in S

ou

th-A

sia

Newsletter 7

What do we mean by innovation in the world of pharmaceuticals? Is there anyways to bring creative invention into existence, which do not fall under the molecularparadigm that dominates since the second half of the 20th Century? �ese are someof the questions that the new Pharmasud project will attempt to answer in the next threeyears, by taking as a case study the Ayurvedic pharmaceutical industry. �is project isjointly led by the IFP and the CERMES 3 in Paris and funded by the French NationalResearch Agency (ANR). �e content of our first workshop, held in Februrary 2010, andour team members are presented in this issue.You will also find the details of a meeting on transnational healthcare in Asia, organizedthis July in Heidelberg - a collaboration between the FIP and the Cluster of Excellence ‘Asia & Europe’. �e participants examined the effects of transnationalism in the health field, and the social formations which result from the cross nation-state borderslinkages between people and institutions.Finally, I would like to thank all my colleagues at the French Institute of Pondicherryto have made my time here so memorable. My mandate expires this summer andI will miss them all. But there are good things in all events... I am very happy toannounce that my successor as a Resident Research Fellow at the FIP will be Guy Attewell,a renowned specialist of Unani medicine, formerly with the Wellcome Trust Centre for theHistory of Medicine at UCL. I would like to offer him a hearty welcome! We are confidentthat our joint efforts to pursue the work started with the SMSA programme will be synergistic.

With best wishes,Laurent Pordié

Edito

July 2010

in South-Asia

Societies & Medicines

UMIFRE 21, CNRS - MAEESocie

ties &

Med

icine

s

FrenchInstitute of Pondicherry

ACADEMIC EVENTSPharmaceutical innovation 1Transnational healthcare 3RECENT LECTURES 8Science, mission and the Tamil society Religion, pharmaceuticals and prescriptions The Religious implications of illness in Tibet

LATEST BOOKAyurvedic industry in Kerala 9

AWARDCharles Leslie Prize 10

DISSERTATIONTibetan medicine in exile 10

In this issue

http://www.ifpindia.org/Societies-and-Medicines-in-South-Asia.html

Societies & Medicines in South Asia Newsletter, Issue 7

EVENT

Workshop

PHARMASUD Innovation in the Ayurvedic industry

9-10 February 2010, Pondicherry

This workshop was  organized  in  the  framework  of  the project  “Local  knowledge,  market  construction  and globalization: two regimes of pharmaceutical innovation in  the  South”  (Pharmasud),  funded  by  the  French National Agency  for Research  (ANR),  and  jointly  led by the  IFP, and  the CERMES  in Paris. This project explores new systems of production, mobilization and transfer of knowledge,  related  to  the  invention  of  drugs  in  two countries  called   to  play  a  growing   role  in   the pharmaceutical economy, and more broadly in the world economic  regulation,  namely  India  and  Brazil.  The meeting  in  Pondicherry was  concerned with  India,  and more  specifically with  the Ayurvedic  industry  who undergoes   a   form   of c o n t e m p o r a r y 

innovation that we propose to study. 

While  works  on  pharmaceutical  innovation  in  the countries  of  the  South  have  been  predominantly centered  in  the  past  on  the  model  of  technological dependence  and  transfer  of  technologies  coming  from laboratories of northern countries, we study  innovation models  that  stem  from  southern  countries,  and  that represent  alternatives  both  to  the  chemical  screening model  of  the  post‐war  era,  and  to  the  appropriation systems  by  means  of  patents.  These  models  produce local knowledge  in  response  to global constraints;  they contribute  towards  the  emergence  of  global  markets and  new  regulations  with  regards  to  quality  and intellectual  property.  This workshop  has  proved  useful to discuss the state of affairs  in this field, and to define the working agenda of our team for the year to come. 

