ABSTRACT
The relationships between religion, spirituality, health, biomedical institutions, complementary, and alternative healing systems are widely discussed today. While many of these debates revolve around the biomedical legitimacy of religious modes of healing, the market for them continues to grow. The Routledge Handbook of Religion, Medicine, and Health is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems, and debates in this exciting subject and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising over thirty-five chapters by a team of international contributors, the Handbook is divided into five parts:
- Healing practices with religious roots and frames
- Religious actors in and around the medical field
- Organizing infrastructures of religion and medicine: pluralism and competition
- Boundary-making between religion and medicine
- Religion and epidemics
Within these sections, central issues, debates and problems are examined, including health and healing, religiosity, spirituality, biomedicine, medicalization, complementary medicine, medical therapy, efficacy, agency, and the nexus of body, mind, and spirit.
The Routledge Handbook of Religion, Medicine, and Health is essential reading for students and researchers in religious studies. The Handbook will also be very useful for those in related fields, such as sociology, anthropology, and medicine.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |10 pages
Introduction
part I|144 pages
Healing practices with religious roots and frames
part II|135 pages
Religious actors in and around the medical field
chapter 14|15 pages
Muslim healthcare chaplaincy in North America and Europe
chapter 16|15 pages
Energy healing
chapter 17|14 pages
Gurus and healing
chapter 18|18 pages
Medical missionaries and witch doctors
part III|97 pages
Organizing infrastructures of religion and medicine
chapter 20|15 pages
Digital tools for fertility awareness
chapter 21|14 pages
The Internet as infrastructure for healing
chapter 22|14 pages
Markets of medicine
chapter 26|12 pages
Religious entrepreneurs in the health market
part IV|104 pages
Boundary-making between religion and medicine
chapter 27|15 pages
Policing the boundaries of medical science
chapter 28|15 pages
Competing religious and biomedical notions of treatment
chapter 31|14 pages
Religion, culture, and the politics of vaccine hesitancy
part V|32 pages
Religion and epidemics