Constructions of Traditional Medicine during Decolonization and the Global Cold War

本研究探讨了20世纪60年代开始的非殖民化期间非洲的土著知识和医疗实践。要使用的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形组织的声音来描述非洲医学知识的特点。目的是解释传统非洲医学在20世纪如何从相对边缘转移到国际卫生关注的中心。这样的转变也发生在中国和印度；然而，如果不是几十个新独立的非洲国家同时做出努力，中国和印度领导人可能会在国际层面孤立地游说支持传统医学。这项研究的结果将以书的形式出版。除了这本书之外，该研究人员还将组织一个关于传统医学和知识的多学科会议，该会议将作为一本杂志的特刊发表。她还计划建立一个有关这些主题的历史研究的网站，并与少数政策智库建立更密切的联系，为他们的政策建议提供更深入的历史分析。本项目将有助于促进对科学史上开始受到更持久关注的三个相互关联的研究领域的学术理解：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形成和裁决关于有效和可接受知识边界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几个领域的研究成果，包括非洲和世界历史、发展研究、环境史、医学和文化人类学以及法律和后殖民研究，从而推进这三个领域。研究人员将系统地探索在二十世纪的过程中，将传统医学构建为一个可行的科学研究和决策类别的法律、学科、政治和经济趋势。由此产生的这本书将通过将传统医学置于非殖民化、民族科学研究的兴起和全球冷战的更广泛背景中来解释传统医学在全球和泛非洲机构中的戏剧性优势。

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.