The AMS/Paterson Lecture: Becoming Alternative? Modern Transformations of Chinese Medicine in China and in the United States

Abstract

Becoming Alternative offers an overview of the transformations of Chinese medicine at home and abroad since the mid-19th century. After coming into contact with biomedicine, China's indigenous medicine was redefined in terms of national culture and history on the one hand, and a competitive alternative science on the other. Reimagined in terms of scientific syncretism in the PRC, and embraced as a counter-cultural alternative to bio-medicine in the United States, the medicine we call "Chinese" today emerges as a pluralistic system with global reach involving complex accommodations with local medical cultures and institutions both at home and abroad.