Dissertation Research: Reconfiguring Traditional Chinese Medicine: A Comparative Transnational Study in China and the United States

本论文项目是一个文化分析的过程中，中国传统医学（TCM）是改造和改造，通过其融入中国和美国的生物医学主流，本研究探讨跨国背景如何塑造中医配置在特定的适当的科学在日常实践中谈判他们的医疗合法性。 通过分别在上海和旧金山弗朗西斯科的中医社区进行实地考察，并通过突出这两个地方之间的跨地方联系，这个项目既是比较的，也是跨国的。 它将采用参与观察、访谈、统计调查和档案研究的方法，比较上海和旧金山弗朗西斯科各医疗机构的中医结构和实践，并追踪从业人员如何跨越机构和国家边界，建立跨地区社区。 本项目旨在开发一种过程性的、互动的文化模式，它将立刻驱逐中医的原始主义代表，并超越“西方”来分析科学的生产和实践。 在更广泛的层面上，这项研究将阐明在日益跨国化的世界中产生特定形式的知识、身份和社区的过程。

This dissertation project is a cultural analysis of the process by which traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is reinvented and transformed through its integration into biomedical mainstreams in China and the U.S. This study examines how transnational contexts shape the configurations of TCM at specific appropriate science in daily practices to negotiate their medical legitimacy. By conducting fieldwork among TCM communities in Shanghai and in San Francisco respectively, and by foregrounding the translocal nexus between these two locales, this project is both comparative and transnational. It will use participant observation, interviews, statistical surveys and archival research to compare the structure and practice of TCM at various medical institutions in Shanghai and San Francisco, and to trace how practitioners travel across institutional and national boundaries to forge translocal communities. This project aims to develop a processual, interactive model of culture which at once dislodges the primordialist representation of TCM, and looks beyond the `West` to analyze the production and practice of science. At a broader level, the study will shed light on the processes by which specific forms of knowledges, identities, and communities are produced in the increasingly transnational world.