The value and efficacy of Akha shamanic medicine: exporting anthropological insights

我的研究探索了疗愈仪式的功效现象。在过去的二十年里，仪式如何发挥作用的问题已经成为医学人类学、认知科学、医学哲学和生物医学实践的中心话题。我的博士研究试图通过对阿卡人的土著医学传统进行长期的人种学田野调查来解决这个问题。阿卡人是居住在老挝高原和邻近边境地区的一群不识字的寡居农民。通过避免与低地文化的同化，阿卡人保持了基于万物有灵论、动物祭祀和萨满教的连贯的传统治疗系统。在我的田野工作中，我检查了阿卡治疗实践的全部范围。我通过安慰剂效应科学的视角研究了这些做法，这是一个新兴的研究领域，利用神经科学和心理学工具来测试和理解治疗仪式是如何起作用的。对“安慰剂效应”的了解使我能够对萨满治疗的工作原理做出明智的猜测。相反，我展示了Akha的材料--萨满是如何工作的，以及他们是如何思考疾病和治愈的原因的--可以为我们对治疗效果的理解提供重要的见解。我认为，从安慰剂效应的科学角度来看，阿卡医学哲学以生物医学无法捕捉到的关于治愈本质的一些基本知识--这一主张对仪式人类学、医学哲学和生物医学实践具有强大的影响。ESRC博士后奖学金主要允许我：1。根据我的博士论文提交一份图书提案。这本书将使用关于阿卡医疗系统(以前从未被研究过)的独特人类学材料来阐明哲学、医学史和科学史中的讨论。它将寻求挑战一套在这些领域流行的关于“本土医学”和“安慰剂效应”的广为流传的假设，并证明万物有灵论医学哲学的价值。我希望这本书既能吸引普通大众，也能吸引学术界的读者。2.把我博士论文的最后一章变成一篇理论文章，讨论安慰剂科学和阿卡原住民思想如何为人类学中的“合理性辩论”提供信息，这场辩论涉及对“明显非理性信念”的解释。它将为一个经典的理论问题提供一个新的视角。3.协助在泰国清莱的阿卡大学中心设立关于阿卡传统文化的永久展览。该中心是湄公河上游地区阿卡社会生活的支点，旨在通过学习传统习俗，加强生活在不同国家的阿卡人之间的共同认同感。应馆长邀请，我将在清莱停留两周，为展览增添我在老挝实地考察时收集到的丰富的萨满教经文。每年有数以千计的阿卡人和非阿卡人访问该中心，这保证了这些资源的广泛曝光率和实用性。计划一个为期三年的研究项目，我打算从2021年10月开始进行，条件是在2020年10月之前获得惠康、英国学院或玛丽·居里夫人奖学金，我正在申请。该项目将解决“医学上无法解释的症状和安慰剂效应”的现象。这一后ESRC奖学金将允许我进一步的理论探索，朝着从人类学过渡到心灵哲学和医学人文学科的目标，并获得一个永久的学术职位。为了实现这些目标，我将在2021年春季在哈佛医学院安慰剂研究项目中度过三个月，在那里我将接受进一步的指导和培训，以发展认知科学和医学人文领域的进一步研究技能。

My research explores the phenomenon of the efficacy of healing rituals. Over the past two decades, the question of how ritual works has emerged as central topic at the intersection of medical anthropology, cognitive science, philosophy of medicine and biomedical practice. My PhD research has sought to tackle this question by conducting long-term ethnographic fieldwork on the indigenous medical tradition of the Akha, a group of non-literate swidden farmers living in highland Laos and neighbouring borderlands. By shunning assimilation with lowland cultures, the Akha have maintained a coherent traditional healing system, based on animism, animal sacrifice, and shamanism. Throughout my fieldwork I examined the whole gamut of Akha therapeutic practices. I investigated these practices through the lens of the science of 'placebo effects', a burgeoning field of study that employs neuroscientific and psychological tools to test and understand how healing rituals work. Knowledge of 'placebo effects' enabled me to make informed guesses about the workings of shamanic healing. Conversely, I showed that the Akha material - how shamans work and how they think about the causes of illness and healing - could offer major insights into our understanding of therapeutic efficacy. I argued that, when looked from the perspective of the science of placebo effect, Akha medical philosophy captures something fundamental about the nature of healing, in a way that biomedicine does not - a claim that holds powerful implications for the anthropology of ritual, philosophy of medicine and biomedical practice. The ESRC postdoctoral fellowship will primarily allow me to:1. Submit a book proposal based on my PhD dissertation. The book will use unique anthropological material on the Akha medical system (which has never been studied before) to illuminate discussions in philosophy and history of medicine and science. It will seek to challenge a set of widespread assumptions about 'indigenous medicine' and 'placebo effects' that are popular in these fields, and to vindicate the value of animistic medical philosophies. I expect the book to appeal to the general public as well as to academic audiences. 2. Turn the final chapter of my PhD thesis into a theoretical article on how placebo science and Akha indigenous thought inform the 'rationality debate' in anthropology, which deals with the interpretation of 'apparently irrational beliefs'. It will offer a new perspective on a classic theoretical problem. 3. Contribute to the installation of a permanent exhibition on Akha traditional culture at the Akha University centre in Chiang Rai, Thailand. This centre - the fulcrum of Akha social life in the Upper Mekong region - aims at strengthening a sense of common identity among Akha people living across countries through the learning of traditional customs. As solicited by its director, I will spend 2 weeks in Chiang Rai to add to the exhibition a rich selection of shamanic texts that I collected in Laos during my fieldwork. The centre is visited by thousands of Akha and non-Akha people annually, which guarantees a great exposure and usefulness of these resources.4. Plan a three-year research project that I intend to conduct from October 2021, conditional on obtaining either a Wellcome, British Academy or Marie Curie Fellowship, for which I am applying by October 2020. The project will deal with the phenomena of 'medically unexplained symptoms and 'placebo effects'. This post-ESRC Fellowship will allow me to further my theoretical explorations, toward the goal of transitioning from anthropology to philosophy of mind and the medical humanities, and obtaining a permanent academic post. To work towards these goals, I will spend three months in Spring 2021 at the Harvard Medical School Program for Placebo Studies, where I will receive further mentorship and train to develop further research skills in cognitive science and the medical humanities.