Abstract
This preliminary research explores the transnational circulations of practitioners and users of traditional and complementary medicine, encompassing diverse healing practices that coexist with conventional medicine. These include both ancestral and more contemporary forms of healthcare, often emerging in response to a growing search for holistic approaches to health and wellbeing. While such practices have been widely examined in local contexts, their transnational dimensions remain underexplored in an increasingly globalized and interconnected world. This contribution draws on a multi-sited ethnography conducted in Bali (Indonesia) and Koh Phangan (Thailand) between June and October 2024. These two locations represent emblematic global crossroads that attract mobile actors who engage with these forms of healing through their distinctive therapeutic landscapes (Gesler, 1992) and associated imaginaries. The research includes ethnographic interviews and participant observation with 16 practitioners and 13 users of traditional and complementary medicine, and is further complemented by digital ethnographic methods conducted between 2024 and 2025. By retracing the socio-spatial trajectories of these actors, preliminary findings reveal the porous boundaries between the categories of practitioners and users, seasonal patterns of mobility—primarily from Western countries and across similar global destinations for alternative healing practices—and their connection to digital nomadism. Social media and digital space emerge as central in shaping and sustaining these transnational circulations and networks. At the same time, the research highlights how socio-economic inequalities shape these forms of (im)mobility and the interactions with local populations.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Interdisciplinary Health Sciences
KEYWORDS
Traditional and Complementary Medicine, CAM, Care, Transnationalism, Circulation, Inequality
