This seminar examines the strategies of legitimacy of Australian providers of unproven autologous cellular products marketed as 'stem cell treatments'.

I examine how providers of autologous cell therapy engage in boundary work and utilise strategies of legitimacy and symbolic capital in order to create a market for treatments that have yet to be proven as safe and clinically efficacious. Drawing on the work of Thomas Gieryn and Pierre Bourdieu, I argue that the 'strategies of legitimacy' employed by the Australian providers are constituted by practices of boundary work that are directed toward the accumulation of symbolic capital within the market.

I demonstrate that legitimacy is constituted by symbolic power through social distinction and the performance of boundary work whereby strategies, such as being regarded as an ethical practitioner, are employed to enhance the provider's position within the market in order to fulfil the hopes of providers of bringing a marginal practice into the mainstream.

Speaker: Dr Casimir MacGregor