'But I'm an Acupuncturist Not a Western Doctor': The Discursive Boundary-work of Acupuncturists

• In Event: Creating and Maintaining Identity: Competitive Papers in Language and Social Interaction

Abstract

Based upon fieldwork in an acupuncture community, I explain how traditional Chinese medicine practitioners (TCM) discursively demarcate and define themselves as different from and preferable to Western biomedicine. Practitioners use a geographical vocabulary of East and West as boundary-work that promotes a particular acupuncture philosophy. In order to recognize how people understand and value health, it is important to study not just what it purports to be, but also what it claims not to be.

Author

• Evelyn Y Ho, Univ of San Francisco