Assembling Therapeutics Cultures, Politics and Materiality

• Other Authors: Salmenniemi, Suvi (Editor), Nurmi, Johanna (Editor), Perheentupa, Inna (Editor), Bergroth, Harley (Editor)
• Format: Electronic Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor & Francis 2020
• Series: Therapeutic Cultures
• Subjects: Complementary therapies, healing & health; Society & culture: general; Sociology; alternative healing; alternative therapies; everyday life; Harley Bergroth; Inna Perheentupa; identity; Johanna Nurmi; life coaching; materiality; material aspects; meaning; mindfulness; political aspects; politics; power; Suvi Salmenniemi; sbjectivity; self-help; self-help literature; self-tracking; social change; sociology; spiritual aspects; therapeutic; therapeutic assemblages; therapeutic practices
• Online Access: OAPEN Library: download the publication; OAPEN Library: description of the publication

The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781351233392, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. This volume examines the ways in which people engage with therapeutic practices, such as life coaching, mindfulness, complementary and alternative medicine, sex and relationship counselling, spiritual healing and self-tracking. It investigates how human and non-human actors, systems of thought and practice are assembled and interwoven in therapeutic engagements, and traces the situated, material and political dimensions of these engagements. By focusing on lived experiences through ethnographically informed case studies, the book elucidates the diverse forms, meanings and embodied effects of therapeutic engagements in different settings, as well as their potential for both oppressive and subversive social change. In this way, Assembling Therapeutics contributes to our understanding of multiple modes of healing, self-knowledge and power in contemporary societies.