Salud Colectiva (Jul 2018)

Between doctors and healers: managing meanings and practices of the health-disease-care process in an Argentine Catholic charismatic movement

  • Ana Lucía Olmos Álvarez

DOI
https://doi.org/10.18294/sc.2018.1530
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 14, no. 2
pp. 225 – 240

Abstract

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This work describes and analyzes the trajectories and strategies in the search for healing among participants of a charismatic Catholic healing movement in Argentina. Using ethnographic research carried out between July 2009 and April 2015, the article focuses on conceptions, practices and experiences surrounding health-disease-care processes. It is highlighted that disease management requires both a cognitive and a practical response, in this case involving two primary therapeutic resources: biomedicine and religious therapies. It is also postulated that each resource is sought at specific moments in the trajectories and the passage from one to another implies a change from a restricted to a holistic notion of the health-disease-care process.

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