School of Social and Political Sciences - Research Publications
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ItemNo Preview AvailableTensions in naturopathic education.(Mary Ann Liebert Inc, 2013-12)
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ItemNo Preview AvailableExperiences of Chinese medicine in a rural community(Steven Clavey, Bettina Brill, and Michael Ellis, 2015-09-11)This paper presents some of the findings from a broader anthropological study, describing types of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) used by low-income rural residents in Victoria, Australia. Mixed qualitative and anthropological methods of data collection and analysis were relied on, mainly observation and in-depth interviews. Chinese medicine (CM) was among the most popular types of CAM consumed and practised by the Australian rural respondents of the study. Over half of those formally interviewed consumed and/or practised some form of Chinese medicine. Consumers displayed great curiosity about CM, a sense of involvement in the preparation and taking of herbal medicines, and considerable trust in practitioners. An important realisation from this study is that healing traditions are seen to be continually changing over time, through what is effectively a folk process, and by cultural adaptation in diverse locations.
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Item'Well, that just complicates matters': The prevalence of long-term poverty in a rural Victorian community, and its interface with enactments of social and health policy directives through government agencies.(Australian and New Zealand Mental Health Association inc., 2015-12-21)This paper discusses aspects of a recent anthropological research project, broadly focused on use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in a rural Victorian community. Participative research facilitated an in-depth understanding of the lives and character of residents of the community, in terms of their experience of entrenched poverty, and the relationship of this circumstance to personal and family hardships, impacted further by formalised enactments of moral health policy directives and institutionalised duty-of-care, through government agencies, including the Department of Human Services, the mental health system, and decision-makers in the welfare sector. In a community where little employment is available within reasonable travelling distance, the most impoverished persons encountered during the research were sole-parents and their children, who are specifically affected by recent changes to welfare payment rates designed to stimulate their increased effort to find gainful employment. Building from simple structuring frameworks developed from anonymous quantitative appraisal of a poor segment of the community, and numerical tally of known community members and interviewees with mental health problems, the paper unpacks richly descriptive ethnographic data from the stories of research participants, particularly highlighting narratives about lives lived in the long-term role of sole-parents, and through the eyes of mentally ill persons. Recent ‘improvements’ in policy approaches – addressing the seeming worklessness of sole-parents, the need to accommodate children when family problems arise (often targeting Aboriginal, migrant, mentally ill, and sole-parent families), and the exercise of powerful and increasingly legalised sanctions that subjugate and control the experience of mental illness, for the benefit of sufferers, families and communities – provide an effective government-citizen interface that serves to complicate the life experiences of impoverished Australians, and seemingly overlooks attempts at realistic, supportive solutions. This problem was starkly apparent even in a relatively trouble-free yet poor community without imposed ‘income management’.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableCAM use by rural Victorians: An introduction.(ATMS; The Australian Traditional-Medicine Society, 2015-09-21)A recent ethnographic PhD study, incorporating both anthropological and qualitative methods of inquiry, has focused on the use of non-biomedical therapies (most often designated Complementary and Alternative Medicine, or CAM) by low-income residents of a rural community in Victoria, and the provision of CAM services by rural practitioners to poorer clients. The resulting thesis describes the research findings using extracts from narratives of consumers and practitioners. Many non-biomedical health practices appear to be in surprisingly common use among consumers who find it difficult to afford practitioner care, often without significant input from professional practitioners.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableRural naturopaths' provision to poorer clients(ATMS; The Australian Traditional-Medicine Society, 2015-12-21)Building from my recent article in this journal: CAM Use By Rural Victorians: An Introduction,' this paper summarises some findings of a recent ethnographic study, giving an insight into Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) practitioner strategies when providing a limited range of services for poor rural clients.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableCAM use by poor rural Victorian consumers(ATMS; The Australian Traditional-Medicine Society, 2016-03-23)Following from previous JATMS papers, this article describes complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use among low-income consumers in a rural community in Victoria, Australia. It refers to ethnographic documentation and interview narratives, using pseudonyms, from an anthropological research project in the composite fictitious town, 'Sephirah'. The particular focus is on differing CAMs selected, and experiential aspects of CAM use. Consumer descriptions of their unconventional healthcare practices emphasise the ongoing popularity and commonality of non-biomedical approaches to wellbeing. A diverse group of welfare recipients consumed CAM, despite usually being unable to afford private-sector fees. Formal or semi-formal CAM provider treatments and 'folk healing' methods were both favoured by those with alternative worldviews or beliefs about the value of holism in health. A connection may be tentatively drawn between a preference for CAM and the evolution of non-mainstream opinions and beliefs, or conversely, between extant alternative viewpoints and development of a preference for CAM.