1/6

Members of the research project  Madhulika Banerjee (Delhi University) Calum Blaikie (University of Kent) Burton Cleetus (Calicut University) Jean‐Paul Gaudillière (INSERM‐EHESS) Harilal Madhavan (IFP) 

Harish Naraindas (Jawaharlal Nehru University) Laurent Pordié (IFP / university of Heidelberg) Kapil Raj (EHESS, Paris) Francis Zimmermann (EHESS, Paris) 

Programme:

Sunday, 14 June 2010 9:00-9:30 Laurent Pordié and Jean-Paul Gaudillière

Pharmaceutical innovation, local knowledge and market construction: Comparing strategies of copy and reformulation in Brazil and India

9:30-10:15 Madhulika Banerjee

The pharmaceuticalization of Ayurvedic medicine

Societies & Medicines in South Asia Newsletter, Issue 7 2/10

10:15-11:00 Burton Cleetus

Locating Ayurveda, Representing science: Reorganisation of indigenous healthcare practices in colonial Kerala, 1900-1960

11:15-12:00 Francis Zimmermann

Textual studies in Sanskrit, Malayalam and Manipravalam, and ethnographic fieldwork among Ayurvedic pharmacies in Kerala (1974–1984)

12:00-12:45 Harilal Madhavan

Knowledge, medicine and the market: Ayurvedic manufacturing in Kerala. 14:00-14:45 Jean-Paul Gaudillière

Industrializing medicinal plants preparations in early 20th century Europe. A case for comparison

15:45-16:30 Laurent Pordié

Ethnopharmacology: the recasting of a science 16:30-17:15 Harish Naraindas

Evidence and efficacy in biomedicine and Ayurvedic medicine 17:15-18:00 Calum Blaikie

Potency in motion: Tibetan medicine production in pre-regulation Ladakh Wednesday, 10 February 2010 9:30-10:00 Laurent Pordié and Jean-Paul Gaudillière

PHARMASUD in India: Issues, fieldwork and coordination 10:00-10:45 Burton Cleetus

Indigenous medicine, Western science and the market: Evolution of the Ayurvedic drug industry in Kerala, 1903-2003

10:45-11:00 Laurent Pordié

Two patterns of drug discovery in today's Ayurveda 11:15-12:00 Harilal Madhavan

Innovations 'below the Radar', markets and local knowledge: Indigenous medicine in Indian South

12:00-12:45 Harish Naraindas

Reformulating the Formulary: from Shastric Yogams to Poly Herbals 14:00-14:45 Jean-Paul Gaudillière

Reformulation, intellectual property and traditional knowledge at the TKDL and the NMPB. An inventory of issues

14:45-15:30 Francis Zimmermann

Exploring the TKDL corpus of textual sources and selecting key drugs in the TKDL corpus for a few case studies

15:45-16:30 Madhulika Banerjee

Mapping the lie of the Land: the levels of Pharmaceuticalisation of Ayurveda in India

EVENT

Societies & Medicines in South Asia Newsletter, Issue 7 3/10

International Workshop

Transnational Healthcare in Asia

4-5 July 2010, Heidelberg

ASIA AND EUROPE

IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT

C L U S T E R O F E X C E L L E N C E UNIVERSITY OF HEIDELBERG

Expansion of transnationalism as a form of cross nation‐state  borders  linkages  between  people,  places  and institutions  has  led  to  numerous  and  unpredictable social  formations  and  cultural  encounters. Notwithstanding  a  marked  increase  in  academic publications pertaining to the effects of transnationalism in  the  health field,  the  light cast  in  this domain  by  the social  sciences is  still  diffuse and  the corresponding 

studies are scattered. This workshop aims to partially fill this gap.  It  is  the  third of a  series of events  [see SMSA Newsletter 5&6], the aim of which is to produce refined collections of essays so as to frame a specific domain of enquiry. 

The  workshop  has  addressed  the  dynamics  of transnational  healthcare  from  both  empirical  and theoretical perspectives, in a variety of domains ranging from  ethics  to  cultural  translation,  or  again  from therapeutic  innovation  to market  construction. Overall, this  meeting  will  examine  the  transnational  and transcultural dimensions of health and healing brought about by the contemporary cross‐border movements of people, objects, procedures, techniques and practices. 

Participants

Programme:

Sunday 4 July, 2010 9:30 am Introduction, by Laurent Pordié 10 am –12:30 pm Session 1: People in the move, markets in transition Globalisation, nationalism and medical tourism: Modernist trajectories in transition?

