Bricolage and Bodies of Knowledge: Exploring Consumer Responses to Controversy about the Third Generation Oral Contraceptive Pill

Abstract

This article explores a small selection of contraceptive consumers’ accounts about the recent third generation oral contraceptive (3GOC) controversy in Aotearoa New Zealand and their responses to it. This article argues that most of the consumers in this study not only value experiential, embodied knowledge (or a way of knowing through the body), but also draw on a variety of sources of other information and recombine them in order to make sense of a medical debate. This compilation of knowledge may contain medical information or embodied experiences, but does not contain either exclusively. In particular, I argue that medical and epidemiological information is understood through the body. The majority of the women interviewed about the 3GOC controversy put together disparate pieces of information about oral contraceptives in order to make sense of the debate surrounding third generation oral contraceptives. I use bricolage as a metaphor for interpreting this process. Bricolage is both utilized and critiqued.