Societies and Medicines in South Asia

• Newsletter 00 (Dec 2006)
• Newsletter 01 (Mar 2007)
• Newsletter 02 (Dec 2007)

Objectives

Medicines, and more generally the means of which people avail to prevent, relieve or heal suffering and disease are formed, transformed and reformed in the field of health and beyond. The constitution of therapeutic spaces appears as the product of social and political combinations, of historical conjunctures, of encounters between people and representations, between ideologies and ideals.

This regional research programme thus examines health traditions, giving particular attention to their social and political dynamics. The general objective of the programme is to understand how contemporary therapeutic spaces are constructed, identified and legitimated.

The use of the “medical” as a prism makes a thorough exploration of the social world possible, an exploration that becomes all the more relevant through the comparative approach offered by a regional project. Research conducted on identical subjects in diverse socio-historical, political and cultural contexts can, in fact, clearly indicate their singularities and underscore their similarities. This approach is essential for a detailed regional analysis.

This research programme explores transversal themes such as the networks of power surrounding health, therapeutic innovations, the trans-nationalization of traditional medicines and the appropriation by the government of the relation to the body. A number of fundamental questions concerning the political dimensions of health naturally emerge from these observations and constitute the framework of the programme.

Besides these transversal themes that concern all projects, vertical axis of research are also retained (sub-projects):

• Axis 1: The institutionalisation of healing: Governance, professionalization, access to health care, and legal protection of indigenous knowledge
• Axis 2: The commoditization of Indian medicines: Raw materials collection (See also ’Medicinal plants research programme’), pharmaceuticalization, medical tourism, and the local and global markets
• Axis 3: Biomedicalization, clinical trials and the quest for efficacy
• Axis 4: Citta (Siddha) system of medicine in Tamil Nadu: Identity, power and pluralism
• Axis 5: Medicine at the border: the politics of Himalayan medicine in India
• Axis 6: Understanding homeopathy today: Spaces, practices and cognition
• Axis 7: Beyond codifications: ’Folk’ knowledge transmission and healing practices This international research programme intends to study the present state of healing systems and their historicity.

Download full project overview(.pdf)

Materials and methods

The program is conducted with a comparative approach between diverse regions that are characterized by heterogeneous socio-historical contexts. It is mainly focused in India. The research undertaken is of a multidisciplinary nature and gathers scientists from disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, political and legal sciences, geography, history, indology and Sanskrit studies, ecology and ethnobotany.

Programme Life Update at the Institute

Download complete list of lectures (pdf).

• Who to meet at the FIP today?: Calum Blaikie, Burton Cleetus, Marion Delpeu, Caterina Guenzi, Stephan Kloos, Robin Lynn Oakley, Laurent Pordié and Brigitte Sébastia (See the team section for details on individual projects, most researchers are on the field...).

• Next event of the FIP in Paris : International Workshop "Medicine and Religion in South Asia. Interactions between scholarly traditions and local practices", to be held on May 20th 2008 at Maison Suger. With M. Gaboriau, D. Gordon White, C. Guenzi, , L. Pordié, M.A. Selby, F. Speziale, G. Tarabout.

• Mark Nichter (University of Arizona) has visited the programme from January 18 to 27 2008. He gave a lecture entitled Revisiting the concept of Karma: lessons from a Dhanvantri Homa.

• Caroline Wilson (University of Sussex) gave the lecture Market Threats to Charity in Medicine – The Everyday Logic of Business and Technology in Kerala on Friday 8th February.

• Francis Zimmermann (Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, EHESS, Paris) stayed at the FIP in December so as to prepare together with L. Pordié and C. Guenzi a forthcoming EHESS Summer School in Pondy, an EHESS/FIP joint venture held at the FIP from 29 to 7 March 2008.

• Recent lectures:

  “An Indologist Looks at Siddha Medicine in Tamilnadu”, by Kenneth G. Zysk (University of Copenhagen)

  “The Dances of Saint Antony: Devotion, Affiction and Possession in Puliyampatti”, Ethnographic movie and discussion (Brigitte Sébastia, IFP)

  “The commodification of materia medica in Ladakh: Institutions, entrepreneurs and exchange networks", by Calum Blaikie (University of Kent)

  “Biomedicalized Globalities: The Institutionalization of ‘Good Science’ in Contemporary Ayurvedic Research”, by Ritika Ganguli (University of Minnesota)

  "The Institutionalisation of Tibetan Medicine in Indian Exile", by Stephan Kloos (UC at San Francisco and Berkeley)

