N egotiating H olistic T urn The Domestication of Alternative Medicine J U D I T H F A D L O N THE Negotiating the Holistic Turn FADLON SUNY Negotiating the Holistic Turn This page intentionally left blank. Negotiating the Holistic Turn The Domestication of Alternative Medicine JUDITH FADLON State University of New York Press Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2005 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, address State University of New York Press, 90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207 Production by Kelli Williams Marketing by Michael Campochiaro Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fadlon, Judith, 1955– Negotiating the holistic turn : the domestication of alternative medicine / Judith Fadlon. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7914-6315-X (alk. paper) 1. Alternative medicine—Israel. 2. Holistic medicine—Israel. I. Title. R733.F344 2005 615.5'095694—dc22 2004042990 1098765432 1 This book is for Gedi This page intentionally left blank. Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Biomedical Culture Revisited 2 Outline of the Book 6 Chapter 1. Conceptualizing NCM 9 Approaches in the History of NCM Research 9 Domestication: Making Sense of Medicine 16 Acculturation and Assimilation 19 Domestication and the Flow of Culture 23 Chapter 2. Setting the Scene: NCM in Israel 25 The Legal Status of NCM in Israel 27 NCM Institutions in Israel 34 Methodological Considerations 36 Chapter 3. Negotiation: The NCM Clinic 39 The Clinic and Its Boundaries 40 How the Clinic Worked 43 The Staff 47 Case Presentations 51 Chapter 4. The Patients: Group Profile and Patterns of Use 63 Cultural Outlook and the Use of NCM 64 Sociodemographic Characteristics and Health Problems 68 Patients’ Attitudes toward Biomedicine 68 Cultural Outlook and Practices 72 The Convergence of Statistics and Ethnography 75 vii Chapter 5. Dissemination: The Popular Discourse of NCM 79 Interprofessional Discourse in the Public Arena 80 The Narrative Formula of Dissemination 83 Magic Moments 84 Deus ex Machina—Bio Medicine as the Organizing Principle 90 Conventional Medicine Fights Back 91 Horror Stories 92 Chapter 6. Institutionalization: The NCM College 97 Introductory Lecture for Potential Students 100 The Yearbook 103 The Oriental Medicine Curriculum 106 The College Bulletin 111 Chapter 7. Conclusion: Familiarizing the Exotic 117 Domestication: Clinic, College, Media, and Patients 119 Local Findings—Global Implications? 126 Why Domestication? The Interplay between Biomedical Hegemony and Consumerist Demand 127 The “Other” Appropriated and the “Other” Rejected 130 NCM and the Postmodern Body 131 Appendix: NCM Modalities Available at the Clinic 137 Notes 143 References 145 Index 155 viii Contents ix Acknowledgments I would like to acknowledge a number of individuals who have con- tributed to my thinking and to this book in particular I am indebted to Professor Haim Hazan for his intellectual contri- bution to my work and especially for his kindness, enthusiasm, and encouragement as I progressed from one stage to the next. I would like to thank Professor Yehouda Shenhav for his support and for gener- ously allowing me time to write, and Professor Noah Lewin-Epstein for his contribution at the outset of this project. I also thank Professor Rivka Carmi for her commitment to research and her agenda to sup- port women scholars. My research on alternative medicine has allowed me the privilege of working through my ideas with members of vari- ous disciplines. In this capacity, I thank my father, Dr. Gerald Shapiro, for deconstructing boundaries between disciplines, and Professor Shmuel Eidelman for his thoughtful remarks on the reconstruction of those boundaries. Professor Shimon Glick, Professor Micky Weingarten, Professor Carmi Margolis, Dr. Shai Pintov, and Dr. Menachem Oberbaum were exceedingly generous in sharing knowledge, experi- ence, and opinions. Even though we did not always agree, our chal- lenging conversations are undoubtedly reflected in my work. Ayal Hassidim, who will one day be a healer, has my gratitude for his editorial assistance, and I thank Ilan Roziner for his statistical advice and his rare ability to help me combine ethnography and statistics. I owe special appreciation to the director, staff, and patients of the clinic where I conducted my fieldwork. I am unable to thank them in name in order to protect the anonymity of the clinic. Thank you. Beyond the intellectual contribution I have gratefully received in this endeavor, I am indebted to my family for the love, support and indeed, at times, tolerance they have shown. I am obliged to my mother, Sybil, for insisting there is a world outside my study. I thank my partner, Gedi, and my children Thor and Shiri for showing me that world. My friend, Mercia Hazan, has my gratitude for the invaluable sense of humor and perspective that she brings to our friendship. [...]