Rating:
Author: Volker Scheid
ISBN : B00EFVLGWQ
New from $14.55
Format: PDF
Free download Free Download Chinese Medicine in Contemporary China: Plurality and Synthesis (Science and Cultural Theory) [Kindle Edition] from mediafire, rapishare, and mirror link
As a traditional healing art that has established a contemporary global presence, Chinese medicine defies categories and raises many interesting questions. If Chinese medicine is "traditional," why has it not disappeared with the rest of traditional Chinese society? If, as some claim, it is a science, what does that imply about what we call science? What is the secret of Chinese medicine's remarkable adaptability that has allowed it to prosper for more than 2,000 years? In Chinese Medicine in Contemporary China Volker Scheid presents an ethnography of Chinese medicine that seeks to answer these questions, but his ethnography is informed by some atypical approaches.
Scheid, a medical anthropologist and practitioner of Chinese medicine in practice since 1983, has produced an ethnography that accepts plurality as an intrinsic and nonreducible aspect of medical practice. It has been widely noted that a patient visiting ten different practitioners of Chinese medicine may receive ten different prescriptions for the same complaint, yet many of these various treatments may be effective. In attempting to illuminate the plurality in Chinese medical practice, Scheid redefines-and in some cases abandons-traditional anthropological concepts such as tradition, culture, and practice in favor of approaches from disciplines such as science and technology studies, social psychology, and Chinese philosophy. As a result, his book sheds light not only on Chinese medicine but also on the Western academic traditions used to examine it and presents us with new perspectives from which to deliberate the future of Chinese medicine in a global context.
Chinese Medicine in Contemporary China is the product of two decades of research including numerous interviews and case studies. It will appeal to a western academic audience as well as practitioners of Chinese medicine and other interested medical professionals, including those from western biomedicine.
Direct download links available for Free Download Chinese Medicine in Contemporary China: Plurality and Synthesis (Science and Cultural Theory) [Kindle Edition]
- File Size: 2705 KB
- Print Length: 432 pages
- Publisher: Duke University Press Books (May 22, 2002)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00EFVLGWQ
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #686,304 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
Free Download Chinese Medicine in Contemporary China: Plurality and Synthesis
I have had the privilege of studying traditional Chinese medicine in Mainland China. It was interesting that many of the Western practitioners who were with me were scandalized by what they saw as the destruction of traditional medicine by contemporary Chinese doctors. If I can generalize, the Chinese are great pragmatists and for them their medicine - including acupuncture and herbalism - is in a constant state of growth and development. By contrast the Westerners thought that traditional Chinese medicine was an ancient system stuck in amber.
This book highlights all of these points and many others.
The author is a medical anthropologist as well as a practitioner of Chinese medicine who reads Chinese.
What he does is to weave together traditional anthropological concepts with Chinese philosophy, social psychology, science and technology to create a revealing tapestry. Although there is evidence that acupuncture has been in use for millennia, its current form is no more than fifty years old, and owes as much to politics as it does to tradition.
This is the way that Chinese medicine has adapted and synthesized new discoveries and new influences over the centuries. It is now quite normal to find traditional Chinese practitioners who use both traditional diagnosis using the pulse and the tongue, together with X-rays and blood work. A treatment may include not only acupuncture and herbs, but also some conventional Western medicine. This book highlights the ways in which Chinese medicine is not so much a thing as a dynamic process.
The author uses case studies from his own fieldwork in China to examine traditional medicine from a variety of perspectives.