The contestation of expertise is perhaps nowhere more pronounced than in
the field of health and well-being, on which this article focuses. A
multitude of practices and communities that stand in contentious
relationships with established forms of medical expertise and promote
personalised modes of self-care have proliferated across Euro-American
societies. Drawing on multi-sited ethnography in three domains –
body–mind–spirit therapies, vaccine hesitancy and consumer-grade digital
self-tracking – we map such practices through the concept of ‘everyday
fringe medicine’. The concept of everyday fringe medicine enables us to
bring together various critical health and well-being practices and to
unravel the complex modes of contestation and appreciation of the
medical establishment that are articulated within them. We find three
critiques of the medical establishment – critiques of medical knowledge
production, professional practices and the knowledge base – which make
visible the complexities related to public understandings of science
within everyday fringe medicine.