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'The illness is part of the person': Discourses of blame, individual responsibility and individuation at a centre for spiritual healing in the North of England

McClean, Stuart

Authors

Profile image of Stuart McClean

Dr Stuart McClean Stuart.Mcclean@uwe.ac.uk
Associate Professor Public Health (Health & Wellbeing)



Abstract

While the growth in usage and practice of varying forms of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) continues apace, social science has increasingly turned to CAM's often individualistic approach to health and illness. CAM has been perceived as both partly a cause of and a response to the well-documented ideology in modern healthcare of 'individual responsibility for health'. This occasionally manifests in a 'victim-blaming' ideology amongst both orthodox and CAM practitioners alike. These issues emerged as key themes in an ethnographic study of a Centre for spiritual healing in the North of England. By drawing upon a range of qualitative data gained through the researcher's participation at this healing centre, I argue that the healers' focus on individual responsibility for health is not so much a part of the current socio-political health ideology of 'victim-blaming', rather, it is illustrative of an important contemporary social phenomenon: the movement towards the subjectification and personalisation of public life. © Blackwell Publishing Ltd/Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness 2005.

Journal Article Type Review
Publication Date Jul 1, 2005
Journal Sociology of Health and Illness
Print ISSN 0141-9889
Electronic ISSN 1467-9566
Publisher Wiley
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 27
Issue 5
Pages 628-648
DOI https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9566.2005.00459.x
Keywords complementary and alternative medicine, spiritual healing, blame, individual responsibility
Public URL https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/1048924
Publisher URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9566.2005.00459.x