(Un-)Disciplining Health

Looking at the modes of therapy which people in Asia as well as Europe employ for their health-problems and then turning towards the representation of academic disciplines concerning health, one notices a clear division of intellectual labour. On the one hand there is a host of academic medical disciplines ranging from somatic (e. g. surgical specialities) to psychic specialities – and in India even medical systems outside biomedicine are represented in academia – and on the other hand we have a large number of popular therapeutic practices, which might be termed “undisciplined”. This includes practices of the so called Heilpraktiker (“healing practitioner”) in Germany as well as the roadside therapist in large Indian cities. The constellation of diciplines reflects various kinds of asymmetry, the disciplines of the body being privileged over other medical systems etc..

We ask how this global division of intellectual labour - in other words, the constellation of legitimate disciplines and illegitimate un-disciplines in an environment characterised by asymmetries – affects therapeutic practice.

Conference of Research Area C3: Mind and Body in European and Indian Medicine.

Title of the Conference: Asymmetrical Translations – Mind and Body in European and Indian Medicine

 

Concept Note:

The biomedical division of labor is inherently asymmetrical, such that the healing disciplines focusing on "the body" have more prestige and more resources than those focused on "the mind," while the "spiritual" dimension of healing falls outside the matrix of legitimate (scientific) therapy altogether, being relegated to the (non-scientific) realm of "religion".

This division of labor, together with the consolidation of the healing disciplines as part of global processes of professionalization, 'materialization', and industrialization (pharmaceuticalization), inaugurates and produces Asian medical practice as the 'other' of biomedicine, which then returns to Europe where it is 'integrated' into the health system as a type of CAM (Complementary and Alternative Medicine).

The occlusion and marginalization of the inferior term comes about from the imposition of an (originally "Western") paradigm privileging material/somatic explanations and therapies, thereby resulting in separate histories and anthropologies, and asymmetrical valuations, of European medicine vs. 'classical' Indian medicine, and of the social science discipline of psychology vs. the medical science discipline of psychiatry, with various 'undisciplined' forms of vernacular healing falling outside the matrix altogether.

In this conference, we consider how flows of ideas and practices produce theoretical, practical, pedagogical, economic, aesthetic and other asymmetries within and amongst European and South Asian healing systems. We are interested in distinctions between legitimate vs. non-legitimate medical practice, as well as to the dominance of the somatic over the psychological, the literate over the non-literate, and the institutionalized over the non-institutionalized.

The participants include members of the Cluster (Ananda Samir Chopra, Johannes Quack) and the University of Heidelberg (William Sax) as well as researchers from Germany and Europe (Gabi Alex, Ritika Ganguly, Stefan Reichmuth, Michi Knecht, Claudia Lang), India (Amitranjan Basu, Tina Chakravarty, Harish Naraindas, Roman Sieler) and the U. S. (Projit Mukharji).

Format of the Conference:

The papers presented at this conference will be divided into three thematic sections: 1) The sciences of the mind such as psychiatry and psychology; 2) The traditional South Asian health disciplines (like Ayurveda, Siddha etc.) and 3) The Un-disciplined purveyors of health (e. g. streetside-sellers of folk medicine).

To facilitate an in-depth discussion, each paper will first be presented by a “respondent” who will critically summarize the contents of the paper, then the author has occasion to answer which will be followed by a general discussion. On the third day there is a morning session in which one discussant for each thematic section will discuss the papers of each section in groups, which – we hope - will initiate a discussion in which boundaries and asymmetries are broken up.

Participation is mainly by invitation. However, a small number of seats are available for interested listeners, if you are interested to come please contact us in advance by E-mail: chopra@asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de.

 

 

Contact:
Dr Ananda Samir Chopra
Südasien-Institut der Universität Heidelberg
Im Neuenheimer Feld 330
69120 Heidelberg
E-Mail: chopra@asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de

 

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Letzte Änderung: 18.06.2012
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