A comparative study on the development of complementary and alternative medicine as a research field

We welcome you to our seminar on alternative health cultures. Alternative health cultures refer to traditional, complementary and alternative medicine, vaccine hesitancy and other forms of contestation of medical knowledge, expertise and evidence-based recommendations. The seminar explores alternative health cultures in different global contexts.

Seminar is organized by Tampere University Research Centre for Knowledge, Science, Technology and Innovation Studies (TaSTI) in collaboration with School of Social Policy at the University of Birmingham.

Time: Thursday 8 December 2022, 10.15–15.30 (EET/UTC+2)

Location: Room A07, Tampere University Main Building (Päätalo) (Kalevantie 4, 33100 Tampere, Finland) and Zoom

Programme:

10.15–10.30 Welcoming words: Pia Vuolanto (Tampere University)

10.30–11.00 Ekaterina Borozdina (Tampere University) Infrastructure of distrust: Explaining vaccination hesitancy among Russian parents

11.00–11.30 Aapo Kuusipalo (Tampere University) Saving the children of Finland? Vaccine-critical rhetoric in the time of COVID-19

11.30–12.30 Lunch (at own cost)

12.30–13.00 Pia Vuolanto & Linda Pitkänen (Tampere University) Anthroposophic medicine & knowledge

13.00–13.30 Jenny-Ann Brodin-Danell (Umeå University) Politics of Complementary and Alternative Medicine

13.30–14.00 Coffee break (at own cost)

14.00–14.30 Nicola Gale (University of Birmingham) 50 years of social science research on TM/CAM

14.30-15.30 Keynote lecture: Caragh Brosnan (University of Newcastle, Australia) Chinese Medicine as Boundary Object(s): Examining TCM’s Integration into International Science

Brosnan’s keynote lecture examines factors driving the scientific ‘success’ of one particular form of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Whereas CAM is often seen as incommensurable with biomedicine and bioscience, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has, paradoxically, assimilated into dominant spaces of knowledge production and legitimation, such as the International Classification of Diseases. In Australia, TCM comprises a designated area of cooperation with China, and TCM research is carried out in numerous universities by otherwise mainstream scientists. Focusing on the Australian case, and drawing on interviews with TCM researchers, I will show how TCM works as a set of conceptual and material boundary objects that facilitate its uptake in bioscientific research domains. Additionally, I will locate TCM research in the wider context of Australian-Chinese knowledge exchange, pointing to the significance of boundary objects in international scientific collaboration. Together, these contextual, conceptual and material elements help explain how and why TCM has transcended scientific skepticism to become an object of scientific study.

Caragh Brosnan is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Her research focuses centrally on debates over legitimate knowledge in health care contexts, and how such contestations relate to power, professional identity, professional education and knowledge production. Caragh has published widely in sociology and STS, including the edited volumes Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Knowledge Production and Social Transformation (with Pia Vuolanto and Jenny-Ann Brodin Danell), Bourdieusian Prospects (with Lisa Adkins and Steven Threadgold) and Handbook of the Sociology of Medical Education (with Bryan Turner).

For more information: pia.vuolanto [at] tuni.fi (pia[dot]vuolanto[at]tuni[dot]fi)