Transnational spirituality and healing: an ethnographic exploration of alternative medicine in Lisbon and Athens

Abstract

In contemporary Portugal and Greece, the number of individuals who resort to alternative medicine continues to rise. From yoga, meditation and energy therapies to healing based on various religio-spiritual traditions, there is a variety of therapeutic practices one can choose from. The main objective of this paper is to show how a therapeutic and spiritual pluralism is produced through the implementation of transnational influences on spirituality and healing. It investigates the diverse ways in which the practice of spirituality through healing leads to a better understanding of how current processes of globalisation, transnationalism and multiculturalism affect, develop and negotiate one’s individual, social, spiritual and medical identity. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Lisbon and Athens, the Portuguese and Greek capital equivalently, the paper explores the pluralistic and transnational character of alternative medicine and the spiritual creativity with which such therapies are practised. Taking the role of the (spiritual) holistic practitioner as healer as a point of departure, it provides an empirical account of the shifting status of both religiosity and healthcare in two southern European countries that are still followed by the stereotype of being predominantly linked to Christianity as the denominational religion, and to biomedicine as the predominant healthcare system.

Keywords:

• Alternative medicine
• CAM
• holistic healing
• new age
• transnational spirituality

Acknowledgements

The research data presented in this paper come from my postdoctoral project (2011–2017), funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), to which I owe my gratitude. The writing up of this paper was made possible through my current position as a researcher at the Centro em Rede de Investigação em Antropologia (CRIA/ISCTE-IUL), in the context of the strategic plan of CRIA (UIDB/ANT/04038/2020), to which I am immensely thankful. I am grateful to all my interlocutors in Lisbon and Athens, who generously offered their time and knowledge in order to assist my research. I would also like to extend my gratitude to the two anonymous reviewers of Anthropology and Medicine for their thorough yet thoughtful criticism and insightful observations.

Ethical approval

This research was given ethical approval by the Ethical Committee of the Centro em Rede de Investigação em Antropologia (CRIA). Oral consent was obtained from all individuals who participated in the research. The identity of all interlocutors have been protected through the use of pseudonyms.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 During my field research, I found out that the terms ‘complementary’ and ‘alternative’ were used in alternation by some, or one of the terms was rejected by others accordingly. For some of my interlocutors, ‘alternative’ possesses negative connotations, promoting exclusion from the mainstream healthcare system. For most of them, however, ‘alternative’ is the preferable term to describe their healing practices, since it offers a stand-alone healing pathway the therapeutic power of which is equal to biomedicine. Consequently, in order to respect the most widespread emic categorisations with regard to the two concepts, the terms ‘alternative healing’, ‘alternative medicine’, ‘New age healing’ and ‘holistic healing’ are used alternatively, signifying the forms of non-biomedical healing practices I came to study in Lisbon and Athens.

2 The concept of ‘New Age’ has received criticism (e.g. Sutcliffe and Bowman 2000; Wood 2007), being considered to be an umbrella term, together with the concepts of ‘CAM’, ‘complementary’, ‘alternative’, ‘holistic’, ‘well-being’, and so on, carrying a strong etic weight and quality. While I am aware of the difficulties and the complications it entails, I also take into consideration that sometimes my interlocutors themselves use the term ‘New Age’, as well as the rest of the concepts mentioned above, in order to contextualise their practices. I therefore find ‘New Age’ and the other concepts useful and I apply them, from both an emic and an etic perpective, in the present paper so as to denote the more individualised and transnational spiritual paths that my interlocutors follow during their everyday lives.

3 When it comes to the term ‘patient’, my intention is far from attributing passive qualities and meaning to its significance (see Kleinman 1980). Instead, both ‘patient’ and ‘healer’ terms are utilised as a tool to define the two sides of the healing relationship, maintaining throughout the text that such a relationship, the roles and the identity dynamics involved are constantly under transformation.