Professional Project and the Evolution of Non-Dominant Medicines;The Case of Osteopathy and Chiropractic

This article explores how non-dominant medical practitioners shape their own self-images and the identity of relevant medicine and in what ways fashioning of self-images and accompanying modalities of medical practice informs the social evolution of the medicines at specific times and over specific places, by means of the historical configuration of osteopathy and chiropractic in the UK and the US. Attention is directed onto motivations and pursuits for professional recognition and actual strategies and activities of non-dominant medicines and its practitioners by turning to historical instances such as osteopathy and chiropractic in the UK and the US, not least drawing focus on professional desires with regard to circumstances it faces within and without. Some non-dominant medicines as a way with which to acquire and protect the exclusive monopoly of its knowledge and practical skills, adopted various forms of professionalism project, as dominant biomedical groups pressed up non-dominant medicines by virtue of marginalizing tactics. Meanwhile, non-dominant medicines took somewhat distinctive professionalisation strategies from each other. Strategies they took were diversified depending on medical philosophy, healing modality, the degree of occupational solidarity embodied as forms of medical organisation, and especially vocational aspiration and prospect. Change of socio-medical culture and the state's policy seems to have wielded critical influenceon the determination of the ups and downs of non-dominant medicines. From the perspective of long-term time span, dominant biomedicine eventually did not have much influence on the ups and downs of marginalized medicines in so far as in the case of osteopathy and chiropractic in Englandand the U. S.