Asymmetrical Conversations

Harish Naraindas has taught at the Universities of Delhi, Iowa, Freiburg and Heidelberg. He is currently Associate Professor in the School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Iowa. He has published widely in leading journals on medical tourism and co-edited a special issue of Anthropology and Medicine (April 2011).

“Cultivating the Nile is a fascinating account, which is likely to attract the attention of the growing community of water anthropologists. It also deserves a wide readership within the community of water policy-makers and others working with resource governance. Its detailed descriptions of encounters around water will most certainly resonate with observations from elsewhere, and the ways in which the narrative reveals how water is made in these encounters is a refreshing reminder that water’s materiality matters in its social life.” · Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute“This is a compelling and intellectually satisfying volume that offers important new ethnographic work which, I would argue, revitalizes studies of medical pluralism… an important project by some of the most outstanding and well-known scholars in these areas of study — several of whose names readers will recognize and inspire interest in the volume.” · Murphy Halliburton, City University of New York“…an excellent volume, useful for teaching at undergrad and postgrad level in anthropology, medical anthropology, religious studies and South Asian studies.” · Caroline Osella, SOAS“The articles display a uniformly high level of intellectual skill, and provide a good combination of methodological expertise, basic research, and cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary acumen. I am very impressed.” · Frederick M. Smith, University of Iowa

• Introduction: Entangled EpistemesHarish Naraindas, Johannes Quack & William SaxChapter 1. Medicines of the Imagination: Cultural Phenomenology, Medical Pluralism and the Persistence of Mind-Body DualismLaurence J. KirmayerChapter 2. Porous Dividuals? Complying to a Healing Temple (Balaji) and a Psychiatric Out-patient Department (OPD)Johannes QuackChapter 3. Medical Individualism and the Dividual PersonFrancis ZimmermannChapter 4. My Vaidya and my Gynecologist: Agency, Authority and Risk in Quest of a ChildHarish NaraindasChapter 5. Davaa and Duaa: Negotiating Psychiatry and Ritual Healing of MadnessHelene BasuChapter 6. A Healing Practice in KeralaWilliam Sax and Hari BhaskarChapter 7. Ayurveda in Britain: The Twin Imperatives of Professionalisation and Spiritual SeekingMaya WarrierNotes on Contributors