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），一种未知治愈的功能性胃肠道疾病（FGID），已成为日益严重的全球健康问题。这种情况已经在西方（对抗疗法）的设置中进行了深入的研究，但只有有限的账户可以从其他世界地区获得。这样的描述可能会产生新的见解，甚至是新的治疗方式，以解决这个棘手而棘手的问题。该项目以南亚的合作研究为基础，有望为这一主题提供新的线索。印度的环境为肠易激综合征的研究提供了许多挑战：西方医学话语中采用的诊断标准和解释模型并不是无条件适用的，无论社区是遵循对抗疗法还是印度草药治疗方式。出于同样的原因，在当代印度多元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分类（Sperber et al. 2016）。利用当地生物学理论（Lock 1994; Lock & Nguyen2010; Niewöhner & Lock 2018）和感官参与人类学的概念（Nichter 2008），该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，并探索与住院患者疾病叙述相关的社会文化话语。

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.