Who pays for e-Junk?

Background: Viewed through the micro focus of an interpretive lens, medical anthropology remains mystified because interpretivist explanations seriously downplay the given context in which individual health seeking-behaviours occur. This paper draws upon both the interpretivist and political economy perspectives to reflect on the ethno medical practices within the KoreanAustralian community in Sydney. Methods: We draw on research data collected between 1995 and 1997 for an earlier study of the use of biomedical and traditional medicine by Korean-Australians in Sydney. A total of 120 interviews were conducted with a range of participants, including biomedical doctors, traditional health professionals, Korean community leaders and Korean migrants representing a range of socio-economic backgrounds and migration patterns. Results and Discussion: First, the paper highlights the extent to which the social location of migrants in a host society alters or restructures their initial cultural practices they bring with them. Second, taking hanbang medicine in the Korean-Australian community as an illustrative case, the paper explores the transformation of the dominant biomedicine in Australia as a result of the influx of ethnomedicine in the era of global capitalism and global movement. Conclusion: In seeking to explain the popularity and supply of alternative health care, it is important to go beyond the culture of each kind of health care itself and to take into consideration the changes occurring at societal, national and global levels as well as consequential individual response to the changes. New social conditions influence the choice of health care methods, including herbal/alternative medicine, health foods and what are often called New Age therapies. Background There is no simple answer to the question, what happens when oriental medicine is transplanted and practised in an Australian context? The question touches on a number of issues relating to the application of traditional nonWestern medical practices in western societies [1,2]. Ethnomedicine in its given oriental cultural and historical contexts does not cease to exert itself upon transplantation into its new social context, but continues to influence health care choices and practices. The life experiences of Published: 03 January 2007 Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 2007, 3:1 doi:10.1186/1746-4269-3-1 Received: 21 July 2006 Accepted: 03 January 2007 This article is available from: http://www.ethnobiomed.com/content/3/1/1 © 2007 Han and Ballis; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.