Team / Research topics

Download research abstracts (.pdf)

Partners

Academic Institutions:

• Paul Cézanne University (CReCSS), Aix-Marseille
• South Asia Institute, Heidelberg
• University of Louvain (CEIAS), Brussels
• University of Cambridge, Cambridge
• University of Delhi, New Delhi
• University of California at Berkeley & San Francisco
• Gujarat Institute of Development Research
• Wellcome Centre at University College London
• Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Paris
• Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi
• Pondicherry Institute of Linguistics and Culture (PILC), Pondicherry
• Centre d’Anthropologie, Toulouse
• University of Paris X-Nanterre, Paris
• National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka
• University of Copenhagen
• Facultés Universitaires St Louis, Brussels
• University of Kent, Canterbury

Professional Bodies:

• British Academy (RG on South Asian Medicine)

Governmental institutions:

• Kerala Forest Department
• Karnataka Forest Department

Non governmental institutions:

• Nomad RSI, Toulouse
• Foundation for the Revitalization of Local Health Traditions (FRLHT), Bangalore
• Ladakh Society for Traditional Medicines, Leh

Funding

• French Institute of Pondicherry
• Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie
• French Minsitry of Foreign Affairs (IFRE’s Tranversal programme / Coord. South African Center)
• Individual Scholarships (ANRS/Ensemble contre le SIDA, Heinrich-Boell-Foundation, Fulbright Scholarships, Commonwealth Scholarship, Netherlands Foundation for the Advancement of Tropical Research (WOTRO), SSHRC doctoral Fellowship, Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute Doctoral Fellowship).

Main Outputs

Organization of International Seminars

• "Medicine and Religion in South Asia. Interactions between scholarly traditions and local practices”, International Workshop co-organised by FIP, The Centre d’études de l’Inde et de l’Asie du Sud (CEIAS) and the Institute of Advanced Studies, Paris, to be held in Paris, 20 May 2008.

• "Faults and Flaws. Therapeutic Practices Against the Norm in South Asia”, International Colloquium organised by FIP and The Centre d’études de l’Inde et de l’Asie du Sud (CEIAS), held in Pondicherry, 7-9 March 2008.

• "EHESS Summer School in Pondy”, FIP and Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), to be held in Pondicherry, 27 February - 7 March 2008.

• “The Exploration of Homeopathy from Europe to Asia”, , FIP and the University of Louvain, to be held in Louvain, Belgium, in November 2007.

• “Therapeutic Knowledge and Medicinal Materials in the Tibetan World. Perspectives in Social Sciences”, FIP - Nomad Research Unit, EHESS - Toulouse, October 2007.

• “Asian Medicine Today. Trans-nationalisation of practices and re-localisation of knowledge”, proposed by the FIP and organized by the Réeseau-Asie (CNRS-IMASIE), September 2007.

• "Siddha Medicine : Historical, Social and Medical Perspectives”, funded and organised by the FIP, August 2007.

• “The institutionalization of therapeutic practices in India. Social and legal perspectives”, organised by the FIP and GIDR, funded by the Transveral programmes of the UMIFRE, December 2006.

• “Soundings in the Contemporary Fashions of Medicines in India”, organised and funded by the FIP, October 2005.

• “Mirrored Views on Healing Systems in India. Merging Policies, Politics and Practices”, co-organised by the FIP and FRLHT, funded by the FIP and Nomad RSI, April 2004.

Various publications

Download list of selected works by team members (pdf).

• Divins remèdes. Médecine et religion en Asie du Sud

Edited by Ines Zupanov and Caterina Guenzi, Paris, Editions de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Collection Purusartha 27), forthcoming in September 2008.
Language : French.

This volume explores different forms of interaction between medicine and religion as seen both in scholarly traditions and local practices of South Asia. The objective of this interdisciplinary work is to focus on the intricate and sometimes conflicting connections between medicines and cosmologies, healers and priests, remedies and rituals in different historical and regional contexts. The studies composing the volume are based on a vast range of textual and ethnographic materials – including medical and tantric treatises, missionary archives, dreams or ex-voto narratives, possession cults, astrological counselling, and healing rituals. By considering the religious and cosmological aspects of medical theories and practices, as well as the therapeutic aspects of devotional and ritual practices, the authors show how the different forms of interactions between medicine and religion reflect the complex systems of relationships between social groups in South Asia.

Keywords : Medicine, religion, South Asia, scholarly traditions, local knowledge

• Le médecin du coeur. Soufisme, religion et médecine en islam indien

Fabrizio Speziale, Paris, Aux Lieux d’Etre, forthcoming in June 2008.
Language : French.

