New universalism: The rise of the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction program in the U.S

I examine the growth of an alternative medical intervention, the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction program (MBSR), a secular course designed to teach the practice of mindfulness meditation. Thirty years ago, the religious origins of meditation would have made the medical prescription of it unthinkable; however, today mindfulness meditation is offered in hospitals and clinics across the United States. This raises the questions of why and how MBSR has been so readily accepted into mainstream medicine when it is based on a practice with Buddhist origins. To address this question, I looked at the role MBSR leaders play in facilitating mainstream acceptance of the program within secular medical institutions. My data come from interviews with MBSR teachers, doctors, and researchers, as well as participant observation in MBSR classes, conferences, workshops, and training programs.;The first paper of the dissertation contributes to the sociology of health and illness literature and argues that there is a new epistemological pluralism within medicine: a new cultural environment in medicine that may be helping some CAM therapies integrate into conventional medicine. This paper explains how mindfulness leaders were able to introduce an alternative medical practice into an evidence-based medical system without feeling like they were compromising the integrity of the mindfulness practice. The second paper of the dissertation contributes to the sociology of science literature on boundaries and introduces the concept of embodied boundary work to describe how MBSR leaders integrated their meditation research with their own personal meditation practices, while preserving the credibility of their scientific research on mindfulness. I developed this paper as it became clear that the growth and popularity of the MBSR program is at least partly due to scientific studies documenting the health effects of meditation. The third paper contributes to the political sociology literature on civil society and argues that MBSR leaders drew on the language of personal responsibility as a strategy to enter conventional medicine, but that they also introduced a non-personal politics that was supported by personal transformation, spontaneity, and compassionate action.