- Title
- The politics of Tibetan medicine and the constitution of an object of study: some comments
- Creator
- Samuel, Geoffrey
- Relation
- Tibetan Medicine in the Contemporary World Global Politics of Medical Knowledge and Practice p. 251-266
- Relation
- Needham Research Institute Studies
- Relation
- http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415447898
- Publisher
- Routledge
- Resource Type
- book chapter
- Date
- 2008
- Description
- The chapters of this book give a different and much more varied picture of Tibetan medicine than most previous Western writing on the subject. Even the recent growth of anthropological writing on Tibetan medical practice has rarely ventured into the complex and often fraught issues of the politics of Tibetan medical practice and the social context of Tibetan medicine considered here. The material in this volume is striking in its variety: we have studies of 'Tibetan medicine' in Tibet, Mongolia, Nepal, Ladakh, the UK and the USA, from a number of at times quite strongly contrasted viewpoints. If the Western image of Tibetan medicine tends to be of a coherent body of practices handed down from the past, the material in this volume may lead us to ask, by contrast, whether there is such a thng as 'Tibetan medicine' at all in the contemporary situation. We note that a range of designations are used in the book for the healing tradition being practised, and that practitioners in Ladakh and Nepal specifically avoid referring to their practice as 'Tibetan mehcine' (the same is true for Bhutan).
- Subject
- Tibetan medicine; politics; pharmaceutical; study; traditional
- Identifier
- uon:6685
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/804642
- Identifier
- ISBN:9780415447898
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