Taught by Dr. Francesca BRAY, UC Santa Barbara, Winter 1997 term
This lecture course will examine the conceptual systems of Chinese learned medicine, set in the context of the other understandings of the body, of sickness and of healing that co- exist in Chinese as in any other culture. The latter part of the course will focus on the relationship between Chinese and Western medicine, as it has evolved in the course of the twentieth century, and will discuss the role of "alternative medicines" in contemporary society.
Readings to be purchased by all students:
Ted Kaptchuk, The Web that has no Weaver: Understanding Chinese Medicine, Congdon and Weed, New York, 1983 (available at UCSB Bookstore)
Course Reader, available at Kinko's in Isla Vista (for list of readings, see below)
Students are expected to prepare for each lecture by reading the prescribed text or texts beforehand so that they can follow the lecture and participate actively in class discussion. There will be a mid-term counting for one-third of the total grade and a final counting for two-thirds. Both exams will consist of several short questions (to be answered within a paragraph), and a choice of essays. The essay questions will be distributed beforehand. Medical or other formal certification will be required for anyone unable to take the exams, who will then be required to write a paper under exam conditions as a make-up; in the interests of equity there can be no exceptions to this rule.
Tue 7 January: Introduction - medicine in China in the late twentieth century: concepts and perspectives.
Thu 9 January: Historical and anthropological perspectives on medicine and the body. Readings 1, 2.
Tue 14 January: Ways of seeing - the issue of medical knowledge. Film: Bill Moyers on qi
Readings 3, 4.
Thu 16 January: Traditional Chinese cosmology Readings: 1 and Kaptchuk ch. 1
Tue 21 January: Chinese bodies: (i) processual physiology. Readings: Kaptchuk Web, chapters 2, 3 and 4.
Thu 23 January: Chinese bodies; (ii) reproduction and growth. Reading 5.
Tue 28 January: Chinese bodies (iii) the concept of "disorder", bing, and the question of "somatization". Reading 6, and Kaptchuk ch's 5, 6.
Thu 30 January: Chinese bodies (iv) therapies of TCM. Reading 7, and Kaptchuk ch. 8.
Tue 4 February: Explanatory models: Dr Chen and his patients. Film: To Taste a Hundred Herbs by Carma Hinton.
Thu 6 February: Discussion of film and of concept of EMs Reading 8.
Tue 11 February: MID-TERM
Thu 13 Feb: Spiritual healing. Film: The initiation kut of a Korean shaman, Laurel Kendall and Diana S. Lee
Readings 9 and 10.
Tue 18 Feb: How holistic and how traditional is TCM? Readings 1, 7 and 11.
Thu 20 Feb: The early impact of the West: missionaries, medical schools and the democratic politics of health reform. Readings 12 and 13.
Tue 25 Feb: "Standing on two feet" and the ideology of indepence: a dual health system in the PRC and the professionalization of medicine. Reading 14.
Thu 27 Feb: Population policy and birth control. Reading 15.
Tue 4 March: New health profiles in China: where does the credit lie? Readings 12 and 14.
Thu 6 March: Making choices in a pluralist system: EMs and economics. Reading 16.
Tue 11 March: Post-1979 revivalism in TCM: the re-enchantment of the Chinese body? Readings 17 and 18.
Thu 13 March: REVISION SESSION
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Some important dates
Outline of Chinese cosmology
Map of contemporary China
1: Francesca Bray: "Chinese medicine", in W.F. Bynum and Roy Porter (eds), Companion Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine, vol. I: 728-54, Routledge, London and New York, 1993.
2: Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margaret Lock: "The mindful body: a prolegomenon to future work in medical anthropology", Med. Anth. Quarterly, 1989: 6-41.
3: Londa Scheibinger: "Skeletons in the closet: the first illustrations of the female skeleton in eighteenth-century anatomy", in Catherine Gallagher and Thomas Laqueur (eds), The Making of the Modern Body, California, 1987: 42-82.
4: Horace Miner: "Body ritual among the Nacerima", in J. Spradely and M. Rynkiewich (eds), The Nacerima, Little, Brown & Co, Boston, 1975 (1st published 1956).
5: Charlotte Furth: "Concepts of pregnancy, childbirth and infancy", J.Asian Studies 46, 1 (Feb 1987): 7-35.
6: Thomas Ots: "The angry liver, the anxious heart and the melancholy spleen: the phenomenology of perceptions in Chinese culture", Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 14 (1990): 21-58.
7: Judith Farquhar: "Time and text", in Charles Leslie and Allan Young (eds): Paths to Asian Medical Knowledge, California, 1992: 62-73.
8: Arthur Kleinman: "Core clinical functions and explanatory models", Patients and Healers 71-118.
9. Arthur Kleinman: "Sacred folk healer-client relationships", Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture, California, 1980: 203-58.
10: Laurel Kendall: "Divine connections: the mansin and her clients", Shamans, Housewives and Other Restless Spirits, Hawaii, 1985: 54-86.
11. Ilsa Veith (tr): The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine, California, 1987: 115-31.
12. C.C. Chen: Medicine in Rural China: A Personal Account, California 1989: 9-56.
13. Elisabeth Hsu: "The reception of Western medicine in China: examples from Yunnan", in P. Petitjean et al (eds), Science and Empires, Kluwer, Amsterdam 1992: 89-101.
14: Francesca Bray, "The Chinese experience", forthcoming in JV Pickstone and Roger Cooter (eds), Medicine in the Twentieth Century, Harwood Academic Publishers.
15: Susan Greenhalgh, "Controlling births and bodies in village China", American Ethnologist 21, 1 (1994): 3-30.
16: Judith Farquhar, "Market magic: getting rich and getting personal in medicine after Mao", American Ethnologist 23, 2 (1996)239-57.
17: "East cures West" etc, Far Eastern Economic Review, 21 Oct 1993, 36-41.
18: Ute Engelhardt: "Movement and tranquility in modern qigong", unpublished paper presented at the 6th International Conference on the History of Chinese Science, Cambridge, 1990.
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