A Looming Question: Will All Medicine be Biomedicine?

• In Event: Bodily Matters/ Bodies Matter: Unsettling Questions on the Discourse(s) on Health and Medicine

Abstract

This paper examines the results of a corpus study of the American Journal of Chinese Medicine and shows how even the least western medical practices are becoming biomedicalized. By “biomedicalization,” I mean the increased importance of science and scientific procedures in medicine, something that was a once considered an “art” is now very much a science. Looking forward, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has become more biomedicalized, and this is true not just when talking to TCM practitioners, but this change is clear in their flagship journal, the American Journal of Chinese Medicine (AJCM). By traditional Chinese medicine, I refer to the 3,000 year old form of medicine based on the assumption that there is an energy that composes and flows through every object; when this energy flows in the wrong direction or at the wrong rate, illness results. TCM practices, which started in China, include the use of herbal concoctions, the movement arts (such as tai-chi), and acupuncture in order to change the movement of a person’s “chi” in such a way as to improve their health.
I will argue that in the AJCM there are two Burkean “terministic screens,” one of which deteriorates over the journal’s 35 year history (the TCM screen), and the other, which emerges and overtakes the journal by 2008 (the biomedical screen). My second line of argument will look to genre analysis of the AJCM’s articles over time to show its movement from a holistic, spiritual, and philosophical journal to a medical journal specializing in medicinal biochemistry. This look at genre can be compared with Atkinson’s (1999) and Gross et al’s (2002) work on the scientific article. My data will show that although the AJCM does not begin as a scientific journal, by 2008 it has all of the requisite sections (IMRD) that-- according to these previous studies-- appear in the scientific journal article. I finally hope to go beyond the corpus, showing how it is a representative example of a change in TCM practice and culture in the United States.

Author

• Erin Wais-Hennen, Lindsey Wilson College