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)
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,
Regulation Multiple: Pharmaceutical Trajectories and Modes of Control in the ASEAN (Science, Technology and Society, 2018)
The article presents the author's commentary on traditional and alternative medicine, with a focus on their transformation with the progression of modernity and science. Topics include social factors in transforming the epistemology of medicine; medical anthropology; and the effects of globalization on the development of medical techniques and therapies.
Spaces of Connectivity, Shifting Temporality. Enquiries in Transnational Health (European Journal of Transnational Studies, 2013)
Pages |