Tradition and reinvention: The making and unmaking of herbal medicines in the UK

Emilie Cloatre; Nayeli Urquiza-Haas

doi:10.1111/jols.12367

Tradition and reinvention: The making and unmaking of herbal medicines in the UK

Emilie Cloatre
, Nayeli Urquiza-Haas

Laws

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

7 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This article looks at the development of the regulation of traditional herbal medicines in the European Union (EU) context and its effects in the United Kingdom (UK). Drawing on socio-legal encounters with science and technology studies (STS), it explores how UK and EU stakeholders have struggled to regulate herbal products, and suggests that in order to tackle growing concerns about their safety, emerging EU legislation built on socio-technical imaginaries of ‘tradition’. We argue that in doing so, the law also reshaped herbal medicines in the UK, rewriting their histories and potential futures by fostering new practices of herbal medicine making that sit precariously on the boundaries of what is lawful. Through an empirical exploration of the everyday landscape of herbal medicine in the UK, this article shows how the label of ‘tradition’ embedded in the new legislation transformed and unsettled the existing material practices and relationships that had underpinned herbal and traditional medicine.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	317-338
Number of pages	22
Journal	Journal of Law & Society
Volume	49
Early online date	22 May 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1111/jols.12367
Publication status	Published - 3 Jun 2022

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https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jols.12367Licence: CC BY-ND

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Tradition and reinvention: The making and unmaking of herbal medicines in the UK

Abstract

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