Irritable Bowel Syndrome Through the Lens of Culture and Local Discourse: Sociocultural Investigations from India

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Since the early 2000s, Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), afunctional gastrointestinal disorder (FGID) with no knowncure, has become an increasing global health concern.The condition has been intensely examined in Western(Allopathic) settings, but only limited accounts areavailable from other world areas. Such accounts may yieldfresh insights and even new treatment modalities for thistroublesome and intractable condition. This project, basedon collaborative research in South Asia, promises to shednew light on this topic. The Indian context provides anumber of challenges to IBS research: diagnostic criteriaand explanatory models adopted in Western medicaldiscourse are not unconditionally applicable, whether the communities are following Allopathic or Ayurvedictreatment modalities. By the same token, research in themulticultural context of contemporary India offers scopefor deepening and extending scientific understandings ofgastro-intestinal disorders, which constitute a complexnosological category (Sperber et al. 2016). Drawing ontheories of local biologies (Lock 1994; Lock & Nguyen2010; Niewöhner & Lock 2018) and on concepts fromsensorially engaged anthropology (Nichter 2008), thisPhD project will provide an ethnographic account of IBS inIndia from both Allopathic and Ayurvedic points of view,and explore the sociocultural discourses implicated inpatients' illness narratives.