... holistic medicine to be negative to the kind of culture in which the other kind of medicine belongs If they have made the choice for gentler, more spiritual medicine, they will be making the same choice in other contexts, dietary, ecological, as well as medical The choice of holistic medicine will not be an isolated preference, uncoordinated with other values upheld by the patient” (p 32) Douglas therefore... medicine, often use the term “complementary.” The term “alternative” is more radical in that it carries the implication of one element replacing another and the concept that nonconventional therapies could, in fact, take the place of conventional medicine in many cases and perhaps compensate for its shortcomings 1 2 Negotiating the Holistic Turn To avoid the normative bias of either complementary or... terms of the write-up is in fact one of the socializing processes of medical internship Students learn what kind of details can make the attending physicians impatient or bored: “They don’t want to hear the story of the person They want to hear the edited version” (Good, 1994: 78) Professional behavior, then, is Not to talk with people and learn about their lives and nurture them You’re not there for... medical pluralism, to the domestication approach offered in this study Modernity versus Tradition The first and earliest approach in the study of NCM rested on a dichotomy between traditionalism and modernity For example, studies 9 10 Negotiating the Holistic Turn conducted in developing societies often labored under the belief in the dominance of Western biomedicine In these studies, the relationship between... and promoting the advantages of NCM These articles provide an interesting instance of the manner in which an opposition between NCM and 8 Negotiating the Holistic Turn CM is created only to be reconciled within the framework of “complementary” or “integrated” medicine Chapter 6 illustrates the manner in which NCM is taught in Israeli colleges This is part of the professionalization of NCM These colleges... nonconventional therapies and techniques could create the impression of medical pluralism, NCM has not gained equal status to biomedicine, in Israel and elsewhere, as the term “medical pluralism” would imply Rather, its successful incorporation 16 Negotiating the Holistic Turn into the therapeutic repertoire of developed countries has proved to depend, in principle, on biomedical approval and the imitation... pre-contact form, and then comparing them to the post-contact situation The cultural features of the group, once adapted, may not be the same as those of the original group on first contact With continued contact the groups and the individuals within them continue to change In the case of NCM, we are interested not only in the post-contact form but also the original form As a result of acculturation... processes So there’s the sense of if you try to really tell people the story of someone, they’d be angry; they’d be annoyed at you because you’re missing the point That’s indulgence, sort of You can have that if you want that when you’re in the room with the patient But don’t present that to me What you need to present to me is the stuff we’re going to work on (1994: 78) Medical discourse therefore is... NCM was examined in the urban context of developed Western societies, the dichotomous principle persisted and the tendency was to transfer the modernization perspective, which had been employed in the study of traditional societies, to the modern milieu The reason for this might be that homogeneous ethnic groups served as the targets of these studies For example, Farge (1977) treated the use of traditional... do, the components of the herbs and their side effects In China people don’t ask because they already know It is part of their background even if it is the first time they are going to see a practitioner Also Chinese people are not tending to ask questions They don’t ask why (Barnes, 1998: 420) Studies such as these conducted by Unschuld, Barnes, and Kleinman show that Chinese medicine practiced in the . T urn The Domestication of Alternative Medicine J U D I T H F A D L O N THE Negotiating the Holistic Turn FADLON SUNY Negotiating the Holistic Turn This page intentionally left blank. Negotiating the. could, in fact, take the place of conventional medicine in many cases and perhaps compensate for its shortcomings. 1 Negotiating the Holistic Turn 2 To avoid the normative bias of either complementary. can make the attending physicians impatient or bored: “They don’t want to hear the story of the person. They want to hear the edited version” (Good, 1994: 78). Professional behavior, then, is Not