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3 Map of Tibetan areas: Dö Ngari, Bar (Tsang-Ü) and Me Do-Kham (Amdo and Kham) Source: Tibet Map Institute
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2005. This dissertation argues that natural-kind classifications need to be contextualized within the particular socio-cultural milieu in which they occur; the present work is therefore framed as an ethnography of plant classifications. The linguistic and ethnic context of medicinal plant classifications i...
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... Significant in terms of symbolic power, the Tibetan medical classic The Four Tantras (T: Rgyud bshi) is now recognized on the Chinese National Archives Documentary Heritage list (Zhongguo dang'an wenxian yichan guojia ji minglu 中国档案文献遗产国家级名录). Since Tibetan medicine, along with other traditions such as Mongolian and Dai medicine, is an ethnically marked knowledge system (Glover 2005), state encouragement and support of the institution of Tibetan medicine is a demonstration of the state's support of the Tibetan cultural world, and the state's larger agenda of a "Harmonious Society." This has long been a selling point of state provisioning for the relatively (now) apolitical institution of Tibetan medicine in the PRC. ...
... Law and Salick (2005) have also hypothesized that the phenotypes of some heavily utilized plants, such as the Himalayan snow lotus, Saussurea laniceps, have been affected by harvesting preferences. 4 Ethnographic evidence based on my own research and that of colleagues over the course of a decade (Glover 2005;Law and Salick 2006;Ma et al. 2011;Saxer 2013;Kloos 2017) indicates that collectors and practitioners of Tibetan medicine agree there are decreases in the availability of certain substances (herbal and animal products)-and there is general agreement as to which resources are decreasing. Research conducted in 2008 by Ma Jianzhong of the Yunnan Academy of Forestry and colleagues in the Khawakarpo (NW Yunnan) region note that 26% (37 out of 144 species) of important Tibetan medicinal plants that grow in the region were identified by local practitioners as "endangered" (Ma et al. 2011). ...
... 6 Martin Saxer (2013: 105-106) reported that in 2009 only about 10% of the research efforts at the Mentsikhang were devoted to cultivation research. 7 The discussion of correlation between scientific (mainly Linnaean) classification and "non-scientific" classification is a broad topic of interest in ethnobiology (Berlin 1992;Ellen and Reason 1979) that I discuss more fully in other publications (Glover 2005(Glover , 2018. Simply put, at certain levels of a taxonomy there are some strong correspondences (although never 100% equivalence) between the Linnaean system and non-Linnaean systems, while at other levels there are vast divergences. ...
I discuss the long-standing practice of ingredient substitution in traditional Tibetan medicine as an adaptive resource management strategy that has enabled resilience in the larger socio-ecological world of medicinal resources, cultural knowledge, and ecological stewardship. Given that there are increasing pressures on and threats to the natural resources utilized in Tibetan (and other) traditional medicines, this flexible strategy should be supported and further accommodated in the growing industry of medicine production. Current industrialized pharmaceutical standardization suffers from a rigidity that partially threatens a sustainable resource management strategy. The theoretical orientation I utilize draws from Resilience Theory literature and discusses adaptive cycles, panarchy, and rigidity traps in the sphere of traditional Tibetan medical knowledge, medicine production, and resource management.
... With this piece, I propose an approach to classification that is based on a historical orientation to classification systems, but one that is also strongly grounded in contemporary ethnography and the contemporary usage of a classificatory system among a particular group of people. This approach has been largely shaped by the work of Ellen and Reason (1979) and their emphasis on social context and is an expansion and new interpretation of previous work of mine on similar topic (Glover 2005(Glover , 2010. Rather than thinking of classification systems as relatively asynchronic and static (or, one might prefer, the term stable) representations of the natural world, the orientation I propose asks that we consider classificatory systems diachronically, as reflections of history and subject to change. ...
... Classifications cannot be effectively understood in isolation outside of socio-cultural-eco-political events (Ellen 1993;Ellen and Reason 1979;Glover 2005). Thus, in this multi-ethnic (but nominally Tibetan) place, the act of naming and categorizing within a subject even as "innocuous" as materia medica can be read as a political, social, and/or cultural act. ...
... in the Tibetan tradition) for the majority of materia medica and for many of the specific categories examined here. I have elsewhere discussed (Glover 2005:112-147) a form of code switching at work in the communications between myself and Rgyalthang doctors, where selective use of Tibetan in Mandarin-dominant conversations may function as a marker of ethnic identity and a symbol of ethnic pride. ...
The present work offers a renewed perspective on natural-kind classification in the field of ethnobiology, one that focuses on analyzing higher-order classifications as a form of narrative. By examining changes in classification of materia medica in three main medical/pharmacological texts from three time periods of the Tibetan medicine tradition, we see an overarching shift in classification from a focus on medical efficacy to one on material substance and morphology, thus suggesting influence from pre-twenty-first century western, Linnaean science. The work then links this historical narrative to the complexities of classification of materia medica among contemporary doctors of Tibetan medicine in the People's Republic of China, who utilize several classificatory schemata. The work encourages continued research in the area of diachronic classification, particularly in terms of what can be gleaned about cultural, political, and social changes in a tradition.
... Contemporary Tibetan language texts published in China began to use the term sowa rigpa but in ways that qualified this term in some cases as overtly Buddhist (bstan 'gyur nang gi so ba rig pa; Pha khol 1989) or overtly Tibetan (bod gyi gso rig; Kunchok Gyaltsen et al. 2007; bod lugs gso rig; Jampa Trinlé 2008). In cases where Tibetan language titles are translated, they are glossed as 'Tibetan medicine' or 'medicine of Tibet' (Xizang yiyao) in English and Chinese (Glover 2005). Conversely, Chinese publications in English use titles such as '''Chinese Tibetan medicine" or "Tibetan medicine of China", always educating the reader about the correct framework of interpretation' in political terms (Saxer 2013, 19; emphasis added). ...
Sowa Rigpa is generally translated as 'the science of healing' and often used synonymously for 'Tibetan medicine'. Historically, Sowa Rigpa can be considered a borrowed term from Sanskrit, accompanied by an adopted sense of 'science', which initially signified all forms of medicine known to the Tibetan world, regardless of their place of origin. Over the centuries, Sowa Rigpa became linked to local, indigenous, and 'enskilled' practices; later, to nationalist political sensibilities; and of late to cultural belonging. The term evokes territoriality, claims to ownership of knowledge, concerns over sustaining national identities, and considerations about how place-based healing practices and material resources relate to the globalizing ideas about traditional Asian medicines. Textual and ethnographic analyses and interviews with practitioners from China, India, and Nepal show how Sowa Rigpa exists at once as a marker of shared intellectual and cultural histories and forms of medical practice and as a label for a globally circulating medical system with distinct interpretations. Looking at Sowa Rigpa as operating in de-and reterritorialized global spaces makes visible how, why, and to what end modernity forgets (Connerton 2009), thereby allowing for broader conclusions applicable to other medical contexts.
