Local health traditions : plurality and marginality in South Asia

The study of medical pluralism, characterised by the authoritative presence of the State in defining ‘legitimate’ inclusion and exclusion, has long been studied in medical anthropology. However, recent scholarship has begun to question this statist frame. Local Health Traditions extends this discussion by focusing on the ‘marginal’ categories of medicine and healing that range from home remedies and herbal medicine to dais, bone-setters and spiritual healers. These different forms of medicine have recently come to be known as ‘local health traditions’ in the policy texts. Academic scholarship on medical pluralism tends to focus more on ‘systems of medicine’, leaving out local health traditions that fall off the radar of ‘systems, science and state’. Turning the lens upside down, this book places local health traditions at the centre-stage of discussion to extend the debates on medical pluralism. The contributors critically engage with issues of legitimacy and recognition, documentation of traditional medical knowledge, and gender in healing. The book also studies the recent developments in policy literature: while the State has begun to address the need to revitalise local health traditions, market trends for natural, traditional remedies and products are now imposing another set of demands on these traditional practices