Towards the alternativization of health? a commentary on Joana Almeida’s notion of camisation

Camisation was coined by Almeida in 2012 in her doctoral dissertation that explored the relationship between CAM, the medical profession and the State regulation in Portugal, using acupuncture and homeopathy practitioners, as useful cases. The notion of camisation was further refined following its presentation at XVIII ISA World Congress of Sociology in Japan (2014) and international conference on Traditional, Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Poland (2016) as resolving everyday human problems through CAM framework. Camisation is defined as ‘a process through which everyday human problems are transformed into health problems which are treated in CAM terms and within a CAM framework’ (Almeida 2012: 92). Almeida’s thesis is premised on the integration and institutionalisation of CAM into orthodox western medicine through the framework of camisation. Central to this idea is the argument that camisation can contribute to re-medicalisation (the process whereby the medical meanings of a disease are restored) or de-medicalisation (the process whereby human problems come to be redefined in nonmedical terms).