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

自21世纪初以来，肠易激综合征（IBS），一种功能性胃肠道疾病（FGID），目前尚无治愈方法，已成为日益严重的全球性健康问题。西方（对抗疗法）对这种疾病进行了深入研究，但世界其他地区的报道有限。这样的解释可能会产生新的见解，甚至是新的治疗方法，以治疗这种棘手的疾病。该项目基于南亚的合作研究，有望为这一主题提供新的思路。印度的情况下，IBS研究提供了一系列的挑战：诊断标准和解释模型采用西方medicaldiscourse不是无条件适用的，无论社区是以下对抗疗法或阿育吠陀治疗方式。出于同样的原因，当代印度文化背景下的研究为深化和扩展对胃肠道疾病的科学理解提供了空间，胃肠道疾病构成了一个复杂的疾病分类（Sperber et al. 2016）。根据当地生物学的理论（Lock 1994; Lock & Nguyen 2010; Niewöhner & Lock 2018）和感官参与人类学的概念（Nichter 2008），这个博士项目将从对抗疗法和阿育吠陀的角度提供印度IBS的民族志描述，并探索患者疾病叙述中涉及的社会文化话语。

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.