Integrating Traditional Medicine

Traditional medicine is gaining increasing positive attention after a long period of being ignored or actively discouraged across much of the world. This resurgence is part of a global shift away from purely biomedical approaches to health and healthcare provision towards more diverse forms. This project aims to contribute to a better understanding of these shifts and their implications by conducting fine-grained anthropological research into the integration of Sowa Rigpa (or Tibetan medicine) into state structures in India, which officially recognized Sowa Rigpa in 2010. This project will be the first study to observe in real- time the early stages of the integration of an Asian medical tradition into legal, institutional, public health and pharmaceutical systems and governance regimes. The project will address the following research questions: How does a formerly marginalized medical tradition gain official legitimacy and become integrated into state structures? What interactions are taking place between representatives of Sowa Rigpa and branches of the Indian state? How are integration processes understood, experienced and reacted to by differently positioned practitioners and groups? These questions will be approached via three distinct yet interlinked domains of enquiry: the association, the clinic and the pharmacy. These correspond to major fields in which Sowa Rigpa is interacting with the Indian state as integration processes play out. Data will be gathered using anthropologys signature methodology of ethnographic fieldwork. The researchers will spend time at key Sowa Rigpa institutions and with a broad range of practitioners and pharmacists, engaging in participant observation, interviews and events. Due to the current COVID-19 situation as well as the fast-moving nature of the topic, field research will be combined with digital ethnography methods, using social media to follow developments and gather reactions to them throughout the project period. Both main researchers involved in the project, Calum Blaikie and Stephan Kloos, have extensive experience conducting research with key organizations and individuals in India, which will facilitate access and data collection. A Junior Postdoctoral Researcher will join the project for the final two years. Overall, this project is uniquely positioned to document integration processes as they actually unfold, to reflect on the various perspectives of those involved, and to trace the impacts of these developments both on Sowa Rigpa and its wider social context. It will make an innovative, relevant, timely and comparative contribution to the anthropological literature concerning Asian medical traditions, while contributing empirically and theoretically to wider debates concerning the present and future of health systems, health-related policy processes, minority-state relations, citizenship and social change.

Project title: Integrating Traditional Medicine: Sowa Rigpa and the State in India Project number: FWF P34010G Duration: 2021-2024 Principal Investigator: Dr. Calum Blaikie Host institution: Institute for Social Anthropology, Austrian Academy of Sciences In 2010, the medical tradition known as Sowa Rigpa (or Tibetan medicine) was officially recognised by the Government of India and started on a journey of integration into national legal, bureaucratic, healthcare, educational, research and industrial systems. This research project was initiated ten years later in order to examine the integration processes underway, guided by the following questions: How does a formerly marginalized medical tradition gain official legitimacy and become integrated into state structures? What interactions are taking place between representatives of Sowa Rigpa and branches of the Indian state? How are integration processes understood, experienced and reacted to by differently positioned practitioners and groups? In search of answers to these questions, the three members of the project team conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork at sites across India between 2021 and 2024. We assessed the evolution of state policies relating to traditional medicine and the herbal health products industry, documented the reactions of Sowa Rigpa representatives to these policies as well as their role in implementing them, and studied the changes actually taking place in the fields of medical education, public healthcare provision, pharmacological research and pharmaceutical production. Through this research the project team was able to document integration processes as they actually unfolded, gather the views of a range of actors concerning them, and reflect on how increasing interaction with state policies is reshaping Sowa Rigpa knowledge, practice, social organization and medicine production in contemporary India. Research data was generated through multi-sited fieldwork (observation and interviews) conducted primarily in Ladakh, Dharamsala, New Delhi, Bangalore and Varanasi. We consulted actors with different backgrounds and viewpoints, ranging from government policymakers and senior staff at major Sowa Rigpa institutions through to college students and village-based practitioners largely excluded from the developments taking place. Our analyses draw upon recent theorizing of the state, policy and governance, institutional dynamics and majority/minority relations, generating valuable empirical insights alongside significant theoretical contributions. The project was groundbreaking because very few social science studies have been able to make fine-grained and real-time observations of the earliest stages in the state integration of Asian medical traditions. Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda, Japanese Kampo and Korean medicine have much longer histories of interaction with state structures, modern science and industrial production, making the case of Sowa Rigpa in India uniquely revealing. Our research findings are being published in monographs, edited volumes and articles in leading academic journals, as well as being presented at conferences and workshops around the world.