Theorizing Complementary and Alternative Medicines ─ Wellbeing, Self, Gender, Class

Rather than physiological health only, complementary and alternative medicines aim at the production of wellbeing. This wellbeing signifies fulfilment and balance, and an ability to actively navigate the everyday challenges in life. Defining wellbeing in this manner reproduces important ideals shaping understandings of normal and desirable selfhood: individual uniqueness, agency, self-responsibility, and self-fulfilment. These ideals permeate the cultural sphere across Western societies, but at the same time,understandings such as these belong to people with the material and cultural means to engage in the holistic health domain.


Addressing the increasing proliferation of complementary and alternative medicines, this book explores the meanings that people attach to non-biomedical health practices and of the therapeutic experiences that emerge through holistic medicines, arguing that these medicines are intimately connected with the changing configurations of selfhood, gender and class.