Landscapes of Complementary and Alternative Health

Abstract

Complementary and alternative health practices have, in terms of the numbers of people involved, gradually moved from the margins to the mainstream of contemporary cultures of health (Ruggie 2004). This flourishing of non-biomedical approaches to health, specifically since the 1970s, hides a complex past that remains important for making sense of the holistic health field today. A lack of state support, together with scientific marginality, mark both the past and the present of alternative health practices. The holistic health arena is not, however, shaped solely in relation to the rise of institutionalized biomedicine, and by the accompanying processes of marginalization. The complementary health scene also draws from historical ideas around health and healing that together with the continuing institutional marginality paint a complicated picture about the appeal and legitimacy of alternative and complementary health practices.