Transcultural medicine: a multi-sited ethnography on the scientific-industrial networking of Korean medicine.
Through a multi-sited ethnography of three different types of organization--a traditional medical clinic, two laboratories, and a biotech company--this article examines how Korean medicine (KM) scientizes, globalizes, and industrializes its clinical knowledge. By tracing the complex networking process among multiple places, I aim to understand how KM reinvents its knowledge, identity, and boundaries in a global situation. In particular, I pay attention to how this process involves multiple dimensions of power relations, economic interests, and scientific authorities. This article concludes that heterogeneous and unequal encounters between KM, science, and industry lead to simultaneous productions of new culture and power without reducing them to a single logic or center in a global age.
Kim
Jongyoung
J
Department of Sociology, Kyung Hee University, Seoul, South Korea. jykim24@khu.ac.kr
D000884:Anthropology, Cultural; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D007373:Interinstitutional Relations; D007723:Korea; D007753:Laboratories / Q000458:organization & administration*; D008518:Medicine, East Asian Traditional / Q000266:history; D008517:Phytotherapy / Q000266:history; D012577:Schools, Medical