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Money, commodification and complementary health care: Theorising personalised medicine within depersonalised systems of exchange

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Abstract

Across the United Kingdom and other Western nations, complementary health care has become big business, with pressure to commercialise and technologise its goods and services. Economic liberalisation and the democratisation of health care have encouraged the increased commodification of complementary health services. This article focuses particularly on more personalised forms of complementary health care, such as folk healing, but equally highlights the importance of a whole health-care systems analysis when thinking about commodification and marketisation. We develop an exploratory synthesis of recent empirical data in the United Kingdom, in which we theorise the significance of money for complementary healthcare and folk healing. Four mutual themes and questions emerge and are presented here, with a discussion of their contribution to wider theoretical debates about money, the community, and social and health-care systems.

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Notes

  1. The social aspects of this are largely lost in modern forms of legal local and international banking transactions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Health and Applied Social Sciences, University of the West of England, UWE Bristol, Glenside Campus, Blackberry Hill, BS16 1DD, Bristol, UK

    Stuart McClean

  2. UCD School of Sociology, University College Dublin, Newman Building, Belfield, 4, Dublin, Ireland

    Ronnie Moore

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  1. Stuart McClean
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  2. Ronnie Moore
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Correspondence to Stuart McClean.

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McClean, S., Moore, R. Money, commodification and complementary health care: Theorising personalised medicine within depersonalised systems of exchange. Soc Theory Health 11, 194–214 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1057/sth.2012.16

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