Healing at the Periphery: Ethnographies of Tibetan Medicine in India

by Laurent Pordié (Editor), Stephan Kloos (Editor)

Overview

India has long occupied an important place in Tibetan medicine's history and development. However, Indian Himalayan practitioners of Tibetan medicine, or amchi, have largely remained overlooked at the Tibetan medical periphery, despite playing a central social and medical role in their communities. Power and legitimacy, religion and economic development, biomedical encounters and Indian geopolitics all intersect in the work and identities of contemporary Himalayan amchi. This volume examines the crucial moment of crisis and transformation that occurred in the early 2000s to offer insights into the beginnings of Tibetan medicine's professionalization, industrialization, and official recognition in India and elsewhere. Based on fine-grained ethnographic studies in Ladakh, Zangskar, Sikkim, and the Darjeeling Hills, Healing at the Periphery asks how the dynamics of capitalism, social change, and the encounter with biomedicine affect small communities on the fringes of modern India, and, conversely, what local transformations of Tibetan medicine tell us about contemporary society and health care in the Himalayas and the Tibetan world.

Contributors. Florian Besch, Calum Blaikie, Sienna R. Craig, Barbara Gerke, Isabelle Guérin, Kim Gutschow, Pascale Hancart Petitet, Stephan Kloos, Fernanda Pirie, Laurent Pordié

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781478021759
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	10/18/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Laurent Pordié is Senior Researcher, Research Unit on Science, Medicine, Health, and Society at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS).

Stephan Kloos is the Acting Director of the Institute for Social Anthropology at the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Table of Contents

Introduction. The Indian Face of Sowa Rigpa / Stephan Kloos and Laurent Pordié  1
1. The Amchi as Villager: Status and Its Refusal in Ladakh / Fernanda Pirie  23
2. Good Medicines, Bad Hearts: The Social Role of the Amchi in a Buddhist Dard Community / Stephan Kloos  41
3. Where There is No Amchi: Tibetan Medicine and Rural-Urban Migration Among Nomadic Pastoralists in Ladakh / Calum Blaikie  65
4. The Monetarization of Tibetan Medicine: An Ethnography of Village-Based Development Activities in Lingshed / Florian Besch and Isabelle Guérin  95
5. The Amchi at the Margins: Notes on Childbirth Practices in Ladakh / Laurent Pordié and Pascale Hancart Petitet  119
6. A Case of Wind Disorder: The Interplay of Amchi Medicine and Ritual Treatments in Zangskar / Kim Gutschow  143
7. Allegiance to Whose Community? Effects of Men-Tsee-Khang Policies on the Role of Amchi in the Darjeeling Hills / Barbara Gerke  171
Afterword. When "Periphery" Becomes Central / Sienna R. Craig  197
Contributors  201
Index  205

Editorial Reviews

These wonderfully detailed ethnographic studies look at ‘Tibetan Medicine’ from the peripheries and the grass roots of Indian Himalayan regions. A diverse and populous amchi medicine is here revealed as plural, embedded in communities and in history, and much valued by sick and healthy people alike. This volume promises to completely recast and thoroughly pluralize Tibetan studies and Asian medical history.”—Judith Farquhar, Professor Emerita of Anthropology, University of Chicago

"This volume is a valuable exercise in recording old stories and paving the way for new ones. Its impact is undeniable, as it provides insight into the transformation of the periphery into the center (regardless of whether one is at the center or the periphery)."—Chia-hui Lu, East Asian Science, Technology and Society

From the Publisher

"This volume is a valuable exercise in recording old stories and paving the way for new ones. Its impact is undeniable, as it provides insight into the transformation of the periphery into the center (regardless of whether one is at the center or the periphery)."

East Asian Science, Technology and Society - Chia-hui Lu

These wonderfully detailed ethnographic studies look at ‘Tibetan Medicine’ from the peripheries and the grass roots of Indian Himalayan regions. A diverse and populous amchi medicine is here revealed as plural, embedded in communities and in history, and much valued by sick and healthy people alike. This volume promises to completely recast and thoroughly pluralize Tibetan studies and Asian medical history.

Judith Farquhar

This volume on Tibetan Medicine in India produces a dual sense of the vastness of this medicine's past (indeed its origins in the subcontinent and spread through the Tibetan hinterland) and the specificity of its return journeys arriving with the Tibetan diaspora. Through a palimpsest of ethnographic work, we are reminded of these practitioners' capacious ability to read the external conditions of life in the most minute of bodily disfunctions and the political, historical, social, and fiscal stakes of this task in different Himalayan contexts. This unique and scholarly collection will be of use to any scholar of comparative medical systems in the Asian context for years to come.

Medicine Between Science and Religion: Explorations on Tibetan Grounds - Vincanne Adams