Le médecin du cœur est le nom donné au médecin soufi, dont la tradition reste vivante aujourd’hui. La médecine islamique s’est développée dans le monde indien à partir du XIIIe siècle et la médecine soufie y occupe une place importante. Les mystiques soufis ont produit l’un des plus importants corpus médicaux du monde islamique à l’époque moderne. Ils ont joué un rôle déterminant dans le renouveau de cette tradition médicale à l’époque coloniale et puissamment contribué à la transmission de la médecine prophétique – reposant sur les traditions médicales du prophète Muhammad – et à l’adaptation en Inde du savoir médical d’origine grecque, hérité par les médecins musulmans. Cet ouvrage fait revivre les pèlerinages aux sanctuaires soufis de la ville d’Hyderabad (Deccan), aujourd’hui spécialisés dans les rituels de cure, qui attirent, musulmans et hindous, et fournissent des cas intéressants de guérison par les rêves. La médecine soufie s’est exportée dans le monde entier avec une grande vitalité et s’est adaptée à certaines exigences des sociétés d’aujourd’hui.

Keywords : Islam, Sufism, India, medicine, historical and textual studies

• Good Deaths, Bad Deaths. Anthropological Perspectives on Death and Dying. Special issue of Curare 31(2)

Edited by Gabriele Alex and Suzette Heald, 2008.
Language: English

The question of a ‘good’ death as opposed to a ‘bad’ one provides for a critical exploration and synthesis of changing attitudes to death cross-culturally. What can transform a bad death into a good one and what moral terrain does it serve to define? Mortuary rituals have long been an interest of anthropologists for the way they illuminate cultural values. This formal dimension of death in recent work has been over-ridden by a concern with the more subjective aspects of dying and the choices available to individuals. Two, opposed trajectories can here be seen to meet. On the one hand, there has been the development of new medical technologies with their promise of overcoming death. On the other hand, terrorism, on-going wars, third world poverty and the HIV/AIDS pandemic have ensured that, untimely death is not just a newspaper headline but an issue that reaches all. Suicide highlights attitudes towards death and the subjective choice of dying. It further illuminates cultural virtues which are expressed in responses to suicide, in the ways how people discuss and evaluate a suicide.

This volume covers three main themes. Firstly, the way in which the medicalisation of death in the developed world has produced new institutional ways of ‘managing’ death and a new lexicon to go with it. Secondly, the varied meanings and responses to suicide and self-killing are examined in different cultural contexts. Lastly, this issue turns to the responses to death when populations are faced by a pandemic such as AIDS.

Keywords: Medical anthropology, death and dying, HIV/AIDS, suicide, medicalisation

• Tibetan Medicine in the Contemporary World. Global Politics of Medical Knowledge and Practice

Edited by Laurent Pordié, foreword by Margaret Lock, London and New York, Routledge, 2008.
Language : English.

The logics of the neo-liberal economy, modern institutionalization, state-controlled policies, biomedicalization, and the renewed aspirations of the practitioners have brought about a dramatic change in medical provision on the national level and an unprecedented expansion on the international level. This volume offers a comprehensive reading of contemporary Tibetan medical knowledge and practices by considering both the reasons that have led to their diversity and by bringing out the common orientations of this medical system. The specialist authors brought together in this book examine the social, political and identity dynamics of various forms of ‘Tibetan medicine’ and post-modern medical pluralism, based upon multisided research conducted in Nepal, India, Tibet and Mainland China, in Mongolia and in the West. This collective reflection refreshes the contemporary understandings of scholarly Asian medicines in their global context.

Keywords : Tibetan medicine, modern institutionalisation, politics of knowledge, therapeutic globalization

• Ethnographic Humanism: Migrant Experiences in the Quest for Well-Being, Special issue of Anthropology in Action 14(1&2)

Edited by Robin Oakley and Anne Sigfrid Grøsneth, Paris, Oxford and New York, Berghahn Publishers, 2007.
Language : English.

The articles in this volume reinforce the power of ethnographic humanism, of "anthropology in action". The focus is on the relationship between macro political forces and their influence on the varied experiences of health in advanced industrial capitalist contexts. Our approach views migrants as capable agents negotiating new lives for themselves and confronting the challenges they face. We strongly advocate socially informed policy that offers a minimum recognition to migrants as full fledged members of the new society that they have voluntarily or involuntarily migrated to. We are especially interested in health and well-being as analytical tools for understanding the contradictions and tensions immigrants face in regard to staying or leaving, as well as in feelings of identity and belonging. How do nation-state, market and capital interact in providing and/or denying access to social arenas that supply a minimum of social human recognition, which are critical to experiences of illness, well-being and joy? The contributions in this volume emphasise ethnographic practice as an important policy tool to understand meanings, experiences and practices of immigrants as they attempt to make themselves at home in Western settings.

