New positioning of ethnomedical knowledge under globalization: a case study from Kerala, India

摘要

This article aims to describe how practitioners of ethnomedicine attempt to transform and improve their ethnomedical knowledge under globalization, through a case study from Kerala, India. In the course of the argument, I attempt to delineate particular characteristics of the ethnomedical knowledge. Recently, ethnomedicines have become popular in the West. Ethnomedical knowledge tends to be displaced from local contexts and transformed into an objectifi ed set of techniques that can be learnt and used anywhere. On the other hand, Western medicine has spread widely in India and, with rapid modernization of life-styles, people nowadays tend to avoid ethnomedicine, which is often slow to take effect and may involve severe restrictions on diet. Under such conditions, local practitioners in Kerala have begun to get together and collectively improve their ethnomedical knowledge. They have started to remove the hereditary boundaries of knowledge and form groups with reliable colleagues to share and improve their ethnomedical knowledge and skills. By sharing their experiential knowledge, they aim to re-create ethnomedicine that is relevant to contemporary contexts. This does not mean, however, that they insist on their intellectual property rights, or that they reveal their knowledge to the public as doctors of Western medicine do. They try to maintain the basis of their unique, coherent and embodied knowledge of ethnomedicine and at the same time transform the knowledge in a fl exible way by introducing new aspects of medical practices in response to the needs of contemporary patients and patients worldwide who want to receive the treatment.