Caroline Wilson (University of Bristol) Thai hospitals at the crossroads of new health mobilities: medical tourism and cross-border movements

Audrey Bochaton (Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, France)

Medical tourism in Malaysia: ‘transnationalism from above’ and intensification in the commodification of healthcare services

Heng Leng Chee (National Singapore University) 1:30 – 3:15 pm Session 2: The ethics of transnational healthcare

Bioethics and transnational medical travel: Clinical complications and public health challenges in the global health services marketplace Leigh Turner (University of Minnesota)

Societies & Medicines in South Asia Newsletter, Issue 7

“How not alive does a patient need to be to declare him dead?” Organ transplantation and its changing paradigms in a transnational context Sinjini Mukherjee (KJC, University of Heidelberg)

3:45 – 6:00 pm Session 3: Transnational translations

Incommensurable natures: traditional Chinese medicine in translation Mei Zhan (University of California, Irvine)

From guru sishya parampara to transnational distance education: the case of Siddha Varma medicine Roman Sieler (South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg)

Monday 5 July, 2010 9:30 – 12 am Session 4: Transnationalism and the making of new therapies

Transcultural creativity. The spa as a site for innovation in India Laurent Pordié (University of Heidelberg / French Institute of Pondicherry)

Standardizing as a whole-body treatment: the impact of transnationalism on Thai massage Junko Iida (Kawasaki University of Medical Welfare, Japan)

From healing practice to relaxation technique: The transnational reconfiguration of shirodhaara in Indian health resorts Christoph Cyranski (KJC, University of Heidelberg)

Abstracts: * arranged by alphabetic order after the last name of the author Thai hospitals at the crossroads of new health mobilities: medical tourism and cross-border movements. Bochaton, Audrey (Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, France)

In today’s world, people move more, move further, and move for increasingly varied reasons, such as work, study or the search for exoticism. Seeking health care away from one’s home is a part of this trend and many patients do not hesitate to cross borders or to cover sometimes thousands of kilometers in order to consult a well-known doctor or to benefit from a fast, high-quality and cheap health-care service. The social phenomenom commonly known as “medical tourism” well illustrates this transformation and world expansion of therapeutic itineraries. Among the countries which receive these patients, Thailand is a world leader. In addition to the global attraction that the Thai health infrastructure seems to exert, it is illuminating to observe and analyze patient movements at the regional level, more precisely in the Lao-Thai border area, where new behaviors are appearing around health care mobility. Lao nationals are crossing the border to seek health care in Thai hospitals in ever increasing numbers. Indeed a sizeable part of the population is involved in this practice, which is connected to the recent political and cultural opening of Laos and at the same time emphasizes the development gap between the two countries. Border discontinuity between the two countries is reflected in the medical discontinuity which helps to explain movements also facilitated by the proximity and historical links of the populations living along the Mekong. The objective of this

4/10

paper is to explore the Thai health care system and its changes as connected to globalization at a transnational as well as a cross-border scale.

Medical tourism in Malaysia: ‘transnationalism from above’ and intensification in the commodification of healthcare services Chee, Heng Leng (National Singapore University)

Medical travel, i.e. travelling to another country for medical treatment, is not a new phenomenon, but it was only in the last few decades that the term ‘medical tourism’ came to be widely used to refer to it. In Asia, this came about in the late 1990s, when healthcare providers as well as governments became involved in the deliberate strategizing, marketing and developing of medical travel as an industry. Using Malaysia as a case study, I identify the development of the medical tourist industry as marking an intensification in the process of commodification of healthcare services, the features of which are reflected in the expansion of the market, aggressive marketing, and standardization and benchmarking to indicate quality. Healthcare providers, hospital corporations, governments and intermediary businesses and organisations work in tandem to standardize, package, promote, and sell medical treatment and procedures to patients-customers in what is seen to be a competitive global marketplace. Although such activities may be considered to be usual business strategies of private corporations, they were never employed to such an extent in the healthcare sector in the country until the advent of the medical tourist industry. Insofar as these activities are seen to be necessary to cultivate the international medical consumer, they may be characterised as ‘transnationalism from above’. Transnational healthcare corporations, with the active support of state institutions, carry out systematic strategies to regularise and sustain the procurement of patients from across national borders. This may change how medicine is viewed, practised, and utilised or consumed.

