Joseph S Alter (ed.) Asian medicine and globalization, Encounters with Asia, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005, pp. vi, 189, £29.50, US$45.00 (hardback 0-8122-3866-4).

Abstract

Given that medical traditions are intrinsically dynamic and open to innovation, as scholars have recognized since at least the time of Charles Leslie's classic Asian medical systems (1976), nationalist categories of medicine are to a great extent, artificial. To use the term “western medicine” requires the qualification that there is nothing specifically “western” about it, and that its development may equally derive from people or initiatives in the “east”, or indeed the “north” or “south”. Similarly, terms such as “Chinese medicine”, or “Tibetan medicine” may be convenient and in themselves both indicators of and factors in the systemization of various regional traditions and practices, but they are far from historical. What is now Tibetan medicine, for example, is a systemized development of a variety of practices and understandings primarily deriving from the elite textual tradition of sowa rigpa (“the science of healing”), a branch of Himalayan Buddhist learning within which might be isolated not only indigenous traditions and practices but also those of India, China, Persia, and even Greece. Terms such as “Chinese” or “Tibetan” medicine were not indigenous, but derive from European classifications, albeit suited to the interests of, and rapidly adopted by, those nationalist interests. Given the artificiality of such constructions, and the implicit and often explicit claims of virtually all medical systems to universal validity, a tension arises between national and transnational conceptions of regional medical systems. This volume seeks to explore the issues arising from that tension in the context of the globalization process, as (“western”) biomedicine is indigenized in Asia and Asian medical systems and related practices such as yoga are adopted in the west. The majority of the articles thus examine the character of “national” traditions in exile, and the transformative effects of medical encounters with other cultures, understandings, and laws. Alter's own critical introduction should be required reading for students in the field, problematizing medical communications and encounters from the earliest period, when medical knowledge belonged not to place or nation, but to “a particular person with clearly manifest skills” (p. 14), a Galen or a Caraka. The ability of such individuals to attract patronage—a little studied aspect—was surely crucial to that determination. Indeed patronage, individual or state, is fundamental. Any consideration of Āyurvedic Acupuncture (sic!), the subject of Alter's paper here, or “traditional Indian” treatments for HIV/AIDS, as discussed by Cecilia van Hollen, requires consideration of consumer cultures and economies, and the strategies by which such constructions appeal to those elements. Martha Ann Selby's wonderfully entertaining, albeit brief, account of New Age Āyurveda makes such strategies plain. While consideration of Japan is lacking, Deepak Kumar, and S Irfan Habib and Dhruv Raina, discuss process and modernization in colonial India, while three papers are concerned with these issues in China. Susan Brownell's discussion of plastic surgery there engages with political and class conflicts, as well as military medicine and concepts of identity and the “body”. Nancy Chen examines the popular healing practice of qigong and its relationship with the communist state (without however, sustained linkage to the transnational focus of the collection), while Vivienne Lo and Sylvia Schroer outline the classical textual understandings of the concept of xie (the “deviant airs” of the essay title), and bring out the attempted excising of its demonic associations by the modern Chinese state and its formulation in western practice of Traditional Chinese Medicine. This work will stand as a valuable corollary to studies of specific medical traditions located in a nation and will be of interest to all those whose work is concerned with regions and cultures that cross modern nation-state boundaries. While seemingly rather slim, at just 150 pages of text, conciseness is here a virtue and the additional notes contain much that is of interest. Accessible and stimulating, it may be recommended to both specialists and students.