The Reproduction of Tibetan Culture Through Women's Health

本项目涉及普林斯顿大学文化人类学家的研究，研究在国家指导的汉化现代化条件下，藏族妇女如何利用传统藏药作为文化复兴的手段。具体而言，它探讨了妇女在多大程度上将使用藏药治疗生殖和妇科疾病与努力确保藏族文化在面对中国霸权做法时的生存联系起来。这项工作将侧重于在拉萨一家卫生机构的妇女病房收集六个月的数据，在那里，妇女用于讨论生理、社会、政治和文化不满的习语来自传统的藏族认识论，涉及身体、痛苦的本质以及伦理、生物学和文化身份之间的关系。研究者将采访患者及其家属，了解他们的疾病、治疗方法以及他们认为与其病情相关的其他因素。医生和传统治疗师在治疗病人时将接受采访和观察。该项目将提供有关西藏妇女健康这一相对未知领域的数据，将促进我们对世界重要地区民族振兴与民族医学之间联系的认识。

This project involves the research of a cultural anthropologist from Princeton University, studying how Tibetan women use traditional Tibetan medicine as a means of cultural revitalization under conditions of state-directed Sinicized modernization. Specifically, it explores the extent to which women associate use of Tibetan medicine for reproductive and gynecological disorders with efforts to ensure the survival of Tibetan culture in the face of Chinese hegemonic practices. The work will focus on six months of data collection in the women's ward of a health facility in Lhasa where the idioms used by women for discussing biological, social, political and cultural discontent are drawn from traditional Tibetan epistemologies concerning the body, the nature of suffering, and the relation between ethics, biology, and cultural identity. The investigator will interview patients and families about their diseases, treatments, and other factors they consider relevant to their conditions. Physicians as well as traditional healers will be interviewed and observed as they deal with patients. The project will provide data on this relatively unknown area of women's health in Tibet, will advance our understanding of the links between ethnic revitalization and ethnomedicine in the important area of the world.