From healing practice to relaxation technique: The transnational reconfiguration of shirodhaara in Indian health resorts Cyranski, Christoph (KJC, University of Heidelberg)

This paper addresses the transformation of the Ayurvedic treatment shirodhaara from an infrequent healing technique used for mental disorders and other ailments into a popular tourist attraction and means of relaxation for stressed Europeans. I argue that the application of shirodhaara and its usage for relaxation and stress relief in Kerala’s Ayurvedic resorts represent a new transnational form of Ayurvedic practice, which is based on a network of multiple interdependent elements and processes. The three central nodes of this network are 1) Ayurveda’s transformation from a medical system into a wellness and relaxation product in Europe and in Kerala’s popular holiday destinations, 2) the widespread occurrence of textual and visual representations of shirodhaara as relaxation and anti-stress treatment in both European and Indian media discourse and public sphere, and 3)

the transfer of the idiom and syndrome ‘stress’ from Europe’s workplaces to Kerala’s Ayurvedic resorts by European guests. I will demonstrate the necessity of considering the practice of shirodhaara in Kerala’s Ayurvedic resorts in a transnational perspective, so as to better understand the dynamism of a form of treatment shaped by global networks of Ayurvedic practice and knowledge. Ayurvedic resorts in Kerala are part of a ‘global ayurvedascape’ and represent its local agglomeration. They are ‘contact zones’ that produce a new transnational form of Ayurveda through intercultural encounters, and one aspect of this new form of Ayurveda is the usage of shirodhaara as a means for stress relief and relaxation.

Standardizing as a whole-body treatment: the impact of transnationalism on Thai massage Iida, Junko (Kawasaki University of Medical Welfare, Japan)

This paper examines how nationalism and transnationalism have affected the knowledge construction and the practice of Thai massage in Thailand. Thailand’s encounter with the West and the process of nation-building, both acknowledged as affecting other Asian medical traditions, have worked to construct ‘Thai traditional medicine’. More recently, the policy of the World Health Organization and domestic traditional medicine revivalist movements have encouraged the Thai government to standardize Thai traditional medicine and to promote Thai massage as one of its therapies. Tourism, however, has a far more direct and significant impact on the practice of Thai massage than any of these factors. The standardized whole-body

Societies & Medicines in South Asia Newsletter, Issue 7 5/10

massage, following a step-by-step routine from foot to head, exemplifies a product developed to answer the needs of foreign tourists, mostly from Europe and North America, who have no specific symptoms. As it is also very popular among tourists to learn Thai massage, a teaching system has been standardized so that foreigners can easily acquire massage skill. As a result, folk terms are translated into English. For example, the term ‘sen’, the lines on the body along which Thai massage is applied, has been translated as ‘energy line’, even though Thai massage practitioners do not recognize that ‘energy’ is flowing along sen. As well, textbooks have been made following the requests of tourists from abroad. This paper shows this transformation of the practice of Thai massage has also affected the perception of legitimacy and the practice of Thai massage for Thai people.

“How not alive does a patient need to be to declare him dead?” Organ transplantation and its changing paradigms in a transnational context Mukherjee, Sinjini (KJC, University of Heidelberg)

My findings in this paper are based on the exhaustive discussions that took place at the 2nd ELPAT Congress in The Netherlands, organised by the platform for Ethical, Legal and Psychosocial Aspects of Organ Transplantation (ELPAT). The shift in preference from "cadaver" to "live organ" donations, from the framing of the “brain dead” to the “non-heart-beating” donor, and the oscillation between “organ scarcity” and “organ harvesting” are some of the transformations that will be historically contextualised and analysed in this paper. These shifts in medical categories have significant impact on and challenge the prevailing legal system which then needs to bring these changes within the folds of ‘legality’. Similar effects are felt on the existing moral orders of society. However, the direction of influence can also be reversed where laws and ethical protocols guide the course of technological research; thus, giving rise to a circuitous reality. At the core of this paper will be questions pertaining to what constitutes ‘life’ and what constitutes ‘death’ and how and why different actors present at this Congress engaged in reworking and rearticulating this distinction and towards what exact ends. From here, I will analyse how these transformations in the medical, legal and moral systems translate into a universal protocol for medical practitioners while, at the same time, giving rise to a human rights discourse. The latter attempts to keep a check on practices within the medical profession as well as curtail the mushrooming of other related ‘unethical’ practices around the field. What does this mean for professionals involved in organ transplantation in Asia, and more specifically in India? How do these discourses shape the medical, cultural and social ambit of transplantation outside Europe? These questions shall also be addressed in the concluding section of this paper.

