Main description:

There is a growing interest in studies that document the relationship between science and medicine - as ideas, practices, technologies and outcomes - across cultural, national, geographic terrain. Tibetan medicine is not only known as a scholarly medical tradition among other Asian medical systems, with many centuries of technological, clinical, and pharmacological innovation; it also survives today as a complex medical resource across many Asian nations - from India and Bhutan to Mongolia, Tibet (TAR) and China, Buryatia - as well as in Western Europe and the Americas. The contributions to this volume explore, in equal measure, the impacts of western science and biomedicine on Tibetan grounds - i.e., among Tibetans across China, the Himalaya and exile communities as well as in relation to globalized Tibetan medicine - and the ways that local practices change how such "science" gets done, and how this continually hybridized medical knowledge is transmitted and put into practice. As such, this volume contributes to explorations into the bi-directional flows of medical knowledge and practice.

Contents:

List of Illustrations

List of Figures and Maps

Acknowledgements

Notes on Transliteration

Notes on Contributors

Introduction

Chapter 1. Medicine in Translation between Science and Religion

Vincanne Adams, Mona Schrempf and Sienna R. Craig

PART I: HISTORIES OF TIBETAN MEDICAL MODERNITIES

Chapter 2. Biomedicine in Tibet at the Edge of Modernity

Alex McKay

Chapter 3. Tibetan Medicine and Russian Modernities

Martin Saxer

PART II: PRODUCING SCIENCE, TRUTH AND MEDICAL MORALITIES

Chapter 4. Navigating 'Modern Science' and 'Traditional Culture': The Dharamsala Men-Tsee-Khang in India

Stefan Kloos

Chapter 5. A Tibetan Way of Science: Revisioning Biomedicine as Tibetan Practice

Vincanne Adams, Rinchen Dhondup and Phuoc Le

Chapter 6. Correlating Biomedical and Tibetan Medical Concepts in Amchi Medical Practice

Barbara Gerke

PART III: THERAPEUTIC RITUALS AND SITUATED CHOICES

Chapter 7. Between Mantra and Syringe: Healing and Health-Seeking Behaviour in Contemporary Amdo

Mona Schrempf

Chapter 8. The Extension of Obstetrics In Ladakh

Kim Gutschow

Chapter 9. From Empowerments to Power Calculations: Notes on Efficacy, Value, and Method

Sienna R. Craig

PART IV: RESEARCH IN TRANSLATION

Chapter 10. Qualitative and Quantitative Research Methodology in Tibetan Medicine: History, Background, and Development of Research in Sowa Rigpa

Mingji Cuomu

Chapter 11. The Four Tantras and the Global Market: Changing Epistemologies of Dra ('bras) versus Cancer

Olaf Czaja

Chapter 12. Re-integrating the Dharmic Perspective in Bio-Behavioural Research of a Tibetan Yoga Intervention (tsalung trukhor) for People with Cancer

M. Alejandro Chaoul

Epilogue

Chapter 13. Towards a Sowa Rigpa Sensibility

Geoffrey Samuel

Index