Healing Powers and Modernity

LINDA H. CONNOR is Associate Professor, Department of Sociology & Anthropology, The University of Newcastle, Australia./eGEOFFREY SAMUEL is Professor of Anthropology, The University of New Castle, Australia./e

What is the current state of traditional healing practices in contemporary Asian societies? How are their practitioners faring in the encounter with Western science and its biomedical approach? How are traditional healing practices being transformed by the politics of health within the modern nation-state and by the processes of commodification typical of modern economies? How do patients in Asian societies see the various healing options now open to them?The authors, all of whom are anthropologists, observe the clashes and complementarities between traditional therapies and biomedicine, which, in its many manifestations, is the dominant form of medicine supported by national governments, and is emblematic of the modernity to which they aspire. Some of the medical traditions, such as the sophisticated herbal-humoral systems of Tibetan medicine and Indian Ayurveda, are becoming well known in the West, both through scholarly study and through their increasing popularity with Western patients interested in their healing potential. This book adds a new dimension to their study, being focused unlike most previous writing on practice rather than textual tradition.

IntroductionHealing Powers in Contemporary Asia by Linda H. ConnorHealing in the Modern State: Korea, Malaysia, and IndiaThe Cultural Politics of "Superstition" in the Korean Shaman World: Modernity Constructs Its Other by Laurel KendallTradition and Change in Malay Healing by Carol LadermanModernity and the Midwife: Contestations Over a Subaltern Figure, South India by Kalpana RamThe Political Ecology of Health in India: Indigestion as Sign and Symptom of Defective Modernization by Mark NichterHealing on the Margins: Malaysia, Indonesia, and ChinaEngaging the Spirits of Modernity: The Temiars by Marina RosemanPresence, Efficacy, and Politics in Healing Among the Iban of Sarawak by Amanda HarrisSorcery and Science as Competing Models of Explanation in a Sasak Village by Cynthia L. HunterMedicines and Modernities in Socialist China: Medical Pluralism, the State, and Naxi Identities in the Lijiang Basin by Sydney D. WhiteHealing Power and Identity in Tibetan SocietiesTibetan Medicine at the Crossroads: Radical Modernity and the Social Organization of Traditional Medicine in the Tibet Autonomous Region, China by Craig R. JanesPartuclarizing Modernity: Tibetan Medical Theorizing of Women's Health in Lhasa, Tibet by Vincanne AdamsTibetan Medicine in Contemporary India: Theory and Practice by Geoffrey SamuelGlossary of Tibetoan TermsIndex