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ABSTRACT
In this analytic review, the authors consider the 'boom' in demand for the services of practitioners of modalities of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). The evidence for the increase in demand for these services is reviewed and explanations for this phenomenon considered and evaluated. Two particular explanations are considered: the postmodern thesis and the gendered spirituality thesis, as well as more general changes in society. Finally the paper considers the role of the social sciences in the legitimation and increasing use of CAM. The paper concludes that the trend is likely to continue, as will the role of social scientists in observing and documenting CAM.
Received 2 February 2007 Accepted 20 February 2007
KEY WORDS
sociology, complementary medicine, alternative medicine
Introduction
The increasing use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) within the industrialised, 'advanced' nations in the west, presents itself as something of a curious enigma. As a social phenomenon it is not well understood or indeed much researched. This article offers an analytical review in the form of observations and tentative explanations, some of a speculative nature. It is curious that growth is occurring in those nations in which western scientific method is generally accepted as a major foundation for health professions, and where scientific evidence has become the basis of western medicine. In these same countries, evidence based practice' has become the dominant health paradigm for the treatment of disease and trauma. At a time when the claim to be scientific by medicine has never been stronger, when medicine is witnessing an explosion in its knowledge base, and when genomic medicine is opening a new approach to medical care, we are witnessing the rapid growth and expansion of a branch of health care in which the claim to be scientific, so far at least, is tenuous at best and problematic at worst.
The problem of definition: What's in a name?
An immediate, and serious issue in understanding this area is that there is no agreed upon, or uniform definition of what constitutes CAM. The definition of CAM used by the National Center of Complementary and Alternative Medicine in the United States refers to those:
... healthcare practices that are not an integral part of conventional medicine. As diverse and abundant as...