Encounters with live blood analysis: An anthropological perspective on an alternative health practice

This research takes the alternative health practice of live blood analysis (LBA) as a site of inquiry into the relationship between medical pluralism and the construction of medical reality in the context of individual lives. It is primarily concerned with how people approach and use alternative medical knowledge, and how they locate themselves in relation to the dominant system of biomedicine. Data were collected through an ethnographic approach combining partcipant-observation in the office of a live blood analyst with in-depth interviews with clients and practitioners. Chapter One interrogates the assumption common to critics of alternative health practices that patients' irrationality or lack of scientific literacy are suitable explanations for their use. The concept of pragmatic skepticism is explored as a more appropriate way to characterize how people approach practices such as LBA. Chapter Two examines how clients draw on LBA as a resource to develop medical definitions for experiences of bodily disease. Particular attention is paid to the complicated relationship such definitions bear to the institutional authority of biomedicine. Chapter Three employs a Bakhtinian theory of language to explore how biomedical discourse is brought into dialogue with the practice of LBA, and to demonstrate the shortcomings of an empiricist approach to medical language in this context. Finally, I consider implications this research holds for the evaluation of alternative health practices.