Romanian Sociology Today Editorial Note
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SOCIOLOGIA 2/2015 STUDIA UNIVERSITATIS BABEŞ-BOLYAI SOCIOLOGIA 2/2015 December Sociologia Editors: www.studiasociologia.ro Editor-in-Chief: http://www.studia.ubbcluj.ro/ Irina Culic, “Babeş-Bolyai” University [email protected] Executive Editor: Studia Sociologia is the peer-reviewed Cristina Raţ, “Babeş-Bolyai” University journal of the Faculty of Sociology and Social Work, published bi-annually (June and Technical Assistant: December) as part of the Studia Series of the Diana Gabor, “Babeş-Bolyai” University “Babeş-Bolyai” University. Editorial Board: The journal is oriented towards research articles, discussion papers, essays and book reviews which Dan Chiribucă, “Babeş-Bolyai” University address challenging topics from the fields of Mircea Comşa, “Babeş-Bolyai” University Sociology, Anthropology, Social Work and Social Sorin Gog, “Babeş-Bolyai” University Policy. Marius Lazăr, “Babeş-Bolyai” University Gyöngyi Pásztor, “Babeş-Bolyai” University Academic papers grounded in empirical research Rudolf Poledna, “Babeş-Bolyai” University or focused on the social realities of Central and Livia Popescu, “Babeş-Bolyai” University Eastern Europe are particularly welcomed. Adina Rebeleanu, “Babeş-Bolyai” University Irina Tomescu, Graduate School for Social Research Advisory Board: Raymond Boudon, L’Université de Paris IVe Sorbone Barbara Einhorn, University of Sussex Vasile Dîncu, University of Bucharest Mihai Dinu Gheorghiu, “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University Wilfried Heller, University of Potsdam Petru Iluţ, “Babeş-Bolyai” University István Horváth, “Babeş-Bolyai” University Don Kalb, Utrecht University and Central European University David Kideckel, Central Connecticut State University Enikő Albert-Lőrincz, “Babeş-Bolyai” University August Österle, University of Vienna Traian Rotariu, “Babeş-Bolyai” University Dumitru Sandu, University of Bucharest Kazimierz Slomczynski, The Ohio State University Jan Sundin, Linköping University YEAR Volume 60 (LX) 2015 MONTH DECEMBER ISSUE 2 S T U D I A UNIVERSITATIS BABEŞ–BOLYAI SOCIOLOGIA 2 Desktop Editing Office: 51ST B.P. Hasdeu, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, Phone + 40 264-40.53.52 CONTENTS CORINA RUSU, Alternative Medicine as Counter-Conduct: Therapeutic Spaces and Medical Rationality in Contemporary Romania ............................. 5 SILVIA BUTEAN, Reflected Bodies: Women’s Perspectives on the Marital Experience and the Transformation of the Maternal Body. A Case Study of Middle-Class Women in Suburban Romania ....................................... 21 ELENA CHIOREAN, Postsocialism or When ‘Having’ is Another Way of ‘Being’. The Reconfiguring of Identity Through Land Restitution and the Narratives of the Past .............................................................................................. 39 Romanian Sociology Today ................................................................................................. 57 MIRCEA COMȘA, Turnout Decline in Romanian National Elections: Is It That Big? ............................................................................................................................... 59 CRISTINA RAȚ, ANDRADA TOBIAS and VALÉR VERES, Mapping Deprivation in Rural Areas from Transylvania: Reflections on a Methodological Exercise .................................................................................................................................. 85 Critical Reviews ...................................................................................................................... 113 Book Review: Sociologia istorică a lui Henri H. Stahl (The Historical Sociology of Henry H. Stahl) by Ștefan Guga. Cluj-Napoca: Tact Publishing House, 2015, 387 pages. (CĂLIN COTOI) ............................................................................ 115 Book Review: Sociologia istorică a lui Henri H. Stahl (The Historical Sociology of Henry H. Stahl) by Ștefan Guga. Cluj-Napoca: Tact Publishing House, 2015, 387 pages. (GABRIEL TROC) ........................................................................ 121 Book Review: Sociologia istorică a lui Henri H. Stahl (The Historical Sociology of Henry H. Stahl) by Ștefan Guga. Cluj-Napoca: Tact Publishing House, 2015, 387 pages. (RALUCA PERNEȘ) ..................................................................... 129 Book Review: Dependenţă și dezvoltare. Economia politică a capitalismului românesc (Dependency and Development. The Political Economy of Romanian Capitalism) by Cornel Ban. Cluj-Napoca: Tact Publishing House, 2014, 293 pages. (ANCA SIMIONCA) ...................................................... 