Smelled Difference – Social-Worlds Analysis of Essential Oil controls

• Main Authors: TSENG, FU-CHUAN, 曾福全
• Other Authors: CHEN, HSIN-HSING
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2017
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/n8uumw

碩士 === 世新大學 === 社會發展研究所(含碩專班) === 105 === This thesis explores the process in which essential oils come to be regulated through interactions of different “social worlds” in particular “arenas.” Those dynamic processes include “boundary work” that differentiate social worlds from each other, as well as other forms of action. Through this case, I seek to examine the bewildering social complexity of chemicals in our daily lives. My discussion starts with dynamics in two arenas where essential oil becomes center of controversy: aromatherapy and heated aromatic oil. Tracing the history of medicinal use of essential oils and the fashion of using essential oils as means of relaxation starting in the 1990s in Taiwan. For decades, essential oil vendors undergo intricate negotiations with governmental agencies, especially the Food and Drug Agency of the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Bureau of Standards of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, in order to market their products with some suggestions of therapeutic effects. On the first arena, essential oil vendors, practitioners of aromatherapy of different kinds, and their proponents had to negotiate with orthodox medicine on what can be properly labelled as therapeutic, and how to suggest relaxing effects without overtly claiming to be therapeutic. On the second arena, highly combustible isopropyl alcohol solution of essential oils sold to be heated as indoor fragrance caught fire and resulted in human injuries. Such incidences prompted government agencies to step in under the pressure of public opinion. Civil-society groups, government agencies and the vendors eventually worked out a modus operandi in which using aromatic oil is allowed only in the absence of open fire. Complex interplay of science, law and administrative actions drew players from various social worlds, each with its own agenda about this new commodity, into those controversies. Various actors throughout the past two decades succeeded in persuading consumers and sometimes even enlisting them as advocates of aromatic essential oils as enjoyable relaxation. In some occasions, essential oils are even regarded as panacea of some sort. This complex process is explored with several angles. In addition, this thesis also looks at the difficulties regulatory agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency have to tackle with in trying to regulate the illusive “smell.” These agencies typically see objects of their regulatory efforts as chemical compounds. They strive to differentiate commercialized chemical compounds such as essential oils into criteria such as real/fake, therapeutic/non-therapeutic, safe/hazardous, and so on. However, while new chemicals enters the market at an exponentially accelerating speed, no regulations can ever catch up with the development.