Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Abstract

Various terms have been bandied around over the past several decades for a wide array of heterodox medical systems, ranging from professionalized to folk medical systems. Within the US context, the term that has become commonplace in various circles is “complementary and alternative medicine,” whereas, for example, in Australia it is simply “complementary medicine.” At any rate, historically, medical sociologists have tended to focus on various aspects of biomedicine, including medical dominance and professionalism, and have tended to ignore alternative medical systems. Exceptions include the work of Walter Wardwell, Lesley Biggs, David Coulter, Ian Coulter, and Evan Willis on chiropractic in the United States, Canada, and Australia. Conversely, medical anthropologists have conducted studies of shamanism and other indigenous and folk medical systems as well as the phenomenon of medical pluralism in complex societies. In modern industrial or postindustrial societies, in addition to biomedicine – the dominant medical subsystem – one finds other medical subsystems such as homeopathy, osteopathy, chiropractic, naturopathy, religious healing systems, and popular and folk medical systems. Patterns of medical pluralism tend to reflect hierarchical relations in the larger society, including ones based upon class, caste, racial, ethnic, regional, religious, and gender divisions. The medical system of a complex society consists of the totality of medical subsystems that coexist in a generally competitive, but sometimes collaborative or even co‐optative, relationship with one another.