The utilization of spiritual capital by the practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine in the San Francisco Bay Area

This dissertation seeks to understand how different systems of ideologies inevitably clash yet creatively coexist in the practices of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) in California (with focus in the San Francisco Bay Area), particularly from the perspectives of the practitioners. Individual TCM practitioners, who locate across various ethnic, cultural, and linguistic boundaries, collectively participate in the reinvention of the medicine. This reinvention is a result of active negotiations with market forces and expectations, often (but not only) by investing and utilizing the "spiritual capital" (resources in the forms of "spiritual"-related knowledge and practices) that are readily available in the shared vocabulary and increasingly multicultural conceptions of American popular spirituality.