Homeopathy in Practice: an Analysis of Contemporary Approaches

This book provides an analysis of contemporary approaches to homeopathic practice. It is informed by discursive psychology which focuses on verbal accounts as social interactions. Advocates of homeopathy manage their personal credibility through sensitive ways of accounting. These unique accounts reflect the way homeopathy is located in a culture of scepticism, as an alternative, contested and controversial social practice, thus positioned on the fringe of the modern medical market. Demonstrating their expectations and understandings of homeopathy as a form of treatment, speakers draw upon dichotomised categories attributed to notions of mainstream medicine and homeopathy. They combine their various communication competencies in order to add persuasiveness to their descriptions. Furthermore, these detailed accounts have wider implications for understanding other contested, controversial and new medical practices in ways that mainstream medicine is the taken-for-granted and accepted yardstick for practice. This book provides an engaging intellectual context, and is essential reading for academics, students and health practitioners from across social and medical sciences.