Lay healing practices in the household

This thesis explores the power-knowledge relationship underlying lay healing practices in the household; a non-traditional area of study in public health. Lay knowledge continues to be discounted as illegitimate and !non-expert' by policymakers, health professionals and academics. Given the absence of theory on lay knowledge and decision-making, an eclectic theoretical approach was undertaken in this study. Theory is drawn from medical anthropology, sociology of the body, health economics, gender studies, social theory, psychology, nursing, ethics, philosophy and history of medicine in order to contribute to and advance debate. Operating within the genre of a 'multi-sited ethnography' (working across different sites), methods for data collection included 'anthropology at home' by undertaking fieldwork in Geelong, Victoria, Australia. I conducted interviews and focus group discussions with, and administered a questionnaire to, 98 participants who are parents of young children. They were recruited via primary schools and snowball sampling. The quantitative data presents a socio-demographic 'picture' of 78 women and 20 men (representing 98 households) from urban, rural and coastal areas of the region. The qualitative data contains case studies as well as narratives, analysed for their content and discourses. Additional methods included maintenance of a 'reflexive journal', inter-sectoral consultations and public health policy analysis. Research findings indicate laypeople's conceptualisations of the body, self, health and illness rest upon a notion of the embodied self and health that is physical, mental and spiritual. Lay people have a substantial knowledge base on health and ill-health that derives from many sources, is both generalised and specialised, and is set within the context of everyday life. Laypeople make diagnoses and treat illness and injury within the household. They also exercise substantial agency in determining their choice of healer(s) for therapeutic intervention and management of ill-health outside the household. This study has substantial implications for public health in terms of healers' clinical practices, research and policy.