133 Book Review: Dependenţă și dezvoltare. Economia politică a capitalismului românesc (Dependency and Development. The Political Economy of Romanian Capitalism) by Cornel Ban. Cluj-Napoca: Tact Publishing House, 2014, 293 pages. (NORBERT PETROVICI) ............................................ 137 The Authors of this Issue .................................................................................................... 153 STUDIA UBB SOCIOLOGIA, 60 (LX), 2, 2015, pp. 5-19 DOI: 10.1515/subbs-2015-0007 ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE AS COUNTER-CONDUCT: THERAPEUTIC SPACES AND MEDICAL RATIONALITY IN CONTEMPORARY ROMANIA CORINA RUSU1 Abstract. This study analyses the practice of medical pluralism in contemporary Romania, addressing the phenomenon of alternative medicine through the Foucauldian concept of counter-conduct. Employing in-depth interviews with general and alternative practitioners from two towns in Transylvania, and participant observations in spaces where they practice their knowledge, I describe how certain discursive acts reformulate the body and the subject- patient. Alternative therapists construct their practice in direct opposition to several parameters of biomedicine, such as the logic of diagnosis, treatment, and the praxis of patient’s visit to the general practitioner’s office, discussed in the paper. They define their approach as psychosomatic, and set-up the medical space as a confessional space, envisioning a holistic corporeality and the idea of the “inner doctor” in each patient. This conduct would supposedly make the subject “active” and “empowered”, as opposed to the “passive” patient succumbed to the diagnosis of conventional doctors. Keywords: counter-conduct, biomedicine, alternative medicines, patient subject Introduction Postsocialist Romania, especially in the last decade, opened up to a breadth of non-conventional medicines, also named holistic, alternative or complementary medicines. Romania accommodates a wide range of such practices, mainly clustered around big cities; in 2009, 7% of the population resorted to alternative medicines within the last 12 months (Dragan and Madsen, 2011). The possibility of diversity made way for new therapeutic figures on the medical market – naturopaths, homeopaths, osteopaths, Reiki therapists, modern shamans - all of them working next to family practitioners, popular healers and plastic surgeons. Looking into this space of medical pluralism, this 1 MA in Applied Anthropology at the Babeș-Bolyai University and MA in Psychosomatic Medicine at the “Iuliu Hațieganu” University of Medicine, Cluj-Napoca, e-mail: [email protected]. CORINA RUSU study examines the discourse and practice of alternative medicines through the conceptual framework of counter-conduct. I claim that, in a governmentality that promotes mostly conventional medicine, alternative practices respond as counter-conducts, having an inherent critical positioning towards biomedical conduct. This becomes apparent in the new, reorganized therapeutic spaces, and in the discursive constitution of alternative practices. In response to the scarcity of ethnographic studies concerning medical practices in Romania, and in particular alternative ones, I have used a combined methodology of empirical observations in the medical rooms, exploratory discussions, semi-structured and in-depth interviews with 25 patients, family practitioners and complementary/alternative doctors, taking place in 2011-2012. The majority of family practitioners interviewed were middle-aged women, while alternative practitioners were males and females, in equal distribution, with ages ranging between 25-55 years old. I visited six individual surgeries and three alternative medical centres in Cluj-Napoca, the second largest city in Romania, and Media , a smaller-town in Transylvania. The time spent in the offices of family practitioners and alternative ones, allowed me to observe in a comparative way the interactionsș between doctors and patients, the temporal organization of medical visits, and the spatial distribution of therapeutic facilities. In a manner that takes into consideration all therapeutic possibilities, by alternative medicine I mean practices and products of healthcare that are not included or are rarely included within conventional biomedicine, such as homeopathy, acupuncture, osteopathy or Ayurveda2. Although there are some differences in nature, yet lacking a definitional consensus, I chose to use the terms alternative, naturist, complementary, holistic in an interchangeable way. In practice, medical pluralism is a syncretic phenomenon, a combination of different “schools of thought”, rather than a process that requires either separate or hierarchical use of various kinds of therapies (Leslie apud. Lock and Nichter, 2002)3. Biomedicine is understood as a system of knowledge and practices 2 Law no. 118/2007 is the formal framework that organizes alternative medical practices