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.