Transcultural creativity. The spa as a site of innovation in India Pordié, Laurent (University of Heidelberg / French Institute of Pondicherry)

This paper will examine the multilayered influences and composite nature of a set of healing practices widely found in the health tourism industry in India. These practices are claimed to be Indian, but remain largely inspired by the global wellness industry and further shaped by the needs and desires of managers, therapists and patients altogether. Here, imagination as a local social practice is not only affected by the desires of those at great social,

cultural, and geographic distance, as globalization theory would have it, but also by repeated contacts, discussions and bodily interactions. That is to say, transnationalism plays an instrumental role in shaping healing practices in this context. I will argue that health tourism is both being produced by, and creating transnational spaces – in the form of spas –, in which people from various cultural backgrounds contribute to the creation of new therapies. To this end, I will present an ethnography conducted in a national chain of high class, standardized spas which became renowned after it won, perhaps ironically, a prominent National Innovation Award for “reviving the ancient knowledge of India”. The encounters brought about by transnational healthcare introduce creative invention into existence. What is the meaning of innovation for a company which makes use of various world resources while claiming its indianity? How does transnationalism create cultural products and how is the idea of “culture” associated to therapeutic practice in this context?

Societies & Medicines in South Asia Newsletter, Issue 7 6/10

From guru sishya parampara to transnational distance education: the case of Siddha Varma medicine Sieler, Roman (South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg)

The growing body of studies on transnational healthcare today tends to focus on institutions, practices and their ‘flows’ rather than on knowledge transmission, despite its important role in the transnationalisation of therapeutic knowledge and practices. Transmission of knowledge, a 'flow' par excellence, involves a process of translation, often argued to be prevalent and accompanying transnationalism. This paper therefore seeks to fill a gap in the existent literature by exploring the modes of instruction in Siddha medicine and, in particular, in Varmam therapy (“vital spot” medicine). It compares the case of hereditary practitioners in Tamil Nadu, South India, who emphasize an intimate, long-term relationship between teacher and student, to that of a newly established course, namely the “Doctorate in Varma Medical Sciences" (D.V.M.S.). This course, offered by an institute in Chennai, aims to attract foreign students and provides lessons and exam papers by e-mail. This paper stresses the need to recognize the ways in which the modalities of knowledge transmission, the intentions of the teachers and the perceptions of students are an important site for the study of therapeutic transnationalism.

Bioethics and transnational medical travel: Clinical complications and public health challenges in the global health services marketplace Turner, Leigh (University of Minnesota)

Having access to a global health services marketplace benefits some individuals. Acknowledging that many patients receive high-quality care at international facilities, not all episodes of medical travel end well. Publications by researchers from Australia, Canada, England, Germany, New Zealand, and the United States reveal that some medical travellers return home with serious complications. News reports document over twenty cases of medical travellers who have died after undergoing elective surgical procedures. Though normative analysis of international medical travel must take provisional form given the modest body of scholarship examining this topic, the establishment of a transnational marketplace in health services raises many

ethical concerns. Particular consideration must be given to such topics as: whether the competitive, profit-driven ethos of the medical tourism industry compromises standards promoting informed patient choice; quality of care in a transnational marketplace that is not governed by global standards; reliability of international hospital accreditation; clinical judgement and surgical technique of clinicians at some international facilities; access to post-operative care; prospects for legal redress when medical malpractice occurs; questions of fairness when publicly funded health care systems must dedicate resources to treating complications of patients who have obtained care at international facilities; and public health consequences of medical travel. Paying particular attention to the emergence of India, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand as destinations for transnational health care, I address various ethical issues generated by the establishment of a global health services marketplace. Scholarship in bioethics is used to develop a framework for identifying and addressing ethical considerations.

