On the Making of Asian Industrial Medicines

2-4 September 2013, Driebergen, The Netherlands

Panel held during the 5th edition of the International Conference on the Pharmaceutical Life Cycle

Synopsis

For the last two decades, Asian industrial medicines have seen a remarkable growth in both production and consumption in most regions of Asia and globally. This changing landscape is closely linked to the construction of new markets, which, in turn, exert their influence on pharmaceutical manufacturing and production, on marketing strategies, design and on property right protection. In the process, traditional herbal formulations are transformed, sometimes (re)invented, to give rise to a new generation of drugs, marketed for new health and well-being aims. Yet researchers in the field of anthropology, history and Asian Studies, have paid little attention to the modulations of traditional herbal formulations.
This panel aims to fill this void. We will follow the itineraries of individual pharmaceuticals from creation to ingestion, how they accrete or lose constituents, and how these new compounds themselves have agency in the making of therapeutic value, knowledge and practice. In other words, we are interested in the role that objects play in the transformation of Asian medicine. Objects and their users and producers do not live in isolation. Our investigations will therefore focus on their interactions and on the way these interactions are socially mediated in such situations as casual discussions, in the clinic, (specialized or not) shops or through diagnosis and sales on the Internet.
To this purpose, scholars working in China, Tibet, South Korea, The Philippines, Indonesia and India will study the overlapping of both the domains of knowledge and technique/technology and that of the social and political, in an attempt to provide a lucid picture of the region, its pharmaceutical environment and its changing societies.

Participants and talks

The many lives of an Indian medicine: assembling cyavanaprâsh
Marteen Bode (University of Amsterdam)

Samphel norboo: Tibetan jewel pills from palace to metropolis
Calum Blaikie (Cermes3, Paris)

Super Magic Man® -- Changing configurations of masculinity in South Sulawesi in times of HIV/AIDS
Anita Hardon (University of Amsterdam)

From social lives to interactive playing fields: the "pharmaceutical" Artemisinin (qinghaosu) and the "herbal" Artemisia annua L. (qinghao/huanghuahao)
Elisabeth Hsu (University of Oxford)

Joins®: whose right is it to prescribe?
Eunjeong Ma (Pohang University of Science and Technology)

Hangover Free! The invention and social inscription of PartySmart®
Laurent Pordié (CNRS - Cermes3, Paris)

Metaphorical journeys of skin-whiteners in and from the Philippines
Michael Tan (University of the Philippines Diliman, Quezon city)

Download the programme and abstracts

Organizers

Anita Hardon (University of Amsterdam) and Laurent Pordié (CNRS, Cermes3, Paris)

Funding bodies

Jointly funded by the Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development at the University of Amsterdam and the Cermes3 (CNRS/EHESS/Inserm) in Paris.

Venue

'De Horst' in Driebergen, the Netherlands.