Doctoral Dissertation Research - Imagining "difference": Preserving culture and practicing science in Ayurvedic research in India

这项博士论文研究由国家科学基金会的科学、技术和社会项目支持，研究了保护印度传统医疗体系的项目。这一保护项目导致了跨文化医学研究，但为确认土著(阿育吠陀)医学实践的权威性设定了现代生物医学参数。印度政府2001年制定的《印度医学体系国家政策》为阿育吠陀在国际上提供了新的合法性条件。该政策适应和适用阿育吠陀科学，以回应医学科学研究中国际问责的要求，同时意识到阿育吠陀医疗系统的国家定位。这项研究汇集了科学技术研究和全球化人类学的工具和概念，以调查三个问题。首先，“保存文化”的国家叙述如何与科学研究协议的国际标准的执行相联系(例如，在美国验证补充和替代医学研究)？其次，两个合作的科学家小组(生物医学和阿育吠陀)如何协商不同的认识论，以开发一部“现代”阿育吠陀药典？最后，阿育吠陀科学家如何理解“跨文化”医学研究，因为他们寻求同时成为全球科学医学界的成员和印度医疗界的正式成员？在这项研究中，使用文本和人种学的方法来探索科学工作，使得我们能够关注后殖民社会中医学遭遇的一个独特阶段。这项研究将重点从阿育吠陀诊所中生物医学知识的整合转移到与药理实验室中的生物医学科学家合作开发阿育吠陀知识。本论文的研究将通过确定实验室作为这种相遇的形成场所，为少数几个持续调查印度两大医学知识体系之间的微观层面相遇的研究增添新的内容。此外，这项研究将把阿育吠陀知识的演变定位为传统医学知识制度化历史上的一个独特时刻，这些传统医学知识通过跨国家和全球范围的合作而得到“保存”。人种学研究模式为这个项目带来的密切观察、参与和描述将不仅分析话语，还将分析可能改变阿育吠陀自己对身体、疾病、健康和康复的方法的科学实践。

This doctoral dissertation research, supported by the Science, Technology & Society program at NSF, examines the project of preserving India's traditional medical system. This preservation project has resulted in inter-cultural medical research, but sets modern biomedical parameters for confirming the authority of indigenous (Ayurvedic) medical practice. The National Policy on Indian Systems of Medicine framed by the Government of India in 2001 produces new terms of legitimacy for Ayurveda at the international level. The policy adapts and appropriates Ayurvedic science in response to demands for international accountability in medical science research, with a simultaneous consciousness to national positioning of the Ayurvedic medical system. This research brings together tools and concepts from science and technology studies and anthropologies of globalization to investigate three questions. First, how does the state narrative of "preserving culture" interface with enforcement of international standards of scientific research protocol (e.g., to validate Complementary and Alternative Medicine research in the US)? Secondly, how do two collaborating groups of scientists (biomedical and Ayurvedic) negotiate diverse epistemologies to develop a "modern" Ayurvedic pharmacopoeia? Finally, how do Ayervedic scientists understand "inter-cultural" medical research as they seek to emerge as members of the global scientific medical community and full-fledged members of the Indian health care community at the same time? The use of textual and ethnographic methods to explore scientific work in this research permits a focus on a unique stage in medical encounters in a postcolonial society. This research shifts the focus beyond the incorporation of biomedical knowledge in Ayurvedic clinics to the collaborative development of Ayurvedic knowledge with biomedical scientists in pharmacological laboratories. This dissertation research will add to the few sustained studies investigating the micro-level encounter between two major systems of medical knowledge in India by identifying the laboratory as the formative locus of this encounter. Additionally, this research will situate the evolution of Ayurvedic knowledge as a unique moment in the history of the institutionalization of traditional medical knowledges that "preserves" by collaborating across national and global margins. The close observation, participation and description that an ethnographic mode of inquiry brings to this project will analyze not only discourses, but also the scientific practices that may transform Ayurveda's own approach to the body, disease, health and healing.