Intuition, Subjectivity, and Le Bricoleur: Cancer Patients' Accounts of Negotiating a Plurality of Therapeutic Options

Abstract

Cancer patients are now combining complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) with biomedical cancer treatments, reflecting an increasingly pluralistic health care environment. However, there has been little research done on the ways in which cancer patients juggle multiplicity in claims to expertise, models of disease, and therapeutic practice. Drawing on the accounts of cancer patients who use CAM, in this article I develop a conceptualization of therapeutic decision making, utilizing the notion of bricolage as a key point of departure. The patient accounts illustrate the “piecing together” (or bricolage) of therapeutic trajectories, drawing on intuitive, embodied knowledge, as well as formalized “objective” scientific expertise. Le bricoleur, as characterized here, actively mediates, rather than accepts or rejects CAM or biomedicine, and utilizes a combination of scientific expertise, embodied physicality, and social knowledge to make decisions and assess therapeutic effectiveness. Although these “border crossings” are potentially subversive of established biomedical expertise, the analysis also illustrates the structural constraints (and penalties) associated with bricolage, and furthermore, the interplay of a repositioning of responsibility with neoliberal forms of self-governance.