Globalisation, nationalism and medical tourism: Modernist trajectories in transition? Wilson, Caroline (University of Bristol)

Since India intensified its programme of economic liberalisation in the early 1990s, health care has become a leading sector in the country’s development as a ‘knowledge economy’ (World Bank 2005). One of the major achievements and beacons of economic reforms is the growth of some of the most technologically advanced hospitals in the world. Arguably, the rapid expansion of the health care industry is testament to a new spirit of entrepreneurship and ambition affecting leading entrepreneurs, professionals and state officials, eager to participate in the global market for health services. In the southern state of Kerala, where corporate and smaller super-speciality hospitals are developing infrastructure and networks to attract international medical tourists, expansion into biomedical tourism appears somewhat misplaced, given the majority of hospitals are stretched to capacity treating local patients. To explore this seeming paradox, this paper analyses the regional, national and global imaginings and social practices framing local engagements with biomedical tourism. By

Societies & Medicines in South Asia Newsletter, Issue 7 7/10

situating the expansion of medical tourism within broader modernist trajectories and debates on health and medicine in South Asia, the presentation explores the different ways in which biomedical tourism is re-articulating India’s position within a local and global order of people and things.

Incommensurable natures: traditional Chinese medicine in translation Zhan, Mei (University of California, Irvine)

In this paper I examine the ways in which different worlds and forms of knowledges are produced through translation. I suggest that instead of simply bridging differences and forging connections, cultural translation gives rise to new forms of knowledges and discrepant visions of the world amongst interlocutors. In particular, I discuss the ways in which “Nature” is invoked and refigured in the worlding of traditional Chinese medicine. To do so I draw on my field research at international educational programs at the Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine—especially its short-term acupuncture program which simultaneously brings together teachers, translators, students, and sometimes patients from diverse geographical, linguistic, educational, and other socioeconomic backgrounds within one classroom and/or clinic setting. Even though many international

students and their teachers understand traditional Chinese medicine to be a holistic and naturalistic medicine—and are attracted to it as such—they often envision Nature in contradictory and even incommensurable ways, and they do so through articulations in relation to science, modernity, tradition, and the everyday sociality of China. In explicating these discourses of Nature, I suggest that it is precisely the incommensurability and multiplicity of Nature in these translational practices that enables the knowledge-making and worlding-making in and of traditional Chinese medicine today.

RECENT LECTURES in Pondy Science between Mission, Commerce and Tamil Society: The doctor of the Danish-Halle Mission in Tranquebar, ca. 1730-1766 Niklas Thode Jensen, European University Institute, Florence 25 January 2010

From their arrival in Tranquebar at the beginning of the eighteenth century the missionaries of the protestant Danish-Halle mission were engaging with many different kinds of knowledge present in Tamil society and with the local natural environment. This paper will focus on the activities in the field of natural history or science, especially medical botany and chemistry, from the time of the arrival of the first mission doctor in 1730. The establishment of the office of mission doctor appears to be a decisive moment for the development of the connection between the Mission and scientific enquiry. As a case study, it presents a window into the complex connections between medicine, science, trade and religion in the early eighteenth century both locally in South India and in the global colonial networks. The case will show how new scientific knowledge about the colonial “periphery” India was constructed both in dialogue and competition with Tamil experts and informants, and at the same time addressing concerns and interests coming out of the scientific “centers” of Europe. In this way, the new scientific knowledge about Indian nature was not just collected locally; it was made in a complex global process.

Societies & Medicines in South Asia Newsletter, Issue 7 8/10

Societies & Medicines in South Asia Newsletter, Issue 7

The imprint of religious culture on the use of pharmaceuticals and medical prescriptions Sylvie Fainzang, INSERM, Paris 11 February 2010

Whereas religious beliefs are known to influence the way people behave in the field of health and illness, an aspect which has not been studied is the influence of religious culture, even in the absence of religious belief, on people’s behaviour towards medication, prescriptions and doctors. I will present the results of research on the link between patients’ backgrounds as regards their religious culture (Catholic, Protestant, Jewish or Muslim) and their use of pharmaceuticals, in order to show that the cultural family origin of patients impacts, through the major values and the collective history of the groups to which they belong, on their attitudes towards prescriptions, medicines, and doctors.

ject: Buddhist Nuns, Avalokitesvara and the Religious

Austin College 9 March 2010

s between three different regions on the basis of a woman’s experience with suffering and a fasting practice.

