This paper explores two submerged networks in the Pittsburgh area alternative health movement through the use of thirty two intensive interviews and ethnographic research. Utilizing Jürgen Habermas's colonization theory as well as Alberto Melucci's emphasis on the process of collective identity formation, the paper describes a “conservative Christian’ and a culturally progressive network demonstrating how these networks differ and what they have in common. The paper examines how new oppositional identities and meanings emerge from face to face interactions between alternative practitioners, patients and activists in a variety of settings. Overall, the paper argues that resistance to the “medical industrial complex,’ one leading instrument of “colonization,’ is coming from the Christian right as well as elements of the cultural left.

Utilizing ethnographic materials and data from thirty‐eight interviews, this article investigates the relevance of alternative health bodily regimes as a source of involvement in public life. These regimes, we argue, have an aesthetic core, a quest for perfect harmony and balance, that step by step makes people available for participation in public life. The article seeks to overcome the neglect of aesthetic sources of participation in public life as well as the neglect of the body as a symbol of risk and a source of resistance to dominant institutional arrangements. Foucault's later writings on “technologies of the self”are used to interpret alternative health regimes and open up their politicizing potential.

Through a case study of a complementary medicine clinic in a major urban hospital this article explores the links between two levels of power in the alternative health movement -the institutional level and alternative health's 'submerged networks.' Alternative health is conceptualized as a 'new social movement' whose central goal has been to create and sustain a form of life outside of conventional codes and institutional arrangements. The strength of this movement has been its ability to create a cultural laboratory where patients and activists can experience new ideas, authority relations, and identities. Through interviews and observations with the clinic staff and patients, the article asks whether alternative health's growing success in achieving institutional recognition is coming at the price of alternative health's submerged networks and core identity. Overall it is argued that complementary medicine clinics located in hospitals have the potential of establishing fruitful links with the dominant health care system but there is a clear danger of becoming absorbed by that system. The other danger is that alternative health will remain marginalized and lose touch with the institutional direction of society as a whole. The article concludes by arguing that alternative health should remain a 'dual movement' with institutional links as well as maintaining a close connection to the lifeworlds of patients. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many thanks to the staff at the complementary medicine clinic who were enthusiastic about this project and gave us many hours of their time. Special thanks to Dr Lewis Madronna for generously allowing us to interview him over many weeks and in a number of locations. Also, thanks to Sharon Nepstad who read and commented on a version of the manuscript and to Duquesne University for supporting this research.

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