Asian Medicine And Globalization

by Alter, Joseph S.

• ISBN13: 9780812238662
• ISBN10: 0812238664
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-04-29
• Publisher: Univ of Pennsylvania Pr

Summary

Medical systems function in specific cultural contexts. It is common to speak of the medicine of China, Japan, India, and other nation-states. Yet almost all formalized medical systems claim universal applicability and, thus, are ready to cross the cultural boundaries that contain them. There is a critical tension, in theory and practice, in the ways regional medical systems are conceptualized as "nationalistic" or inherently transnational. This volume is concerned with questions and problems created by the friction between nationalism and transnationalism at a time when globalization has greatly complicated the notion of cultural, political, and economic boundedness. Offering a range of perspectives, the contributors address questions such as: How do states concern themselves with the modernization of "traditional" medicine? How does the global hegemony of science enable the nationalist articulation of alternative medicine? How do global discourses of science and "new age" spirituality facilitate the transnationalization of "Asian" medicine? As more and more Asian medical practices cross boundaries into Western culture through the popularity of yoga and herbalism, and as Western medicine finds its way east, these systems of meaning become inextricably interrelated. These essays consider the larger implications of transmissions between cultures.

Author Biography

Joseph S. Alter is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of Gandhi's Body: Sex, Diet, and the Politics of Nationalism and Knowing Dil Das: Stories of a Himalayan Hunter, both available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: The Politics of Culture and Medicine	1	(20)
2. Ayurvedic Acupuncture-Transnational Nationalism: Ambivalence About the Origin and Authenticity of Medical Knowledge	21	(24)
JOSEPH S. ALTER
3. Deviant Airs in "Traditional" Chinese Medicine	45	(22)
VIVIENNE LO AND SYLVIA SCHROER
4. Reinventing Traditional Medicine: Method, Institutional Change, and the Manufacture of Drugs and Medication in Late Colonial India	67	(11)
S. IRFAN HABIB AND DHRUV RAINA
5. Health and Medicine in British India and the Dutch Indies: A Comparative Study	78	(10)
DEEPAK KUMAR
6. Nationalism, Transnationalism, and the Politics of "Traditional" Indian Medicine for HIV/AIDS	88	(19)
CECILIA VAN HOLLEN
7. Mapping Science and Nation in China	107	(13)
NANCY N. CHEN
8. Sanskrit Gynecologies in Postmodernity: The Commoditization of Indian Medicine in Alternative Medical and New-Age Discourses on Women's Health	120	(12)
MARTHA ANN SELBY
9. China Reconstructs: Cosmetic Surgery and Nationalism in the Reform Era	132	(19)
SUSAN BROWNELL
Notes	151	(12)
References	163	(14)
List of Contributors	177	(4)
Index	181	(8)
Acknowledgments	189