Constructions of Traditional Medicine during Decolonization and the Global Cold War

这项研究探讨了非洲在20世纪60年代开始的非殖民化期间的土著知识和医疗实践。其中一种方法是通过非洲科学家、政治家、领导人、机构和世界卫生组织等伞式组织的声音来描述非洲的医学知识。其目的是解释传统非洲医学如何在二十世纪从国际卫生关注的相对边缘转移到中心。中国和印度也在发生这种转变;然而，如果不是几十个新独立的非洲国家同时努力，中国和印度领导人可能会孤立地在国际一级游说支持传统医学。这项研究的结果将作为一本书出版。除了这本书之外，研究人员还将组织一次关于传统医学和知识的多学科会议，该会议将作为一份期刊的特刊出版。她还计划建立一个有关这些主题的历史研究的网站，并与少数政策智囊团建立更紧密的联系，为他们的政策建议提供更深入的历史分析。技术摘要本项目将有助于促进学术界对三个相互关联的研究领域的理解，这些领域已经开始在科学史上受到更持续的关注：非殖民化及其对国家批准的研究的影响、科学家在定义和编纂传统医学方面的作用以及国际机构和法律在塑造和裁定关于有效和可接受知识界限的全球辩论方面的作用。该项目将利用与科学和技术研究交叉的若干领域的研究成果，包括非洲和世界历史、发展研究、环境历史、医学和文化人类学以及法律的和后殖民研究，从而推动这三个领域的发展。研究人员将系统地探讨法律的，学科，政治和经济的趋势，在二十世纪的过程中，建设传统医学作为一个可行的科学研究和决策类别。由此产生的书将解释传统医学在全球和泛非机构中的巨大优势，将其置于非殖民化，民族科学研究的兴起和全球冷战的更广泛背景下。

General Audience Summary This research explores indigenous knowledge and medical practice in Africa during decolonization, which began in the 1960s. One methodology to be used is to characterize African medical knowledge through the voices of African scientists, politicians, leaders, institutions, and the umbrella organizations such as the World Health Organization. The goal is to explain the ways in which traditional African medicine shifted from the relative periphery to the center of international health concerns during the twentieth century. Such shifts were also taking place in China and India; yet had it not been for the simultaneous efforts within dozens of newly independent African countries, Chinese and Indian leaders might have been lobbying in support of traditional medicine at the international level in isolation. The results of this research are to be published as a book. In addition to the book, the researcher will organize a multidisciplinary conference on traditional medicine and knowledge that will be published as a special issue of a journal. She also plans to develop a website relating historical research on these subjects, and to forge closer ties with a small number of policy think-tanks to provide deeper historical analysis to their policy recommendations.Technical Summary This project will serve to advance scholarly understanding of three interrelated research areas that have begun to receive more sustained attention in the history of science: decolonization and its effects on state-sanctioned research, the role of scientists in defining and codifying traditional medicine, and the role of international institutions and the law in shaping and adjudicating global debates about the boundaries of valid and acceptable knowledge. The project will advance these three areas by bringing to bear findings from several fields that intersect with science and technology studies including African and world history, development studies, environmental history, medical and cultural anthropology, and legal and post-colonial studies. The researcher will systematically explore the legal, disciplinary, political, and economic trends during the course of the twentieth century that constructed traditional medicine as a viable category of scientific research and policy-making. The resulting book will explain the dramatic ascendency of traditional medicine within global and pan-African institutions by situating it in the wider context of decolonization, the rise of ethno-scientific research, and the global Cold War.