Keywords: Migration, health, well-being

• Les rondes de saint Antoine. Culte, affliction et possession en Inde du Sud

Brigitte Sébastia, Paris, Aux Lieux d’Etre, 2007.
Language : French. 30 Euros.

The handling of psychogenic disorders and the « indigenisation » of catholic practices in Indian society are at the heart of this book. It presents the study of a sanctuary in South India dedicated to the Portuguese Saint, Anthony de Padua, who holds functions of divine descent and the ability to exorcise. Pilgrims and Indian catholic patients meet there, and make devotional and ritualistic gestures inspired by Hinduism.

These rituals are informal because, in this country, the clergy is opposed to exorcism practices. On the contrary, they are scrupulously observed by families who accompany patients suspected of being victims of possession. Relations have a central role in the therapeutic process. They base themselves on different elements in order to demonstrate the supernatural origin of the ailments. The family then puts pressure on the patient and physically abuses him in order for him to subsequently manifest his possession, which thus proves the diagnostic correct. According to the nature of the ailments, the patient can submit to the relations’ will. This first experience often marks the beginning of a long series of possessions, more and more frequent and violent.

Keywords : Possession, sorcery, indigenisation of Christianism, psychiatry, Siddha medicine, India

• Ethnography of Healing, Special issue of the Indian Anthropologist 37(1)

Edited by Laurent Pordié, New Delhi,
Journal of the Indian Anthropological Association, 2007.
Language: English. 1500 Rs

The anthropology of health practices classically included in the category of “folk healing” is one of the neglected areas of the discipline in India. Social scientists do not give them the same attention as scholarly medical traditions. Usually located in villages “folk healers” are, however, regularly frequented by the general population. This situation contrasts again very strongly with the national health policies that accord no or very little attention to these therapists.

This special issue of the Indian Anthropologist is intended as a contribution to the definition and study of folk therapeutic practices. A series of articles of an essentially ethnographic nature explores their implication in the process of Indian modernity. Three themes bind the articles together: the social role of the healers and the social functions of healing processes, the presence of the religious and its normative dimension on the practice of medicine, and the importance of healing in group identity.

Keywords : Folk healing, illness, India, religion

• Les médecines en parallèle

Edited by Olivier Schmitz, Paris: Karthala, 2006, 279 p.
Language: French. 25 €

Despite the authority biomedicine displays for treating illnesses in contemporary western societies, a growing part of their population now have recourse to other therapeutic methods. What does this multitude of healthcare practices called « alternative », « parallel » or even « natural», mean to the public and the practitioners? Are they, as has been said of the art of traditional healers, the missing part of biomedicine, which has, in its historical development, progressively separated the social from the biological, the material from the spiritual? The chapters which make up this volume, provide answers to these queries, by offering singular and previously unpublished studies of a sample of « different » healing practices such as yoga, Qigong, geobiology, magnotherapy or shamanism. Social sciences specialists subsequently point out to the remarkable plasticity in the field of healthcare practices, and offer some analysis. Les médecines en parallèle sheds light on these medical alternatives and on the profound social reorganizations of which they are the reflection.

Keywords: Alternative medicines, trans-nationalisation of practices, social change

• Soigner par l’invisible. Enquête sur les guérisseurs aujourd’hui

Olivier Schmitz, Paris: Imago, 2006
Language: French. 25 €

In spite of the success of biomedicine, there are many other healing practices living and developing today which are based upon the manipulation of certain “forces”, spirits, waves or energies. Who are the practitioners of these therapeutic forms and who are their clients? What are the representations of disease and of the body that animate these therapeutic practices? Over the course of a long period of field study, the author considered these therapies, which attribute the origins of the sickness and misfortune of individuals to the invisible world: cults based on saints and trees that heal, pilgrimages to springs and fountains, magicians, sorcerers, radiesthesists and geobiologists. The picture that emerges from this is one of a popular form of urban medicine, in which practitioners ground the legitimacy of their magico-religious discourse on disease and its causes on the advances of science and technology. Through participating in consultations, observing the stages of treatment and collecting experiences from the healers and their patients, the author has uncovered, at the very heart of our modern society, a magical universe in which our contemporaries attempt to find meaning and relief from their suffering.

