In this bonus episode, sociologist and Wellness Culture author Stephanie Alice Baker returns to discuss the countercultural roots of wellness, how the wellness industry went from its early days in the 1970s to a multi-trillion-dollar global industry, how the concept of intuition is used to market wellness products and practices, and more.
Dr. Stephanie Alice Baker is an Associate Professor and Deputy Head of the Sociology and Criminology Department at City, University of London. Dr Baker’s research explores influencer culture in the context of health and wellness. She currently examines the amplification of disinformation, influence networks, and potential radicalization pathways online. Learn more about her work here, and check out her new book Wellness Culture.
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Christy's new book, The Wellness Trap, is now available wherever books are sold! Order it online or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore.
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Resources and References
Contains affiliate links to Amazon and Bookshop.org, where I earn a small commission for any purchases made.
Stephanie’s new book, Wellness Culture: How the Wellness Movement Has Been Used to Empower, Profit and Misinform
Stephanie’s first book, Lifestyle Gurus: Constructing Authority and Influence Online
Christy’s second book, The Wellness Trap: Break Free from Diet Culture, Disinformation, and Dubious Diagnoses and Find Your True Well-Being
Christy’s online course, Intuitive Eating Fundamentals
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Transcript
Disclaimer: The below transcription is primarily rendered by AI, so errors may have occurred. The original audio file is available above.
Christy Harrison: Hey there. Welcome to this bonus episode of Rethinking Wellness. I'm Christy, and my guest today is sociologist and author Stephanie Alice Baker, who's back to discuss the countercultural roots of wellness, how the movement went from its early days in the 1970s to a multitrillion dollar global industry, how the concept of intuition is used to market wellness products and practices, and more. Now without any further ado, here's my bonus interview with Stephanie Alice Baker.
Christy Harrison: There's so much in this book that I wanna explore and unpack. The first thing that really caught my attention was your discussion about the countercultural origins of wellness culture. That history is really fascinating and kind of sets the stage for so much of what's going on now. So can you talk a little bit about, you name three distinct threads in this countercultural origin, like medical discrimination and civil rights, women's health movement, and then like the hippie movement, organic and raw food and alternative medicine and all of that, as well as the anti-psychiatry movement. So can you talk a little bit about those different origins and how those helped plant the seeds for what wellness culture became.
Stephanie Alice Baker: When you look at wellness culture, the concept emerged in the late fifties, initially in an article, subsequently in a book called High Level Wellness, but it was very much left at the conceptual level. And then when I was investigating how wellness became more mainstream, it became clear that in the seventies, during the counterculture, a series of pioneers actually developed this concept of wellness, and we're very much influenced by the time.So in the book, I trace four different aspects of the counterculture that really shaped wellness culture today. One of them is the civil rights movement. And what's important there is not just the civil rights movement in terms of highlighting racial inequality, although this is part of it. But more broadly in terms of a movement that really challenged authority and really sought to aid marginalized groups. And so, for example, you mentioned the women's movement. And there was a lot of campaigners, including the Black Panthers, who were championing racial equality and very much speaking to the times where there was huge discrimination on the basis of gender and race. And so that was a really big influence in the wellness movement and people's desire to look for alternatives. Because the mainstream establishment at the time was very corrupt. This is a time where the Tuskegee Study was still going on. There were huge problems, and it very much shaped people's desire to look for alternative modes of medical care with regard to racial minorities, and also, alternative experts that were less discriminatory.
Stephanie Alice Baker: The other really big influence was the hippie movement. What's important there, again, is that the hippies were also very critical of the post-war conformity that many of their parents embodied and aspired to. And the hippies, in general, rejected the mainstream culture and the kind of mass suburbanization and commodification of social life. And so you saw many hippies looking for alternative lifestyles. Many of them went back to the land, living in communes, embodying more of a a liberal lifestyle. And as you mentioned, there were dietary practices, things like being vegetarian, many desires to experience shared consciousness and that often took the form of LSD or psychedelics.
Stephanie Alice Baker: It very much shaped an interest as well in what we would now term the new age, because many people who were hippies were interested in Eastern philosophy kind of symbiosis as well with Western psychology. And this, I think is a interesting way in which the hippie movement also shared similarities with the Human Potential Movement. Again, that was a movement that had earlier roots, but it was really this idea about reaching your full potential, and everyone's potential is different, but it's about our journey and our quest in life to essentially realize who we could be. And, of course, that language is very much part of wellness culture today. And I think that a really good example of that at the time, which is still around, is Esalen. The Esalen Institute that was created in the sixties still has many lectures that you'd identify as wellness today.And the other one that you mentioned is the antipsychiatry movement. So I think the first thing to say there is it wasn't really a coherent movement. And many of the practitioners that we would describe as part of the movement actually didn't use the term themselves. But it was generally a series of psychiatrists who distanced themselves from the establishment, because they rejected the idea that mental illness was something that could be treated like a disease.
Stephanie Alice Baker: Of the time as well, they were very much like the women's movement and the civil rights movement more broadly, reacting against what they saw as a very unjust, inhumane system and way of treating people. Obviously, it's very controversial now, because there are huge debates over medication and, you know, many people criticize the anti-psychiatry movement for issues in terms of not treating people when they need medication. But the point is that it did definitely feed into the wellness movement as we know it, because people were looking for other modalities of care and support.
Christy Harrison: Yeah. And it seems to me from the history I've read about the anti-psychiatry movement in your book and elsewhere that some of its critiques of psychiatry were very apt at the time. That there was the institutionalization and the treatment of patients within those institutions was just horrendous. And people's autonomy was totally thwarted, and that needed to change, in my view. You know, that needed to change. And so I think that there were some important critiques there. But then in other ways, the anti-psychiatry movement caused real harm to some of the people it was meant to help. And I think that continues today. I think people who are advocating getting off your meds and just fixing it through food or whatever are really doing a lot of harm and a huge disservice to people's mental health.
Christy Harrison: But it's complicated. Right? There's such nuances there. And in these other roots of wellness culture that you talk about too, there's such important critiques and important changes that were made out of those critiques and some unintended consequences maybe as a result.
Stephanie Alice Baker: Absolutely. And I think that's, you know, you mentioned the word nuance, and I think that's the key. It is really important to contextualize these movements and to realize that many of them were speaking to injustices and real social harms. But as you said, these things can get distorted and sometimes people with the best intentions actually can also cause harm. So, you know, the wellness movement, I think, is very much part of that.
