, Clarke et al. (2003) view the co-optation of elements of alternative medicine by biomedicine as one dimension of the broad-based structural trend they identify as “biomedicalization.” However, I would emphasize the difficulty of making future projections based on past patterns or conceptualizations of over-arching structural imperatives.

  4. National surveys of the U.S. population indicate that about 85% of U.S. adults identify with religion, 86% believe in a divine power, and 56% say they pray at least once a day (NORC 2005, 169, 171, 442). By way of international comparison, 82.4% of U.S. adults state that they “gain comfort and strength from religion,” while only 30.6 of adults in Sweden agree with this statement (World Values Survey 2000).

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Lyng, S. Reflexive Biomedicalization and Alternative Healing Systems. Bioethical Inquiry 7, 53–69 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-010-9215-9

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