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Since the mid-1970s, the development of tourism in Ladakh, a remote region in the Indian Himalayas, has attracted an increasing number of foreigners interested in Tibetan medicine. Some English-speaking practitioners have taken the opportunity to directly address this new clientele, in their own clinics or through public lectures. This article is concerned with this local manifestation of therapeutic globalization. More specifi cally, it examines how these practitioners present an elaborated and complex body of medical knowledge with the intention of making it accessible to foreigners. The practitioners pragmatically attempt to create a space for communication, but neither their medical knowledge nor their practice are deeply altered for all that. The brevity of these encounters, however, imposes a need for simplifi cation and reformulation of knowledge, which accentuate existing characteristics in Tibetan medicine, such as Buddhism taken here as an example, and may convey distorted or truncated ideas to their interlocutors. This article shows that the processes involved in the "translation" of Tibetan medical knowledge are not restricted to matters of language or the infl uence of the new market in Tibetan medicine in the region. In trying to understand these expressions of knowledge, one encounters a particular, two-pronged demand: The need to refl ect on the architecture of erudite knowledge in the Tibetan world, and on the regional sociopolitical and economic dynamics. These considerations will help to place in proper perspective some assumptions on the enchantment and transformation of Tibetan medicine in similar environments.

An anthropological equivoque. Researchers' engagement and knowledge production -- Comment on "Coproducing efficacious medicines" (Current Anthropology, 2015)

Almost the entire content of the medical texts, as well as the therapeutic practices carried out daily by the practitioners of the scholarly medicine of Ladakh, North-western India, are of a technical medical and a-religious nature. However, medical ethics and elements of medical epistemology are based on Buddhism, and all healers underscore the importance of the moral dimension in the practice of medicine, a dimension that refers expressly to religion. The ethnography presented in this article examines the role of religion for medical practice in both moral and practical points of view.

Buddhism in the Everyday Medical Practice of the Ladakhi Amchi (Indian Anthropologist, 2007)

Several letters to the editor are presented in response to the article on the research on collaborative event ethnography (CEE).

Genealogy and Ambivalence of a Therapeutic Heterodoxy. Islam and Tibetan Medicine in North-western India (Modern Asian Studies, 2015)

Hijacking Intellectual Property Rights: Identities and Social Power in the Indian Himalayas (Routledge, 2008)

Long confined to Europe and the United States, pharmaceutical innovation now holds centre stage in India. This article explores innovation in the ayurvedic industry as a form of alternative modernity, which contrasts in key ways with the molecular paradigm that has dominated pharmaceutical research in the North since the mid twentieth century. India offers other ways to pharmaceutical innovation based on forms of knowledge essentially foreign to pharmaceutical screening and biotechnology. The industry reinvents its ayurvedic remedies by borrowing from various orders of medical thought and from techniques that belong to modern galenics and biomedicine as well as Indian traditions. This model represents an innovative mode of knowledge production and accounts for the introduction of an independent pharmacy in a milieu hitherto primarily medical. Essentially based on reverse engineering, this innovation regime involves the reformulation and simplification of ayurvedic preparations in order to create new "traditional" medicines for the biomedically-defined disorders of an international clientele. This article opens prospective avenues for the study of these new drugs, the construction of a global market and of an economy of property rights emancipated from pharmaceutical patents. (English)

This article examines the transmission of Tibetan medical knowledge in the Himalayan region of Ladakh (India), taking three educational settings as ethnographic ports of entry. Each of these corresponds to a different operating mode in the standardisation of medical knowledge and learning processes, holding profound implications for the way this therapeutic tradition is known, valued, applied and passed on to the next generation. Being at the same time a cause and a consequence of intra-regional variability in Tibetan medicine, the three institutional forms coexist in constant interaction with one another. The authors render this visible by examining the 'taskscapes' that characterize each learning context, that is to say, the specific and interlocking sets of practices and tasks in which a practitioner must be skilled in order to be considered competent. The authors build upon this notion by studying two fields of transmission and practice, relating to medicine production and medical ethics. These domains of enquiry provide a rich grounding from which to examine the transition from enskilment to education, as well as the overlaps between them, and to map out the connections linking different educational forms to social and medical legitimacy in contemporary India.

Knowledge and Skills in Motion. Layers of Tibetan Medical Education in India (Culture, Medicine & Psychiatry, 2014)

Ce document offre l'une des premières études ethnographiques de la médecine tibétaine conduite pendant plusieurs années au sein d'un groupe réduit de praticiens. L'élite des thérapeutes (amchi) ladakhis constitue le groupe d'observation privilégié. Ces praticiens sont les agents principaux de la redéfinition sociale de cette médecine au Ladakh, au nord-ouest de l'Inde himalayenne. Ils élaborent le discours institutionnel sur la médecine tibétaine dans la région. Ce travail s'intéresse aux relations sociales qui composent ce groupe et aux comportements individuels, guidés par un ensemble variable d'enjeux et de valeurs, afin de comprendre les conditions sociales et économiques d'exercice du pouvoir, ainsi que le rôle des hiérarchies et des réseaux dans le fonctionnement du milieu étudié. Les chapitres sont organisés en cinq sections : les processus de sélection du pouvoir local et les principes de légitimation individuelle et collective, le caractère identitaire de la religion (bouddhisme et islam), le milieu associatif, les usages sociaux de la propriété intellectuelle et enfin, les 'nouveaux guérisseurs' tibétains. La conclusion explicite la notion de frontières donnée en intitulé. La géopolitique du Ladakh, les conquêtes de nouveaux espaces par les amchi, la protection du milieu et des savoirs, les limites entre milieux (rural/urbain, centre/périphérie), l'espace balisé de gestion du conflit, les relations sociales et leurs tensions produisent la médecine des frontières. This thesis offers one of the first, long-term ethnography on a small group of practitioners of Tibetan medicine. The studied group concerns the elite practitioners of Ladakh, Northwestern India. These individuals are an influential minority which produces the institutional narratives on Tibetan medicine in the region and represents Ladakhi amchi in the political arena both at regional and national level. They largely contribute to the social redefinition of Tibetan medicine in the region. This work focuses on the social relations making up this group and on individual behaviour patterns, which, guided by a variable set of issues and values, help questioning the social and economic conditions of power, as well as the role of hierarchies and networks in the milieu studied. The chapters are organized into five sections: the selection process of local power and the principles of individual and collective legitimation, the identity dimension of religion (Buddhism and Islam), the social life of associations, the social uses of intellectual property, and finally, 'new practitioners' of Tibetan medicine. The conclusion elucidates the notion of borders given in the title. The geopolitics of Ladakh, the new territories of the amchi, environmental protection and the preservation of knowledge, the boundaries between areas (rural/urban, center/periphery), the social and spatial dimension of conflict management, social relationships and the tensions they create all go towards producing this medicine at the borders.

The Politics of Therapeutic Evaluation in Asian Medicine (Economic & Political Weekly, 2010)

Reformulating Ingredients: Outlines of a Contemporary Ritual for the Consecration of Medicines in Ladakh (Brill, 2008)

Pordié, L. (2015). Regional conflicts, collective identities and the neutrality of the clinical encounter: A note on tibetan Medicine in Ladakh, In C. Ramble & U. Roesler (eds.). Tibetan and Himalayan Healing. An Anthology for Anthony Aris,

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