The socio-cultural bases of alternative therapeutic practices

Abstract

The emergence and development of alternative therapies comprised part of the counter-cultural movement initiated in the 1960s. In the health field of the western world, the social transformations that occurred at that time inaugurated a period in which diverse health cultures coexisted. In this work we elaborate the socioanthropological interpretations of cultural, political and socio-economic factors that influenced these transformations. First, we identify the macrocultural factors that would influence the transformations in the health field. Next, within this field we analyze the conflicts and disruptions that contributed to the search for new therapeutic practices. We use text analysis as the principal methodology, starting from the presupposition that the integrative approach of alternative therapies expresses an aspect of the transformation in the cultural values of contemporaneous societies.