Healing powers and modernity : traditional medicine, shamanism, and science in Asian societies / edited by Linda H. Connor and Geoffrey Samuel.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Connor, Linda, 1950-

Samuel, Geoffrey.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Healing--Asia.

Healing.

Social medicine--Asia.

Social medicine.

Traditional medicine--Asia.

Traditional medicine.

Shamanism--Asia.

Shamanism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (295 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Distribution:

London : Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024

Place of Publication:

Westport, Conn. : Praeger, 2001.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

What is the current state of traditional healing practices in contemporary Asian societies? How are their practitioners faring in the encounter with Western science and its biomedical approach? How are traditional healing practices being transformed by the politics of health within the modern nation-state and by the processes of commodification typical of modern economies? How do patients in Asian societies see the various healing options now open to them? The authors, all of whom are anthropologists, observe the clashes and complementarities between traditional therapies and biomedicine, which, in its many manifestations, is the dominant form of medicine supported by national governments, and is emblematic of the modernity to which they aspire. Some of the medical traditions, such as the sophisticated herbal-humoral systems of Tibetan medicine and Indian Ayurveda, are becoming well known in the West, both through scholarly study and through their increasing popularity with Western patients interested in their healing potential. This book adds a new dimension to their study, being focused unlike most previous writing on practice rather than textual tradition.

Contents:

""Contents""; ""Illustrations""; ""Acknowledgments""; ""A Note on Tibetan Spelling""; ""INTRODUCTION""; ""1 Healing Powers in Contemporary Asia""; ""HEALING IN THE MODERN STATE: KOREA, MALAYSIA, AND INDIA""; ""2 The Cultural Politics of “Superstition� in the Korean Shaman World: Modernity Constructs Its Other""; ""3 Tradition and Change in Malay Healing""; ""4 Modernity and the Midwife: Contestations Over a Subaltern Figure, South India""; ""5 The Political Ecology of Health in India: Indigestion as Sign and Symptom of Defective Modernization""

""HEALING ON THE MARGINS: MALAYSIA, INDONESIA, AND CHINA""""6 Engaging the Spirits of Modernity: The Temiars""; ""7 Presence, Efficacy, and Politics in Healing Among the Iban of Sarawak""; ""8 Sorcery and Science as Competing Models of Explanation in a Sasak Village""; ""9 Medicines andModernities in Socialist China: Medical Pluralism, the State, and Naxi Identities in the Lijiang Basin""; ""HEALING, POWER, AND IDENTITY IN TIBETAN SOCIETIES""; ""10 Tibetan Medicine at the Crossroads: Radical Modernity and the Social Organization of Traditional Medicine in the Tibet Autonomous Region, China""

""11 Particularizing Modernity: Tibetan Medical Theorizingof Women�s Health in Lhasa, Tibet""""12 Tibetan Medicine in Contemporary India: Theory and Practice""; ""Glossary of Tibetan Terms""; ""Index""; ""About the Editors and Contributors""

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9798400662195

9780313002762

0313002762

OCLC:

929144638