Therefore, I prefer to get medicines myself so I have the opportunity to check the quality… In this way, I can ensure that no dangerous chemical stuff is used in the production process. My doctor knows I'm using cannabis, instead of the one he can prescribe which only worsens my condition.This quote comes from our study Where and how do you buy medicines? 1 The respondent has been consuming cannabis for twelve years, claiming it works well to manage his pain. One way to obtain cannabis is to get family to send it from abroad. Cannabis consumption is not a common healing practice among our respondents. However, between the lines, this respondent articulates a complex yet increasingly common view of medicines and how to access them in contemporary society. Somehow, it hints at a desire to gain some control over one's body, by skilfully distinguishing what are considered as good medicines from bad ones. Such practice is often characterized as self-care, as opposed to care provided by medical professionals. Furthermore, suggested in this quote is the emergence of an array of relations: markets entering institutions, self-care constituting public care, and lay perspectives encountering professional ones. Alongside, individual agency is taking shape.Health systems, in Sweden as elsewhere, are often conceptualized as 'knowledge economies that produce and mediate access to health

This article builds upon literature on materialities of care and departs from a relational view of care and place. Using the concept of atmosphere, it investigates how care practices are situated spatially and temporally in pharmacies. In many countries, pharmacies are viewed as an important sector in formal healthcare systems. Rarely discussed in pharmacy literature is the affective and embodied aspect of care and care services. Drawing on an ethnographic study of Swedish pharmacies, I demonstrate that pharmaceutical care services are more than filling prescriptions and giving medical advice. Senses of care are partly accomplished through pharmacy staff's routinized and embodied engagement with the material environment. They also are performed through staff's tacit reading of customers. This article argues for an alternative understanding of care than an institutionally scripted one.