Transformations in Asian Healthcare: Commercialization, Institutions, and Identities

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel Proposal Application

Abstract

This panel looks at recent healthcare transformations in Asia on multiple levels. These transformations include changes in medical systems and institutions, in health practices, and also in the identities that medical systems represent. Biomedicine is often representative of modernity and since colonial times there have been global and national pressures for countries to reform their healthcare systems along the lines of biomedicine. Although various forms of biomedicine have been incorporated into most national health systems, these forms intersect with traditional and indigenous medical practices, which have not disappeared but continue to play an important role in healthcare across Asia. The practices and identities of multiple forms of healthcare are related to their commercialization, state support, ethnic and religious identities, and global health agendas. Faruk Shah examines the indigenization of biomedicine in the local landscape of healthcare in rural Bangladesh. Karen McNamara looks at how the pharmaceutical industry and health institutions play a role in the creation, overlap, and contestation of the boundaries between different categories of traditional medicine in Bangladesh. Kira Schmidt Stiedenroth explores the representation of Unani medicine in India as a unified "system of medicine" in some contexts even though its heterogeneous practices are an intrinsic characteristic of its practice. Por Heong-Hong investigates how Traditional Chinese Medicine groups in Malaysia negotiate ideas about ethnic identity and professionalization in their responses to state and WHO policies. This panel broadens understandings of healthcare by looking beyond national contexts to reveal the connections and discontinuities in healthcare across Asia.

Area of Study

• Interarea-Border Crossing-Diaspora

Session Organizer

• Karen McNamara, Sweet Briar College

Chair

• Karen McNamara, Sweet Briar College

Individual Presentations

• Modernity and the Indigenization of Biomedicine in Rural Bangladesh - Md Faruk Shah, University of Auckland

• Boundaries in Motion: Shifting Categories of Traditional Medicine in Bangladesh - Karen McNamara, Sweet Briar College

• Between Professional Singularity and Standardization: Unani Medicine in Contemporary India - Kira Schmidt Stiedenroth, Heidelberg University

• Traditional Chinese Medicines in Motion and the Dual Narratives of Ethnic Culture Preservation and Professionalization in Malaysia - Heong Hong Por, Universiti Sains Malaysia