Encounters with Efficacy

Abstract

[Basham Medal EssayNote: The Basham Medal commemorates the name of Professor Arthur L. Basham, co-founder of the International Association for the Study of Traditional Asian Medicine (IASTAM), and is given “to recognize special contributions by IASTAM members to promoting the goals of IASTAM”. In 2009 it was awarded at the International Conference on Tradition Asian Medicine in Thimphu, Bhutan to Professor Vincanne Adams, of the Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine of the University of California, San Francisco. This is the paper she delivered on that occasion.Vincanne’s research interests include the social conditions and epistemological framings of integrative medicine, international health development, women’s health and health care in Tibet, theories of modernity in relation to morality, disaster capitalism, aging and displacement politics. Her primary research area has been the Himalayan region (Nepal and Tibet), where she has worked on topics such as medical pluralism, medicine and social change, and the politics of clinical trials research. More recently, she has also studied life disruption and disaster as a way of life in post-Katrina New Orleans. Vincanne is also interested in global studies of science, technology and medicine, and particularly the postcolonial exchange of scientific activities (from labs to field sites, informed consent procedures to the residual problem of spirit-caused disorders). Her works include Doctors for Democracy: Health Professionals in the Nepal Revolution (1998), Tigers of the Snow and Other Virtual Sherpas: an Ethnography of Himalayan Encounters (1996), Sex in Development: Science, Sexuality, and Morality in Global Perspective (2005, with Stacy Leigh Pigg ) and Medicine between Science and Religion: Explorations on Tibetan Grounds (2011, with Mona Schrempf and Sienna R. Craig ). Vincanne’s work speaks to both academics and practitioners of traditional Asian medicine, in a way that is consistently inspiring, intellectually incisive, and topical in the issues that it addresses., Basham Medal Essay Note: The Basham Medal commemorates the name of Professor Arthur L. Basham, co-founder of the International Association for the Study of Traditional Asian Medicine (IASTAM), and is given “to recognize special contributions by IASTAM members to promoting the goals of IASTAM”. In 2009 it was awarded at the International Conference on Tradition Asian Medicine in Thimphu, Bhutan to Professor Vincanne Adams, of the Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine of the University of California, San Francisco. This is the paper she delivered on that occasion. Vincanne’s research interests include the social conditions and epistemological framings of integrative medicine, international health development, women’s health and health care in Tibet, theories of modernity in relation to morality, disaster capitalism, aging and displacement politics. Her primary research area has been the Himalayan region (Nepal and Tibet), where she has worked on topics such as medical pluralism, medicine and social change, and the politics of clinical trials research. More recently, she has also studied life disruption and disaster as a way of life in post-Katrina New Orleans. Vincanne is also interested in global studies of science, technology and medicine, and particularly the postcolonial exchange of scientific activities (from labs to field sites, informed consent procedures to the residual problem of spirit-caused disorders). Her works include Doctors for Democracy: Health Professionals in the Nepal Revolution (1998), Tigers of the Snow and Other Virtual Sherpas: an Ethnography of Himalayan Encounters (1996), Sex in Development: Science, Sexuality, and Morality in Global Perspective (2005, with Stacy Leigh Pigg ) and Medicine between Science and Religion: Explorations on Tibetan Grounds (2011, with Mona Schrempf and Sienna R. Craig ). Vincanne’s work speaks to both academics and practitioners of traditional Asian medicine, in a way that is consistently inspiring, intellectually incisive, and topical in the issues that it addresses.]