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WiSe 21/22: The Politics of Traditional Medicines

Karoline Buchner

Information for students

Dieses Lehrangebot findet im wöchentlichen Gruppenwechsel sowohl in Präsenz als auch Online über Webex statt. Die Gruppeneinteilung erfolgt in der ersten Sitzung, den entsprechenden link zur Online-Sitzung finden Sie im Black Board der Lehrveranstaltung.
Eine ausschließliche Online-Teilnahme am Seminar ist nicht möglich. close

Comments

This class will examine the relationship between so-called traditional medicines and politics. Whether embraced in decolonial nation-building and countercultural movements or transformed into a commodity circulating the globe, contemporary traditional medicines and their practitioners, healing methods, and material objects participate in various power struggles. Even questions of efficacy—belonging to the seemingly ‘objective’ domain of science—often lie at the heart of political struggles over traditional medicines. Drawing on examples from Chinese medicine, Tibetan medicine, and Ayurveda, this class will look at traditional medicine as a matter of interest to national politics, as embedded in global linkages and flows, and as related to the politics and hierarchies of knowledge. As an introduction to how we might think about traditional medicines in medical anthropology, please read Venera Khalikova’s overview of medical pluralism in the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology: close