Article,
Asian Medicine in America: The Ayurvedic Case
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, (2002)
Abstract
Ayurveda, the classical South Asian medical tradition, was first introduced
to American audiences in the mid-1980s as a holistic alternative
to biomedical orthodoxy. This article argues that transplanted Ayurveda
is shaped not only by aspects of American medical culture, but by
millennial, heterodox elements of American religious culture, such
as the loose cluster of beliefs and practices known as the New Age.
Because New Age Ayurvedic practices occupy the ideological and statutory
middle ground between medicine and metaphysics, they face a unique
professionalizing dilemma: whether to present themselves as healing
religions or as practicing branches of medicine. Drawing on an ethnographic
study of this professionalizing dilemma in legal, clinical and popular
arenas, this article shows that New Age Ayurveda-far from being a
monolith-reveals a wide-ranging plurality of sub-traditions in practice.
Taken together, they suggest multiple modes of reinvention and a
variety of professionalizing routes that Ayurveda follows other than
licensing and institutional credentialization.
