AMBIENTUM BIOETHICA BIOLOGIA CHEMIA DIGITALIA DRAMATICA EDUCATIO ARTIS GYMNAST. ENGINEERING EPHEMERIDES EUROPAEA GEOGRAPHIA GEOLOGIA HISTORIA HISTORIA ARTIUM INFORMATICA IURISPRUDENTIA MATHEMATICA MUSICA NEGOTIA OECONOMICA PHILOLOGIA PHILOSOPHIA PHYSICA POLITICA PSYCHOLOGIA-PAEDAGOGIA SOCIOLOGIA THEOLOGIA CATHOLICA THEOLOGIA CATHOLICA LATIN THEOLOGIA GR.-CATH. VARAD THEOLOGIA ORTHODOXA THEOLOGIA REF. TRANSYLVAN
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VIEW PDF: ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE AS COUNTER-CONDUCT: THERAPEUTIC SPACES AND MEDICAL RATIONALITY IN CONTEMPORARY ROMANIA
This study analyses the practice of medical pluralism in contemporary Romania, addressing the phenomenon of alternative medicine through the Foucauldian concept of counter-conduct. Employing in-depth interviews with general and alternative practitioners from two towns in Transylvania, and participant observations in spaces where they practice their knowledge, I describe how certain discursive acts reformulate the body and the subject-patient. Alternative therapists construct their practice in direct opposition to several parameters of biomedicine, such as the logic of diagnosis, treatment, and the praxis of patient’s visit to the general practitioner’s office, discussed in the paper. They define their approach as psychosomatic, and set-up the medical space as a confessional space, envisioning a holistic corporeality and the idea of the “inner doctor” in each patient. This conduct would supposedly make the subject “active” and “empowered”, as opposed to the “passive” patient succumbed to the diagnosis of conventional doctors.
Keywords: counter-conduct, biomedicine, alternative medicines, patient subject
