Asian Medicine and Globalization

Joseph S. Alter

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780812238662
  9780812238662
• eBook ISBN:
  9780812205251
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Emigration & Immigration
• Index: Social Sciences

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• 1. Introduction: The Politics of Culture and Medicine
• 2. Āyurvedic Acupuncture—Transnational Nationalism: Ambivalence About the Origin and Authenticity of Medical Knowledge
• 3. Deviant Airs in “Traditional” Chinese Medicine
• 4. Reinventing Traditional Medicine: Method, Institutional Change, and the Manufacture of Drugs and Medication in Late Colonial India
• 5. Health and Medicine in British India and the Dutch Indies: A Comparative Study
• 6. Nationalism, Transnationalism, and the Politics of “Traditional” Indian Medicine for HIV/AIDS
• 7. Mapping Science and Nation in China
• 8. Sanskrit Gynecologies in Postmodernity: The Commoditization of Indian Medicine in Alternative Medical and New-Age Discourses on Women’s Health
• 9. China Reconstructs: Cosmetic Surgery and Nationalism in the Reform Era
• Notes
• References
• List of Contributors
• Index
• Acknowledgments