Keywords: syncretic healers, West, magic

• Panser le monde, penser les médecines. Traditions médicales et développement sanitaire.

Edited by Laurent Pordié, Paris, Karthala, 2005, 326 p.
Language: French. 25 €

How do healing traditions transform health development? Vice versa, what role does healthcare development have in the dynamics of vernacular therapeutic practices and knowledge?
The essays gathered in this volume, provide answers to these twin questions, by inviting the reader to explore the social dimension of international health programmes. This book thereby examines the contexts, practices and the social impact of development, and the ways in which medicines are manifested in it, categorised, taken care of, standardized or rendered invisible.
Health development programmes always concern healing traditions, in some way or another, directly or indirectly. This ineluctable encounter is, however, often ignored by healthcare planners. It has social and medical consequences that should yet be thoroughly taken into account to make health development a more balanced practice. The reader will find in this volume essential analytical tools for that purpose. Combining contextualised accounts and anthropological analysis, Panser le monde, penser les médecines precisely insists on the necessity of understanding the world before trying to heal it.

Keywords: Health, healing traditions, medical pluralism, international development

• Himalayan Medicinal and Aromatic Plants. Balancing Use and Conservation

Edited by Yildis Thomas et al., Kathmandu,
NMFSC-WWF-UNESCO-IDRC, 2005. 558 p.
Language : English.

The rapid expansion of the commercial use of Himalayan medicinal and aromatic plants at the regional and international levels represents a threat to the Environment. Moreover, commercial practices generally do not consider the local social and cultural importance of these resources. Increasing market and economic forces often leads to unsustainable commercial harvesting, to which an immediate alternative must be found so as to preserve the fragile Himalayan diversity. This book addresses these issues through exploring existing environment management possibilities and providing new approaches pertaining to plants domestication, cultivation and commercialisation. It also examines the use of plants use by various knowledge holders, such as traditional healers. This volume gathers papers issuing from social sciences researches and conservation programmes in Himalayan Nepal, India, Pakistan, and China. Sustainable extraction of resource and income generating system for the local community do not necessarily stand in opposition to each other; they must be thought carefully though, not to foster current environmental degradation.

Keywords : Trans-Himalayan medicinal plants, conservation, commercialisation, socioeconomic change, healers

• Tibetan Medicine Among the Buddhist Dards of Ladakh

Stephan Kloos, Wien: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und
Buddhistische Studien Universität Wien, 2004, 188 p.
Language: English (limited edition, out of stock).

What is the social role of practitioners of Tibetan medicine (amchi) in rural Ladakh in the 21st century? What are the effects, on society and traditional medicine, of new roads, a changing economy, increasing political links to distant centers, and heavy militarization in the wake of a recent conflict with Pakistan? This book provides a case study of a remote village, Hanu Gongma, and its most influential amchi in recent times, to shed light on the establishment and change of Tibetan medicine in an Indo-Aryan minority community in Ladakh. The first section deals with the local history of Hanu and the introduction and practice of Tibetan medicine there since at least the 19th century. Tracing four generations of amchi, a detailed portrait of the present clinical situation and the role of Tibetan medicine in Hanu Gongma is given. This leads to an analysis of Hanu’s most important amchi’s unique role in mediating the socio-economic and medical changes in the village since the 1970s, and the ambivalent effects on both the health of the village, local Tibetan medicine, and himself. The author argues that at the heart of the successful practice of Tibetan medicine lies a dialectic relationship between social and medical power, which has to be renegotiated and re-established in the context of modernity.

Keywords: Tibetan medicine, social role of the healer, Ladakh

• The expression of religion in Tibetan medicine. Ideal conceptions, contemporary practices and political use

Laurent Pordié, 2003, 83 p. (PPSS n°29)
Language: English. 150 Rs (5 €)

What place does religion today assume in the lives of the Ladakhi practitioners of Tibetan medicine (amchi)? And, how does medicine, as a social institution, negotiate its relationship to religion? The author addresses these questions by singling out two vantages of observation: institutionalization and the voluntary sector, after having defined the ideal religious frame putatively surrounding medicine according to the amchi’s representations. Contrasting the desire for scientificity that characterizes Tibetan medicine institutions and the political use of religion by healers’ associations, this volume sheds light on central aspects of the contemporary construction of Tibetan medicine in Ladakh.

Keywords: Anthropology, Tibetan medicine, religion, science, development