Mirroring the rapid emergence of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) during the last 30 years, over the same time frame, social scientific research has begun to study many of its features. Since the early 1990s, geographers have played a modest role in some basic and initial fact finding, focusing on displaying distributional trends in CAM provision and use. Since 2000, however, a greater volume of research has emerged, studies collectively providing a broader and more critical deconstruction of the dynamics between therapy, culture, and places. Indeed, whereas researching CAM was once the preserve of medical geographers, mirroring the fact that CAM connects with many aspects of people's everyday lives, it is now also explored by cultural and social geographers using a greater range of methods and drawing on, and developing, a greater range of theory. Commentators have suggested that a diverse and growing disciplinary engagement will be needed to fully appreciate and articulate many features of what constitutes one of the most significant consumer trends of recent decades.