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Undoing gender? The case of complementary and alternative medicine
Author(s) -
Brenton Joslyn,
Elliott Sinikka
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
sociology of health and illness
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.146
H-Index - 97
eISSN - 1467-9566
pISSN - 0141-9889
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9566.12043
Subject(s) - undoing , femininity , masculinity , gender studies , sociology , distancing , doing gender , subjectivity , psychology , identity (music) , social psychology , aesthetics , psychoanalysis , epistemology , medicine , covid-19 , disease , pathology , infectious disease (medical specialty) , philosophy
Despite a rich body of sociological research that examines the relationship between gender and health, scholars have paid little attention to the case of complementary and alternative medicine ( CAM ). One recent study (Sointu 2011) posits that men and women who use CAM challenge traditional ascriptions of femininity and masculinity through the exploration of self‐care and emotions, respectively. Drawing on 25 in‐depth interviews with middle‐class Americans who use CAM , this article instead finds that men and women interpret their CAM use in ways that reproduce traditional gendered identities. Men frame their CAM use in terms of science and rationality, while simultaneously distancing themselves from feminine‐coded components of CAM , such as emotions. Women seek CAM for problems such as abusive relationships, low self‐esteem, and body image concerns, and frame their CAM use as a quest for self‐reinvention that largely reflects and reproduces conventional femininity. Further, the reproduction of gendered identities is shaped by the participants' embrace of neoliberal tenets, such as the cultivation of personal control. This article contributes to ongoing theoretical debates about the doing, redoing and undoing of gender, as well as the literature on health and gender.