Notes on a Book ProImplications of Illness Ivette Vargas, 1

Based on historical, textual and fieldwork findings in India, Nepal and Tibet, this book project explores the religious implications of illness in Tibetan biographies and medical texts specifically connected with an Indian Buddhist nun of the 10th century (Gelongma Palmo, Dge slong ma Dpal mo), the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara and the culprits of disease, the klu (Sanskrit. naga). Gelongma Palmo was an Indian Buddhist nun who contracted leprosy and became a founder of a popular lineage of fasting rituals (smyung gnas) in Tibetan Buddhist history. Although rarely do we hear about the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara in the Indian and Tibetan contexts as feminine and connected with disease, this research reveals the feminine aspects of the cult of Avalokitesvara in terms

of embodied enlightenment and ritual performance, and the instrumental value of illness. This work also reveals the historical connection

LATEST BOOK Ayurvedic Manufacturing Industry in Kerala: Growth and Linkages of a Traditional Knowledge Sector

2010, 156 p.

and offers an insightful economic argument to

Harilal Madhavan is an economist, postdoctoral fellow at the IFP/CERMES.

By Harilal Madhavan, VDM Verlag,

This book, based on the author’s graduate dissertation, explores the growth and prospects of Ayurvedic manufacturing in Kerala. This work unpacks the linkages between this industry, medicinal plants supply and health tourism, and their role in the state health development policy. Two manufacturing firms are explored in detail to understand whether this sector would be sustainable or not. This book provides the ground from which to examine the commercialization and transnationalisation of Ayurvedic medicine. It fills an important gap in the literature on healthcare in Keralacurrent anthropological debates.

9/10

Societies & Medicines in South Asia Newsletter, Issue 7 10/10

AWARD Calum Blaikie,  a  PhD Candidate  in Anthropology  at  the University  of Kent  and Associate  Fellow  at  the  French  Institute  of  Pondicherry,  was  awarded  an Honourable Mention  in  the Charles Leslie Prize  for  the best paper by a young scholar, during the 6th Congress of the International Association for the Study of Traditional Asian Medicine  (IASTAM), Timphu, 2009. Click to  listen to his paper: "Critically  endangered?  Himalayan  medicinal  plants  and  diversity  in  Asian medicine". 

Support IASTAM !

PhD DISSERTATION

Tibetan medicine in exile

Stephan Kloos, a PhD Candidate in Medical Anthropology at UC San  Francisco & Berkeley  and Associate  Fellow  at  the  French Institute  of  Pondicherry,  has  been  awarded  a  PhD  in  Spring 2010.  The  dissertation  committee  included  Vincanne  Adams (supervisor), Lawrence Cohen, Aihwa Ong and Laurent Pordié. 

 His dissertation Tibetan Medicine in Exile: The Ethics, Politics, and Science of Cultural Survival combines ethnography, history and critical analysis to produce the first comprehensive account of Tibetan medicine  in exile to date. Beginning with exile‐Tibetan medicine’s  fundamental claim,  it asks how  its practitioners and  institutions  strive  to  simultaneously  “preserve Tibetan  culture”  and  “help  the  world”.  I  argue  that  Tibetan medicine “preserves”  Tibetan  culture  and  produces  a modern  Tibetan  nation  by instantiating, materializing and validating Tibetan Buddhist ethics – which are  taken  as Tibetan  culture  and nation –  in  its medical  knowledge,  its institutions,  doctors,  pills,  and  efficacy.  At  the  same  time,  it  claims  to “help the world” not only by transforming itself into a globally recognized (and recognizable) system of alternative medicine providing herbal pills to an  international  community  of  patients,  but  also  by  producing  an 

alternative,  uniquely  Tibetan modernity  that  addresses  the  perceived  shortcomings  and  desires  of Western modernity. The dissertation  is organized  in seven chapters  including the  introduction. After outlining the analytic framework and introducing the subject matter in the introduction, the chapters proceed  from  the  historical  background  of  Tibetan  medicine  in  exile  to  the  ways  traditional connections between ethics, politics and money have been (and are) renegotiated since the 1960s, to the  transformation  of  exile‐Tibetan medicine  into  a medical  system  and  efforts  to  achieve  legal recognition, to finally Tibetan medicine’s engagement with modern science. 

* *

*