Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Exploring the Body pp 3–20Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

The Storyteller’s Paradox: Homeopathy in the Borderlands

  • Chapter

  • 77 Accesses

Abstract

Dualism has been a key theme in feminist theory over the past 20–30 years. In one of their earliest insights, second-wave feminists noted that western thought is structured by an interweaving network of radical, hierarchical, fixed dichotomies, and that women have generally found themselves on the wrong side of these divides. Feminist analyses have demonstrated that seemingly neutral concepts such as ‘rationality’, ‘individuality’, ‘secularism’, ‘objectivity’ and ‘citizenship’ are, in fact, premised on assumptions of dualism.1 Feminist theory has itself contributed to the dualistic world-view. Recently, some feminist theorists have pointed out that, with its split between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’, a dualistic division between biological and social realities has been central to the second-wave feminist project (Kirby 1991; Nicholson 1994).

1,950 mile-long open wound

dividing a pueblo, a culture,

running down the length of my body,

staking rods in my flesh,

splits me splits me

me raja me raja

This is my home

this thin edge of

barbwire.

(Gloria Anzaldúa 1987: 2–3)

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD   54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  • Anzaldúa, G. 1987. Borderlands/ la Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bauman, Z. 1991. Modernity and Ambivalence. Cambridge: Polity.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bauman, Z. 1992. Intimations of Postmodernity. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bauman, Z. 1993. Postmodern Ethics. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Benjamin, J. 1988. The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism and the Problem of Domination. London: Virago.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bigwood, C. 1991. ‘Renaturalizing the Body (with the help of Merleau-Ponty)’, Hypatia, 6 (3): 54–73.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bordo, S. 1987. The Flight to Objectivity: Essays on Cartesianism and Culture. Albany: SUNY Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boulderstone, K. 1997. ‘Hypericum perforatum’, The Homeopath, 64: 677–81.

