Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Current Sociology
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via HighWire
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Saks, M.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Alternative Medicine and the Health Care Division of Labour: Present Trends and Future Prospects

Mike Saks

Consumer interest in alternative medicine has expanded greatly in western societies in recent years. This has been associated, among other things, with the rapid growth of the numbers and range of practitioners of such therapies. This article discusses from a neo-Weberian perspective the present influence of this development on the nature and form of the health care division of labour, with special reference to such trends as the increasing professionalization of alternative medicine and the growing incorporation of such therapies into orthodox medical delivery systems. The article also considers the possible future impact of rising public interest in therapies currently defined as alternative on the occupational structure in health care. Of particular interest in this context is the extent to which such unorthodox practices are likely to pose a challenge to long-established patterns of biomedical dominance in the division of labour.

Key Words: alternative medicine • division of labour • health care • professionalization

Current Sociology, Vol. 49, No. 3, 119-134 (2001)
DOI: 10.1177/0011392101049003008
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 Soc Hist MedHome page
N. Carter
The Rise and Fall of the Magic Sponge: Medicine and the Transformation of the Football Trainer
Soc Hist Med, November 17, 2009; (2009) hkp060v1.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Home page
 Health (London)Home page
Y. Keshet
The untenable boundaries of biomedical knowledge: epistemologies and rhetoric strategies in the debate over evaluating complementary and alternative medicine
Health (London) , March 1, 2009; 13(2): 131 - 155.
[Abstract] [PDF]