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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
Author(s) -
McClean Stuart
Publication year - 2005
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/j.1467-9566.2005.00459.x
Subject(s) - ideology , blame , individualism , politics , sociology , subjectification , sociology of health and illness , cognitive reframing , health care , moral responsibility , social psychology , psychology , political science , law , linguistics , philosophy
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.