ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the ways in which pharmaceutical practices are negotiated and legitimated in the home. The home might be considered a space where pharmaceuticals are passively consumed in a manner directed by those outside the home: the general practitioner, the pharmacist or the naturopath, for example. By looking at how people use medications in the home this view is quickly unsettled. Latour’s concept of hybrids and de Certeau’s concept of tactics are utilised to argue that the home should be considered a centre of therapeutic practice in its own right with householders assimilating advice from many sources to determine what sort of therapeutic action to deploy. In the home, people actively observe themselves and others to consider when therapeutic action might be required. Householders’ research and experiment with medications, making decisions about what regime to follow, drawing on the opinions of health practitioners and others.
