Alternative Therapies in Latin America. Policies, practices and beliefs

SAIZAR, MARIA MERCEDES Y BORDES, MARIANA

Nova Science Publishers

Lugar: New York; Año: 2017 p. 252

978-1-53612-694-5

Throughout the last half-century, alternative therapies have become a wide and growing set of options in Latin America. Through the work of different authors from Brazil, Mexico and Argentina, this book explores the different aspects these practices present in the region?s intercultural contexts.The analysis of the phenomenon of alternative therapies, also called complementary and alternative medicine or non-conventional medicine, is made from the standpoint of social sciences using different strategies belonging to qualitative methodologies. At the same time, the book fills a void regarding the production of studies made within the region, since it presents a phenomenon in today?s western societies which are marked by multiculturalism.Focusing on the official healthcare system and the inclusion of new therapeutic proposals, the authors analyse the struggle for the incorporation of certain practices and the devising of alternative models of addressing specific sufferings. In the same way public policies adopt experiences of traditional knowledge and practices as part of current processes of acknowledgement of local cultures within the healthcare sector, alternative practices could also be included.Paying special attention to the record of individual experiences, the authors analyse providers and users? perceptions, uses, experiences, and/or paths in relation to specific practices, connoting the way in which those practices transform and redefine the experience of illness, health, and wellbeing, while redefining the terms in which the pain experience is lived and communicated.The relationship between the alternative therapies field and the religious field is analysed in the interweaving of religious and therapeutic itineraries; the incorporation of alternative therapies and practices in traditional religious ritual contexts; the combination of alternative therapies, religion and the state in the production of public welfare policies in the Latin American context; changes in subjectivity, and the emergence of wellbeing or religious movements framed in the context of the New Age.