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ItemA qualitative study of healthcare professionals' perceived trust in and willingness to recommend alternative medicines for the management of diabetes mellitus.(FSG Communications Ltd, 2016-05-16)This small qualitative study, conducted through the University of Mauritius, examined healthcare professionals’ engagement with and willingness to recommend alternative therapies (AT) for adjunctive management of diabetes, particularly type 2 diabetes. Fifteen (15) healthcare practitioners were selected to participate, completing a questionnaire regarding their opinions about the appropriateness of AT to support type 2 diabetes patients. The results highlight nutritionists’ and dieticians’ relative familiarity with AT, for personal use and with clinic patients. However, nurses and medical doctors were often sceptical, unwilling to discuss or recommend AT, and knew little about potential benefits. There appears an emerging need to improve training of Mauritian healthcare professionals regarding AT, to improve their ability to provide up-to-date clinical information to the many diabetic patients in the community who often use AT.
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ItemThe search for holistic herbal medicine research: Comparing approaches to plant-based therapy in two academic journals(AAREF (Australia-Asia Research and Education Foundation), 2016-02-01)This paper briefly reviews and compares the content of herbal medicine journals, particularly 'Phytomedicine' and 'Australian Journal of Herbal Medicine'. Contrasting the divergent research styles proritised and selected for publication in professional herbal medicine literature, it aims to highlight the holistic approach of traditional herbalism, and general non-necessity of animal-based laboratory studies to expand herbal knowledge. Given skin cancer, a major killer in Australia, will likely increase with ozone depletion and global warming, the plant chemical 'silymarin' (from Silybum marianum, St Mary's Thistle) is used as an example of a little-known preventative and reparative herbal treatment for sun-damaged skin. Because laboratory studies, measuring narrow parameters of physiological effects of herb constituents in animal tissues, are heavily weighted toward commercial application for symptomatic treatment, and effectively neglect the need for follow-up human studies to confirm laboratory findings prior to product development, the silymarin example serves to illustrate the unbalanced nature of this type of research. Contemporary herbal practitioners are increasingly encouraged to cite information from laboratory studies to justify herbal prescribing. Reasons are complex, but include biomedical-pharmaceutical demands for 'proof' of herbal effectiveness, concern for herbal safety expressed in public health policy contexts, and alternative medicine practitioners' own efforts to appear 'professional'. This paper contentiously claims that experimental pharmacological research methods using rat and mouse tissues are largely unnecessary, establishing only limited-range activity for herb constituents, while feeding a discourse promoting non-holistic evidence for plant-based medicines. This discourse and its practices undermine the traditional cultural breadth and socio-ecological locations of herbal knowledge.
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ItemTraditional herbal medicine may promote wellbeing in Africa, consistent with the aims of post-2015 development goals.(AFSAAP, 2016-02-05)This paper is based on the theoretical background of a recent Australian anthropological research project describing persistent use of complementary, alternative and traditional medicine (CAM) by poor people, in a first-world country where CAM is positioned as marginal relative to dominant biomedicine. Studies found CAM’s sidelined status was especially prevalent in context of consumers supporting their own wellbeing while receiving conventional HIV/AIDS treatment. Due to ongoing medicalisation processes, a construed CAM marginality is also extended to traditional medicine use in resource-poor countries in Africa, despite pharmaceuticals often being unaffordable. Anthropological studies describe traditional medicine’s diminished social location in light of cultural considerations, and relevance to issues of poverty and socio-economic development. A growing body of ethnobotanical and laboratory research demonstrates potential uses and effectiveness of traditional indigenous and naturalised African herbs, for allaying hunger and ameliorating serious diseases, including HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, pneumonia, diarrhoea, and other infective, nutritional, and metabolic conditions. Traditional herbs may be protective where reduced dependence on expensive internationally-sourced pharmaceuticals is common, and reinforces the significance of cultural heritage in planning new developmental directions in challenging circumstances. The author acknowledges recent research about African herbal medicines, and suggests traditional herbal medicine is appropriate in African healthcare contexts, whether for treatment, maintenance of wellbeing, or to improve preventative care and health promotion. She highlights its prospective contribution to poverty alleviation and realisation of development goals.