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Mary M. Cameron - Three Fruits, Inbunden

Inbunden, Engelska, 2019

Three Fruits

Nepali Ayurvedic Doctors on Health, Nature, and Social Change

Av Mary M. Cameron

Del i serien Anthropology of Well-Being: Individual, Community, Society

1274 kr

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Beskrivning
Mary M. Cameron first encountered an Ayurvedic medical practice in remote, western Nepal in 1978. In Three Fruits, Cameron traces Ayurvedic medical practices from those village healers to the professionally trained doctors in the Kathmandu Valley. An intimate portrayal of Ayurvedic doctors in Nepal during a period of political unrest and social change, Three Fruits connects the doctors’ care for Nepal’s valued medicinal plants to the boundless joy of health they desire for their patients. Combining ethnography with history and Indian philosophy, this detailed study weaves the elegant theory of tridosa (three humors) and the popular medicine trifala (three fruits) into the narrative accounts of doctors’ multi-sited practice. Aware of rising global alternative medicine and environmental movements, the doctors speak to their relevance for Ayurveda and sustainable, integrated, and culturally meaningful plural medicine in Nepal. This book is recommended for scholars of anthropology, sociology, Asian studies, history, philosophy, ethnobotany, public health, and environmental studies.
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Mary M. Cameron is professor of anthropology at Florida Atlantic University.

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Cameron focuses on observations and interviews she carried out between 1997 and 2012 with eight Nepali Ayurveda doctors, including five women. She presents Ayurveda (“knowledge of life”) as a plant-based, person-centered, holistic body of theory and practice that interconnects diet, daily routine, lifestyle, social milieu, mental attitude, and environment with bodily, sensorial, mental, and spiritual health. According to one of the interviewees, “plants can heal humans because both are microcosms of the same biosocial world." The “three fruits” of the title refer to a common Ayurvedic preparation, made from three varieties of trees that grow in Nepal, widely used for digestive problems and as a strengthening tonic. Cameron emphasizes that Ayurveda is accessible to ordinary people in Nepal, and according to the World Health Organization, “75 percent of the population use traditional medicine, mainly that based upon the Ayurvedic system." Ironically, political and economic threats to Ayurveda from supporters of allopathic medicine have enhanced the opportunity of women to engage in professional medicine within Ayurvedic institutions. In addition the conservation of medicinal plants is a valuable bridge between the interests of so-called “traditional” medicine and the environmental consciousness and well-being of modern society.Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty.

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