In the shadows of medicine and modernity: medical integration and secular histories of religious healing in Turkey.
Building upon the World Health Organization's recent publication WHO Strategy for Traditional Medicine (WHO 2002), this paper examines the historical position of "traditional medicines" at their intersection with the development and modernization of a biomedically based health care system in Turkey. This paper considers how the historical development of Turkey's health care system, as a prominent site for the articulation of the state's broader modernization project, sustained particular formulations of subjectivity and citizenship that were defined in opposition to a set of cultural practices and modes of religious-political authority represented by "traditional medicines." Consequently, projects and policies seeking to formally integrate "complementary" or "alternative" therapies directly confront this past and the various ways in which it is reenacted in constituting the present.
Dole
Christopher
C
Department of Anthropology, Amherst College, MA, USA. ctdole@Amherst.edu
D000529:Complementary Therapies / Q000266:history* / Q000458:organization & administration; D003466:Cultural Characteristics; D019033:Delivery of Health Care, Integrated / Q000266:history* / Q000458:organization & administration; D006291:Health Policy / Q000266:history*; D006297:Health Services Accessibility / Q000266:history; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D008605:Mental Health Services / Q000266:history* / Q000458:organization & administration; D012068:Religion and Medicine; D014421:Turkey