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Bricolage and Bodies of Knowledge: Exploring Consumer Responses to Controversy about the Third Generation Oral Contraceptive PillCentre for the Study of Health and Society, School of Population Health, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences at the University of Melbourne, Australia In the late 1990s, when otherwise healthy women in Aotearoa New Zealand started to die as a result of venous thrombosis attributed to third generation oral contraceptive pills, this contraceptive technology became the subject of media scrutiny and professional re-investigation. This research utilizes a qualitative methodology to explore the accounts of a small selection of contraceptive consumers. Many of this study’s consumers constructed an alternative framing of the 3GOC controversy, which accessed official information (such as medical statistics) but critically framed these facts by grounding them in relation to how their bodies reacted to pharmaceuticals. Bricolage is used as a metaphor for thinking about the ways that women engage in decision-making by creating ‘toolboxes’ from a multitude of readily available material and information. Lévi-Strauss’s original formulation of bricolage, in particular the claim that bricoleurs do not create ‘new knowledge’, is critiqued.
Key Words: embodiment • female body • information • medical sociology • risk
Body & Society, Vol. 11, No. 3,
77-95 (2005) |
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