Circulating Qi: "Vital Energy" in China and the United States, 1900 to the Present

项目总结 我正在写一本书，追踪过去一百年来气的全球循环 探讨这种全球化的气在当代临床中是如何表现出来的。 我的研究跟踪了当地对气的改造，因为它与中医一起在 二十世纪初，从现代化城市的医生办公室-- 世纪中国，通过日本、韩国和法国研究人员的实验室， 加州新时代大师的表达，最后到慢性疼痛和戒毒诊所 今天定位在美国的中心地带。虽然这些流通是全球性的，但多个- 方向性和多面性，我的两个主要兴趣点是中华人民共和国中国 还有美国。作为一位在中国生活和工作过的中国医学史学者 中国从上世纪80年代中期开始分分合合，我想了解一下中国作为 辩论的结果往往被安排在现代科学和 古老的遗产。与此同时，作为一个在纽约伍德斯托克长大的美国人， 在田纳西州的纳什维尔生活了15年，我强烈地感觉到气已经成为 美国文化。这个项目试图追踪这种适应是如何发生的，以及它的意义。 一些优秀的研究探索了汉语的全球流通和变化 医药。通过使用齐作为焦点，我的项目提供了一种引人注目的方式来联系历史 过程与当代问题；2)通过理论辩论涵盖中医的意义， 实验室实验和临床接触；以及3)检查中医药是如何 不同的当地社区所经历的。 由此产生的专著，我将写给学术界和非学术界的人都能读到- 学术观众，将阐明转变后的古代概念如何仍可用于 患者和从业者理解他们日常人类经历的痛苦和 治愈。通过历史上扎根的探索，该项目突出了 生物医学模式面临着一个由生物医学定义的世界。我的研究希望揭示一个 全球化的气，远远不只是仪器定义的边缘上的一种“假定的”能量 现实，可能反而提供了一种工具，患者和医生通过它来建立联系 对这个世界，对他们自己的身体，对彼此。

PROJECT SUMARY I am writing a book that traces global circulations of qi over the past one hundred years and explores how this globalized qi manifests in contemporary clinical encounters. My research follows local reworkings of qi as it traveled with Chinese medicine around the world in the twentieth century, from the doctor’s offices of modernizing cities in turn-of-the- century China, through the laboratories of Japanese, Korean, and French researchers, to the expressions of California New Age gurus, and finally to chronic pain and detox clinics positioned in the American heartland today. While these circulations are global, multi- directional, and multi-sited, my two main points of interest are the People’s Republic of China and the United States. As a scholar of Chinese medical history who has lived and worked in China on and off since the mid-1980s, I want to understand how qi has changed in China as the result of debates that have often been arranged around the fraught poles of modern science and ancient heritage. At the same time, as an American raised in Woodstock, New York who has lived for fifteen years in Nashville, Tennessee, I strongly sense that qi has become a part of American culture. This project seeks to trace how this adaptation happened and what it means. Several excellent studies have explored the global circulations and transformations of Chinese medicine. By using qi as a focus, my project offers a compelling way to 1) connect historical processes with contemporary issues; 2) encompass TCM’s meaning through theoretical debates, laboratory experiments, and clinical encounters; and 3) examine how Chinese medicine is experienced by diverse local communities. The resulting monograph, which I will write to be accessible to both academic and non- academic audiences, will illuminate how a transformed ancient concept remains available for patients and practitioners to make sense of their everyday human experiences of suffering and healing. Through historically grounded explorations, the project highlights the tensions non- biomedical modalities face in a biomedically defined world. My study hopes to reveal how a globalized qi, far from being a mere “putative” energy on the fringes of an instrument-defined reality, may instead offer a vehicle through which patients and practitioners forge connections to the world, to their own bodies, and to each other.