still going. Local midwives and community health workers are still benefiting from the training that One Heart has provided in real collaboration with the state and regional health authorities. But One Heart, as a foreign organization, is not working there anymore. Now One Heart is working in a couple of different parts in Nepal. One place is called Dolpo, which is also a culturally Tibetan area, even though it is within the borders of Nepal. It actually leads right up to the border of Tibet. They are also working amongst Tarahumata, indigenous communities in the Copper Canyon in the state of Chihwahwa, Mexico.
What exactly is complementary and alternative medicine? Complementary and Alternative medicine, or CAM, is really a way of talking about different approaches to health and illness, that departs from anything that we might consider conventional western medicine or “biomedicine. CAM therapies include including acupuncture, Chinese herbal medicine, homeopathy, naturopathy, Ayurveda, Tibetan medicine, and many other practices. It is a kind of catchall term that is useful, but only to a certain degree.
FALL 2012
CAM is becoming more and more popular around the world, as people turn to non-conventional or non-biomedical approaches to deal with their health problems. But the idea that you can fit everything that is not conventional biomedicine under one umbrella is a problem, and it is an illustration of the ways that biomedicine – which is an incredibly diverse thing in itself – has essentially more power and authority to dictate what will be considered legitimate forms of care. But CAM as a category also has policy, research and legal implications. For instance, the National Institutes of Health in this country now have a big section that is devoted to testing and evaluating the safety and efficacy of CAM therapies, exploring differing complementary and alternative therapies for problems one might define according to conventional medicine – things like rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, or severe back-pain. Slowly conventional medicine practitioners and researchers are opening up space for things like acupuncture or other forms of therapy to be a part of that healing picture. Still, the NIH and other organizations like it is very much weighted toward the epistemologies, methods, and ways of discerning evidence
that emerges from western science.
Why did you decide to become a cultural anthropologist? Had I not gone to Nepal as an undergraduate, and had I not gotten an opportunity to go back to Nepal after I finished my B.A., I probably would have had a different life trajectory. I may have gone back to Nepal at some point, but I really cannot separate becoming a cultural anthropologist from having a relationship to Nepal and other parts of Asia. That being said, I think the more I studied anthropology, both through field work and classes I had as an undergraduate and in graduate school, the more I came to think about what it means to be human. It was a compelling way to think about the world. That said, while I enjoy being in the department of anthropology and talking to other anthropologists, I also enjoy being the anthropologist in the midst of doctors, development workers, or other environments. This requires me to think about the dynamics between people.
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