Medicine Between Science and Religion: Explorations on Tibetan Grounds

Published by Berghahn Books 2011

Medicine Between Science and Religion

Explorations on Tibetan Grounds

Edited by: Vincanne Adams , Mona Schrempf and Sienna R. Craig

Volume 10 in the series Epistemologies of Healing

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781845459741

Overview
Contents

About this book

There is a growing interest in studies that document the relationship between science and medicine - as ideas, practices, technologies and outcomes - across cultural, national, geographic terrain. Tibetan medicine is not only known as a scholarly medical tradition among other Asian medical systems, with many centuries of technological, clinical, and pharmacological innovation; it also survives today as a complex medical resource across many Asian nations - from India and Bhutan to Mongolia, Tibet (TAR) and China, Buryatia - as well as in Western Europe and the Americas. The contributions to this volume explore, in equal measure, the impacts of western science and biomedicine on Tibetan grounds - i.e., among Tibetans across China, the Himalaya and exile communities as well as in relation to globalized Tibetan medicine - and the ways that local practices change how such “science” gets done, and how this continually hybridized medical knowledge is transmitted and put into practice. As such, this volume contributes to explorations into the bi-directional flows of medical knowledge and practice.

Author / Editor information

Vincanne Adams is Professor and Director of the University of California San Francisco Graduate Program in Medical Anthropology (joint with UC Berkeley). Her books include Tigers of the Snow and Other Virtual Sherpas (1996), Doctors for Democracy (1998) and Sex and Development (with Stacy Pigg, 2005).

Mona Schrempf is a social and cultural anthropologist and post-doctoral research fellow at the East medicine Research Centre, Complementary Medicine, School of Life Sciences, University of Westminster London (2012-2015). Her present research concerns the globalisation of Tibetan medicine(s) in Europe and Asia that is part of the Wellcome Trust funded project “Beyond Tradition: Ways of Knowing and Styles of Practice in East Asian Medicines 1000 to the Present”. She is senior co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity. Having studied at the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology, Free University of Berlin (PhD 2001), with a focus on the anthropology of ritual, performance and religion in South Asia, she has undertaken long-term ethnographic research and fieldwork in rural Tibetan communities in China, the Indian Himalayas and Bhutan on Tibetan medicine, ritual healing, public and women’s reproductive health as well as religious festivals and ethnic identity. Her books are Studies of Medical Pluralism in Tibetan History and Society (eds. with S. Craig, M. Cuomu, F. Garrett, IITBS 2010), Figurations of Modernity. Global and Local Representations in Comparative Perspective (eds. with V. Houben, Campus 2008), and Soundings in Tibetan Medicine (ed., Brill 2007).

Sienna R. Craig is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Dartmouth College. She is the author of Healing Elements: Efficacy and the Social Ecologies of Tibetan Medicine (2012) and Horses Like Lightning: A Story of Passage through the Himalayas(2008), and the co-editor of Studies of Medical Pluralism in Tibetan History and Society(2011).

Vincanne Adams is Professor and Director of the University of California San Francisco Graduate Program in Medical Anthropology (joint with UC Berkeley). Her books include Tigers of the Snow and Other Virtual Sherpas (1996), Doctors for Democracy (1998) and Sex and Development (with Stacy Pigg, 2005).

Reviews

“…shows the substantial recent developments in studies of Tibetan medicine. These developments not only point the way forward for the field, they also hold significant implications for other social studies of medicine and science, in Asia and beyond.” · The Journal of Asian Studies

“The implications of [this volume’s] approach to knowledge and research have far-reaching implications beyond the limits of any one academic discipline, and may also inform choices concerning the provision of healthcare worldwide. Hence the insights proffered by the nuanced analyses of this book, framed as they are with such discerning editorial skill, have profound value for medical anthropology and, more generally, for social scientists, practitioners of healing arts, health seekers, and health providers as they (re)negotiate the theories and practices of health care in the liminal spaces that interface the science and religion of our increasingly globalised world.” · Anthropos

“This volume, containing thirteen articles, including an introduction by the editors and an illuminating conclusion by G. Samuel, is an excellent illustration of this development [of the advances made in medical anthropology over the last two decades]." · Religious Studies Review

"This beautifully crafted volume explores the entanglement of science, medicine and religion, thus transporting us beyond all too common dualistic oppositions of tradition and modernity, science and religion. Close examination of the history of modern Tibetan medicine, and of healing encounters, clinical research and institutional changes, make it startlingly evident how biomedical science and its practices are extensively translated and transformed through incorporation into diverse Tibetan settings, even as Tibetan medicine, long since syncretic, is made yet more so – the traffic is decidedly two-way. Grounded in the sensibility of the sowa rigpa – the “science of healing” foundational to Tibetan medicine, these essays permit no facile interpretation of biomedicine as either usurper or savior. The profoundly humanistic insights of this book have worldwide significance, and should be read diligently by everyone involved in global health care and the social sciences of medicine." · Margaret Lock, Co-author, An Anthropology of Biomedicine

“...an excellent contribution to the literature on Tibetan medicine in the context of modernity and globalization... The editors do an exceptional job at framing the analyses provided in specific chapters. Their introduction to the volume is wonderfully written and instructive to the reader in regards to the scope and intent of the volume.” · Craig Janes, Simon Fraser University, BC

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
List of Figures Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Acknowledgements Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Notes on Transliteration Publicly Available Download PDF	xiii
Chapter 1 Introduction: Medicine in Translation between Science and Religion Vincanne Adams, Mona Schrempf and Sienna R. Craig Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part I Histories of Tibetan Medical Modernities
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	29
Chapter 2 Biomedicine in Tibet at the Edge of Modernity Alex McKay Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	33
Chapter 3 Tibetan Medicine and Russian Modernities Martin Saxer Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	57
Part II Producing Science, Truth and Medical Moralities
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	79
Chapter 4 Navigating ‘Modern Science’ and ‘Traditional Culture’: the Dharamsala Men-Tsee-Khang in India Stephan Kloos Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	83
Chapter 5 A Tibetan Way of Science: Revisioning Biomedicine as Tibetan Practice Vincanne Adams, Renchen Dhondup and Phuoc V. Le Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	107
Chapter 6 Correlating Biomedical and Tibetan Medical Terms in Amchi Medical Practice Barbara Gerke Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	127
Part III Therapeutic Rituals, Situated Choices
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	153
Chapter 7 Between Mantra and Syringe: Healing and Health-Seeking Behaviour in Contemporary Amdo Mona Schrempf Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	157
Chapter 8 From Home to Hospital: the Extension of Obstetrics in Ladakh Kim Gutschow Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	185
Chapter 9 From Empowerments to Power Calculations: Notes on Efficacy, Value and Method Sienna R. Craig Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	215
Part IV Research in Translation
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	241
Chapter 10 Qualitative and Quantitative Research Methodology in Tibetan Medicine: the History, Background and Development of Research in Sowa Rigpa Mingji Cuomu Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	245
Chapter 11 The Four Tantras and the Global Market: Changing Epistemologies of Drä (’bras) versus Cancer Olaf Czaja Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	265
Chapter 12 Re-integrating the Dharmic Perspective in Bio-Behavioural Research of a ‘Tibetan Yoga’ (tsalung trülkhor) Intervention for People with Cancer Alejandro Chaoul Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	297
Chapter 13 Epilogue: Towards a Sowa Rigpa Sensibility Geoffrey Samuel Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	319
Notes on Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	333
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	337

Language: English
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 324
Keywords: Medical Anthropology; Anthropology of Religion

eBook

Published: December 1, 2010
ISBN: 9781845459741