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Alternative and Bio-Medicine in Israel: Boundaries and
Bridges
Judith Shuval and Emma Averbuch
SBN 978-1-93623-86-5 (cloth) $72.00
245 pp., January 2012
Series: Israel: Society, Culture and History
Topic Areas: Alternative Medicine, Health Care Policy, Israel, International Health Care Systems
Summary: This book explores the macro and micro social contexts in which alternative and bio-medicine
co-exist in Israel. It includes a history of alternative health care in Israel and analysis of current policies and
dilemmas regarding different forms of health care. It provides an in-depth analysis of medical professionals
who have added alternative health care to their repertoire of professional skills in their practice settings in
hospitals and community clinics. The heterogeneity of patient populations in Israel makes it possible to
explore attitudes of different cultural groups toward alternative health care: these include Jewish
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immigrants from different countries as well as Bedouin and other Arab groups. Since alternative medicine
is a growing part of the overall health care system in many countries, the book provides insights gained
from the Israeli experience regarding its co-existence along with conventional medicine - to a broad
spectrum of health professionals, policy makers and laypersons.
Author: Judith T. Shuval (Ph.D. Harvard University) is professor emerita at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, where she holds the Rose Chair in the Sociology of Health. She has served as chair of the Israel
Sociological Association, as a member of the Executive Committee of the European Society for Medical
Sociology, on the executive committee of the Research Committee on the Sociology of Health of the
International Sociological Association, and on the editorial board of Social Science and Medicine and
Sociology of Health and Illness. She received the Israel Prize for the Social Sciences. Her publications
include Social Dimensions of Health: The Israeli Experience and Immigrant Physicians: Former Soviet
Doctors in Israel, Canada, and the United States.
Emma Averbuch (PhD Hebrew University) teaches sociology of health in the Braun School of Public
Health, Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem. She coordinates activities regarding
coping with inequality in health at the Israel Ministry of Health.
Alternative and Bio-Medicine in Israel: Boundaries and Bridges
Reviews:
No authors are better positioned than Shuval and Averbuch to explore the boundaries and bridges between
alternative and biomedicine. They have spent over ten years examining the ways in which these two
disparate forms of health care have managed to co-exist in Israel.
With a solid theoretical framework and historical perspective, the book explores the diverse forms of coexistence that have emerged in their country between complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and
the biomedical model. These include studies of nurses and midwives practicing CAM, as well as physicians
who regularly incorporate it into their treatments. Other Israeli colleagues contribute significantly to the
empirical research.
The book will be a critical source for scholars seeking to understand the social processes underlying the
current challenges to the previous dominance of the medical profession and the transformation of the
health care system.
—Merrijoy Kelner
Department of Sociology
University of Toronto
\
It is indisputable that Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) is more popular
today than ever. In light of the public debate within the Bio-Medical community about
the need to regulate CAM and teach about it in medical schools, this comprehensive,
well-written book provides a sociological view of CAM, its scope of practice in Israel
and the Western world, and the developing co-existence of CAM and Bio-Medicine. This
extensive work, which includes a historical perspective of CAM in Israel, case studies of
physicians and nurses practicing CAM, patients' views, and a summarizing chapter on
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ACADEMIC STUDIES PRESS
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"Medicalization and Camification," is the best and most comprehensive description of the
boundaries and bridges between Bio-Medicine and CAM that I have come across. It
should be required reading for all healthcare professionals and for the wider public trying
to navigate between conventional and CAM healthcare providers.
Professor Jonathan Halevy,
General Director,
Shaarei Tzedek Medical Center,
Jerusalem
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