The Routledge Handbook of Complementary and Alternative Medicine draws on historical and international comparative research to provide a rigorous and thematic examination of the field. It argues that many popular and policy debates are stuck in a polarized and largely asocial discourse, and that interdisciplinary social science perspectives, theorising diversity in the field, provide a much more robust evidence base for policy and practice in the field.

Table of Contents

• List of figures
• List of tables
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: understanding CAM in the twenty-first century - the importance and challenge of multi-disciplinary perspectives - Nicola K. Gale and Jean V. McHale
• PART 1 Disciplinary frameworks, law, sociology and history
• 1 Limits and liberties: CAM, regulation and the medical consumer in historical perspective - Roberta Bivins
• 2 Power and professionalisation in CAM: a sociological approach - Mike Saks
• 3 Legal frameworks, professional regulation and CAM practice in England: is CAM “the special one”? - Jean V. McHale
• PART 2 Power, professions and health spaces
• 4 Developing naturopathy in interwar Britain - Jane Adams
• 5 Practising Ayurveda in the UK: simplification, modification, hyphenation and hybridisation - Romila Santosh
• 6 Shamanism and safety: ancient practices and modern issues - Alexander Alich
• 7 The ‘knowledgeable doer’: nurse and midwife integration of complementary and alternative medicine in NHS hospitals - Sarah Cant and Peter Watts
• 8 The nexus between the social and the medical: how can we understand the proliferation of complementary and alternative medicine for enhancing fertility and treating infertility? - Karen Willis and Jo-Anne Rayner
• PART 3 Risk and regulation: CAM products, practitioners and the state
• 9 Making CAM auditable: technologies of assurance in CAM practice today - Ayo Wahlberg
• 10 The harm principle and liability for CAM practice: a comparative analysis of Canadian and United States health freedom laws - Irehobhude O. Iyioha
• 11 Risk and regulation: CAM products, practitioners and the state - perspectives on ‘risk’ and ‘protection of the public’ in the Australian media - Monique Lewis
• 12 Traditional medicine and the law in Kenya - John Harrington
• 13 Regulation of complementary medicines in Australia: influences and policy drivers - Michael Dodson
• 14 Intuitive spiritual medicine: negotiating incommensurability - Ruth Barcan
• 15 Traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture practitioners and the Canadian health care system: the role of the state in creating the necessary vacancies - Sandy Welsh and Heather Boon
• 16 Aspirations, integration and the politics of regulation in the UK, past and future - Julie Stone
• PART 4 Critical perspectives on knowledge in CAM
• 17 CAM and conventional medicine in Switzerland: divided in theory, united in practice - Hélène Martin and Jérôme Debons
• 18 Patient choice and professional regulation: how patients choose CAM practitioners - Felicity L. Bishop
• 19 (Re)articulating identities through learning space: training for massage and reflexology - Emma Wainwright and Elodie Marandet
• 20 Research, evidence and clinical practice in homeopathy - Morag Heirs
• 21 Towards a learning profession? Adapting clinical governance for complementary and alternative medicine - Jane Wilkinson and Nicola K. Gale
• 22 The relationship between the advancement of CAM knowledge and the regulation of biomedical research - Marie-Andrée Jacob
• Concluding chapter - Jean V. McHale and Nicola K. Gale