Division of Sociology

cordially invites you to attend a seminar on:

Overcoming Domain-centric Research & Singular Explanatory Logics:Rethinking Research on Marginal Wellness Practices

By

Mr Justin Lee
  
Date: Friday, 28TH November 2009
Time: 3 pm
Venue: HSS Conference Room (HSS-05-57)

Abstract

Consumers interested in health and well-being often dabble in a variety of different categories of practices—visiting alternative healers, experimenting with New Age spirituality, reading pop psychology self-help books, taking nutritional supplements, trying out various fitness regimes, and engaging personal coaches or psychotherapists to motivate them in work and life. Such eclectic consumer behavior is only to be expected. What is more surprising is the eclecticism or syncretism of producer behavior. In developed countries, there is increasing visibility of what can be called ‘wellness’ practices that combine techniques and ideas from across categories ranging from (but not limited to) healing and medicine; psychotherapy and counseling; motivational and executive development practices; fitness and exercise regimes; beauty and personal care services; as well as spiritual and religious movements.

This presentation demonstrates the analytic limitations of sub-disciplines that organize research according to substantive empirical domains. It rethinks the conceptual and theoretical strategies typically used to examine such phenomena. Most research on wellness practices is sub-disciplinary efforts that have chosen to concentrate their analytic lens onto some specific category of phenomenon, such as ‘medicine’, ‘religion’ or ‘psychotherapy’. Because the empirical domain and theoretical strategies of these studies are bounded using common sense demarcations of societal sectors, they fail to recognize the analytic significance of processes that transcend those sectors, including notably, the cross-sector borrowing of techniques and ideas that have led to the hybridity of wellness practices. Using a singular ‘professionalization’ explanatory logic, these domain-centric approaches assume that the actions of marginal practices are attempts at competition with dominant incumbents in their respective sectors. This singular logic misunderstands non-professionalizing routes as ‘failures’ in professionalization when in fact they could be viable alternative strategies of adaptation. Many of these practices have opted to retain a marginal position so as to avoid state control and professional regulation, while exploiting their ambiguous categorical identity for strategic gains.

About the speaker

Justin Lee is currently a PhD candidate at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has a BA and MA from the National University of Singapore, and was a teaching assistant there for the past 2 years while writing up his dissertation. His substantive interests include culture, occupations and professions, organizations and institutions, science and technology, medical sociology and economic sociology. His dissertation is concerned with clarifying the logic of research, and refining our sociological apparatus.

                                                                   
Wine and Cheese will be served after the seminar and all colleagues are welcome!
 Please circulate this email to anyone else who is interested.