    Google Scholar 

  • Castells, M. 1996. The Rise of the Network Society. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cheney, J. 1989. ‘The Neo-stoicism of Radical Environmentalism’, Environmental Ethics, 11 (4): 293–325.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cheney, J. 1994. ‘Nature/Theory/Difference: Ecofeminism and the Construction of Environmental Ethics’, in K. Warren (ed.) Ecological Feminism. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Csordas, T. 1993. ‘Somatic Modes of Attention’, Cultural Anthropology, 8 (2): 135–56.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • De Beauvoir, S. 1949; 1972. The Second Sex. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Douglas, M. 1966. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Elshtain, J.B. 1981. Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought. Oxford: Martin Robertson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Flax, J. 1992. ‘Is Enlightenment Emancipatory? A Feminist Reading of “What is Enlightenment?”’, in F. Barker et al. (eds.) Post-modernism and the Re-reading of Modernity. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frank, A. 1991. ‘For a Sociology of the Body: An Analytical Review’, in M. Featherstone et al. (eds.) The Body: Social Process and Cultural Theory. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Franklin, S. 1993. ‘Postmodern Procreation: Representing Reproductive Practice’, Science as Culture, 3 (4): 522–61.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Freund, P. 1990. ‘The Expressive Body: A Common Ground for the Sociology of Emotions and Health and Illness’, Sociology of Health and Illness, 12 (4): 452–77.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goodison, L. 1992. Moving Heaven and Earth: Sexuality, Spirituality and Social Change. London: Pandora.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goodman, F. 1986. Body Postures and the Religious Altered State of Consciousness: An Experimental Investigation’, Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 26: 81–118.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gordon, D. 1988. ‘Tenacious Assumptions in Western Medicine’, In M. Lock and D. Gordon (eds.) Biomedicine Examined. London: Kluwer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Griffin, S. 1978. Woman and Nature: The Roaring inside Her. New York: Harper and Row.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grossinger, R. 1990. Planet Medicine: From Stone Age Shamanism to Post-Industrial Healing. 5th edition. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haraway, D. [1985] 1991a. ‘A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century’, in D. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London: Free Association Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haraway, D. [1988] 1991b. ‘Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective’, in D. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London: Free Association Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haraway, D. 1991c. ‘The Actors are Cyborg, Nature is Coyote, and the Geography is Elsewhere: Postscript to “Cyborgs at Large”’, in C. Penley and A. Ross (eds.) Technoculture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haraway, D. 1992a. ‘Ecce Homo, Ain’t (ar’n’t) I a Woman, and Inappropriate/d Others: The Human in a Post-humanist Landscape’, in J. Butler and J. Scott (eds.) Feminists Theorize the Political. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haraway, D. 1992b. ‘The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others’, in L. Grossberg, C. Nelson and P. Treichler (eds.) Cultural Studies. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haraway, D. 1997. Modest-Witness@Second-Millenium. FemaleMan©-MeetsOncoMouse™. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harding, S. 1986. The Science Question in Feminism. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hein, H. 1992. ‘Liberating Philosophy: An End to the Dichotomy of Spirit and Matter’, in A. Garry and M. Pearsall (eds.) Women, Knowledge, and Reality: Explorations in Feminist Philosophy. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holst, T. 1994. ‘In the Name of Rosen – on the Rosen Method and its Application in Sweden’, in H. Johannessen, et al. (eds.) Studies in Alternative Therapy 1: Contributions from the Nordic Countries. Odense: Odense University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jackson, J. 1994. ‘Chronic Pain and the Tension between the Body as Subject and Object’, in T. Csordas (ed.) Embodiment and Experience: The Existential Ground of Culture and Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jackson, M. 1983. ‘Thinking through the Body: An Essay on Understanding Metaphor’, Social Analysis, 14: 127–49.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jay, N. 1981. ‘Gender and Dichotomy’, Feminist Studies, 7 (1): 38–56.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Johannssen, H. 1996. ‘Individualized Knowledge: Reflexologists, Biopaths and Kinesiologists in Denmark’, in S. Cant and U. Sharma (eds.) Complementary and Alternative Medicines: Knowledge in Practice. London: Free Association Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, M. 1987. The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning and Imagination and Reason. London: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kaufmann-Osborn, T. 1993. ‘Teasing Feminist Sense from Experience’, Hypatia, 8 (2): 124–44.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Keller, E.F. 1985. Reflections on Gender and Science. New Haven: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kelly, M. and Field, D. 1996. ‘Medical Sociology, Chronic Illness and the Body’, Sociology of Health and Illness, 18 (2): 241–57.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • King, Y. 1989. ‘Healing the Wounds: Feminism, Ecology, and Nature/Culture Dualism’, in A. Jaggar and S. Bordo (eds.) Gender/Body/Knowledge: Feminist Reconstructions of Being and Knowing. London: Rutgers University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kirby, V. 1991. ‘Corporeal Habits: Addressing Essentialism Differently’, Hypatia, 6 (3): 4–24.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kleijnen, J. et al. 1991. ‘Clinical Trials of Homeopathy’, British Medical Journal, 302: 316–23.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Latour, B. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Law, J. and Mol, A. 1995. ‘Notes on Materiality and Sociality’, The Sociological Review, 43 (2): 274–94.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lloyd, G. 1984. The Man of Reason: ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ in Western Philosophy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Lorde, A. 1984. Sister Outsider. Freedom, CA: Crossing Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • McKee, J. 1988. ‘Holistic Health and the Critique of Western Medicine’, Social Science and Medicine 26 (8): 775–84.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Minh-Ha, T. 1989. Woman, Native, Other: Writing, Postcoloniality and Feminism. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nicholls, P. 1995. ‘The Homeopathy Discussion Group’, in H. Johannessen, S. Gosvig Olesen and J. Østergård Anderson (eds.) Studies in Alternative Therapy 2: Body and Nature. Odense: Odense University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nicholson, L. 1994. ‘Interpreting Gender’. Signs, 20 (1): 79–105.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ortner, S. 1974. ‘Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?’, in M. Rosaldo and L. Lamphere (eds.) Woman, Culture, Society. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pateman, C. 1988. The Sexual Contract. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Phelan, S. 1996. ‘Coyote Politics: Trickster Tales and Feminist Futures’, Hypatia, 11 (3): 130–49.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Plumwood, V. 1993. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rich, A. 1977. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. London: Virago.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sankaran, R. 1991. The Spirit of Homeopathy. Bombay: privately published.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sankaran, R. 1994. The Substance of Homeopathy. Bombay: Homeopathic Medical Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scott, A. 1996. ‘Embodied Politics: Emancipatory Epistemologies and Vitalistic Ontologies within Feminist Alternative Medicine’, University of Bradford: PhD thesis.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scott, A. 1998. ‘Homeopathy as a Feminist Form of Medicine’, Sociology of Health and Illness, 20 (2): 191–214.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sharma, U. 1995. ‘The Homeopathic Body: “Reification” and the Homeopathic “Gaze” ’, in H. Johannessen, S. Gosvig Olesen and J. Østergård Anderson (eds.) Studies in Alternative Therapy 2: Body and Nature. Odense: Odense University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Star, S.L. 1991. ‘Power, Technology and the Phenomenology of Conventions: On Being Allergic to Onions’, in J. Law (ed.) A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology and Domination. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thornquist, E. 1995. ‘Musculoskeletal Suffering: Diagnosis and a Variant View’, Sociology of Health and Illness, 17 (2): 166–92.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vithoulkas, G. 1986. The Science of Homeopathy. Wellingborough: Thorsons.

    Google Scholar 

  • Warren, K. 1990. ‘The Power and the Promise of Ecological Feminism’, Environmental Ethics, 15 (2): 125–46.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Williams, G.H. 1984. ‘The Genesis of Chronic Illness: Narrative Reconstruction’, Sociology of Health and Illness, 6: 175–200.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Williams, S. 1996. ‘The Vicissitudes of Embodiment across the Chronic Illness Trajectory’, Body & Society, 2 (2): 23–47.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Winkler, C. (with Wininger, K.). 1994. ‘Rape Trauma: Contexts of Meaning’, in T. Csordas (ed.) Embodiment and Experience: The Existential Ground of Culture and Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. Anne Scott
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Community Health Sciences, University of Edinburgh, UK

    Sarah Cunningham-Burley (Reader) (Reader)

  2. Research Unit in Health, Behaviour and Change, University of Edinburgh, UK

    Kathryn Backett-Milburn (Senior Research Fellow) (Senior Research Fellow)

Copyright information

© 2001 British Sociological Association

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Scott, A. (2001). The Storyteller’s Paradox: Homeopathy in the Borderlands. In: Cunningham-Burley, S., Backett-Milburn, K. (eds) Exploring the Body. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230501966_1

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation