PLURALISMO TERAPEUTICO E MEDICINA POPOLARE: DALLA SEGNATURAALLE MEDICINE ALTERNATIVE

Identifier:  imarina:9298218

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/imarina9298218

Authors:  Ricco, Isabella

Abstract:
During the second half of the twentieth century, numerous studies on folk medicine (and particularly on the ritual called segnatura) were conducted in Italy. Nonetheless, the interest for the phenomenon has drastically decreased during the last decades due to the `apparent' disappearance of folk therapeutic rituals. A multi-located research conducted between Emilia Romagna and Catalonia constitutes the base for this contribution, which aim is to present the folk medicine panorama in these two areas. On the one hand, the disappearance of the classic model of folk medicine has been confirmed, while, at the same time, it has been showed how this fact does not imply folk medicine's disappearance as such. Many of these therapeutic practices and beliefs have sure enough been reinserted into another context, increasingly present in the Western countries: the one of alternative medicines and holistic therapies. This reality permits to draw a link between the today's and yesterday's therapeutic pluralisms, as well as to demonstrate the need of `spaces of resistance' to the hegemonic medical model.