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Paper short abstract:

Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) practitioners provide services to Australians within a healthcare landscape dominated by biomedical beliefs, practices and policy imperatives. This paper summarises philosophical tenets of CAM, contrasting these with biomedicine's Cartesian perspective.

Paper long abstract:

Not every 'medical professional' practices 'western medicine' (known as biomedicine). Yet, worldviews espoused by biomedical professionals permeate healthcare policy and institutional landscapes, contributing to a defining narrowness of belief and practices accepted as 'conventional'. The overriding biomedical professional culture has purposefully contrived an ongoing marginalisation of non-mainstream health providers. Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) practitioners continue to work both in formal and informal marketplaces. My anthropological research about poor consumers' use of CAM, and CAM providers treating 'non-financial' consumers, revealed that many non-normative health practices remain popular, for reasons referred to political beliefs, spiritual understandings, autonomy, and a desire for wellbeing that approximates a 'natural' or 'holistic' state. Here I summarise the underlying philosophical principles associated with several CAM approaches, including homeopathy, touch- and energy-based therapies, holistic and community nutrition, narrative-psychotherapy, Indigenous rituals, witchcraft and psychic healing (yes, in Australia), herbal, folk and Chinese medicine, and yoga and meditation used for healing and health promotion. Common strands of these beliefs are drawn from traditional cultures, many of which are increasingly 'westernised' and saturated with capitalist-consumer values, while their healthcare models are pressured to rely on costly biomedical services. Science-driven research invents avant-garde solutions, that are adopted as 'the best', normative standard for health policy, informed by biomedical imperatives. Traditional viewpoints - of CAM's wellbeing-focused healing - therefore stand in contrast to the generalised biomedical Cartesian perspective, and biomedicine's location among highly-profitable capitalist enterprises. I highlight some assumed but unsubstantiated beliefs espoused by biomedicine, to facilitate consideration and understanding of CAM.