Allergy Narratives in Italy: ‘Naturalness’ in the Social Construction of Medical Pluralism

Abstract

Based on an ethnographic study conducted in both biomedical and complementary and alternative medicine settings in north Italy, I explore how people and practitioners make sense of allergy and how patients utilize plural healing options. Despite a wide range of medical modalities, people categorize and use medicine according to whether they are ‘natural’ or ‘not-natural,’ thus dissolving any potential confusion between diverse therapies. I analyze how the concept of naturalness relates to allergy and medical pluralism. Nature is perceived as opposed to pollution, the first associated with a reassuring and idealized past and the latter to a modernity riddled with uncertainties. Participants associated a diverse set of meanings with nature, permitting them the syncretism of different medical modalities. Medical pluralism in the study area is an uneven platform for discussion and experimentation, the outcome of historical and cultural context and local entanglements of power.

Keywords:

• allergy
• Italy
• naturalness
• patients’ perceptions
• pollution

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Lenore Manderson for her precious work of sharpening and editing the article and for her intellectual generosity in supporting my writing experimentations in a foreign language. I would also like to thank the kind treatment I received by the hospital medical staff and, finally, my Italian colleagues, Giovanni Pizza and Ivo Quaranta, for having encouraged me to undertake the research path at the end of my undergraduate studies. The paper derives from PhD research, which was funded by Vaud Academic Society (2008), the Italo-Suisse Foundation (2007), the Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs (2005–2006), and its writing was supported by the European Community and Provincia Autonoma di Trento through the fellowship Marie Curie COFUND 2009—Reintegration—project “Trentino”—The Trentino programme of research, training and mobility of postdoctoral researchers.

Notes

Ten Italian regions have regional regulations integrating various CAM practices within the public health care system, allowing people the opportunity to access CAM with no or limited cost. The region in which I conducted the study does not provide CAM within the public sector, although since completing the study, new legislation has been proposed at the national level, which is still subject to final parliamentary approval.

The term, originally used in chemistry, has entered social science literature to account for a relation between two different social dimensions.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Roberta Raffaetà

ROBERTA RAFFAETÀ obtained a PhD at the University of Lausanne in 2008 and is currently Marie Curie COFUND-PAT postdoctoral research fellow at Trento University, Italy. She has conducted research on allergy, vaccinations, and medical pluralism, and is now studying migration, parenting, belonging, and identity politics.