Panel: Global Commodification of Asian Traditional Health
Practices
At the dawn of the 21st century, there has been a rapid revival of Asian traditional health
practices in both Asia and beyond. From India to the Philippines, to China and the western
world, Asian traditional health practices and herbal medicines have taken centre stage and
become alternative modes of healings to the well-established cosmopolitan and clinical-based
treatments. This panel will explore the discourses that surround this debate of global
commodification of Asian traditional health practices and herbal medicines and how both the
indigenous population and the outsiders exploit traditional health practices for their own
personal and financial interests.
Paper one
Traditional Medicine and Health Commodification: Impact of
Globalisation on Ayurvedic Medicine
Md Nazrul Islam and K E Kuah-Pearce
Abstract
Over the last two decades, there have been intense debates on whether health is a social
service or product breed by the rapid commodification of the traditional drug industry. At the
same time, within the traditional health medicine sector, there is an emerging trend towards
the consumption of herbal health products as alternative treatments to modern. Ayurveda is
not an exception under this journey while many biggest ayurvedic drug companies in
contemporary India are aggressively marketing various health products and laxatives known
as herbal and natural remedy and have no side effect. The inner question addressed in this
paper is the discrepancy in ayurvedic globalisation under which ayurveda transformed to a
commodity instead of complete way to restore health and enter an era of new consumption
pattern which is paradoxical with its principle. It investigated the areas of patent drugs,
cosmetics and toiletries products, pharmacopoeias, packing and out look of medicine, new
brand and taste, etc. The paper concluded with raise the question that how much has ayurveda
protected its original efficacy and principle if it incorporated under the current form of
globalization?
Paper 2
Commodification of Traditional health Care: People’s Narrative
in Development
Krishna Soman
Abstract
India has a rich heritage of indigenous knowledge and practices of healing and care.
People’s narratives in stratified villages of the state of West Bengal in eastern India throw
light on such knowledge and practices that had guided their lives earlier. Women played a
central role in keeping families and communities healthy at large by providing preventive
and curative care. There was a time when they were the sole manager of childbirth too.
Above all, women were partners with men in popular folk institutions of ‘Baul’ offering
philosophical insights for maintaining balanced, secular and healthy existence in the
composite fabric of the society. They protected and transferred their knowledge and
practices to the following generations by systematically and skillfully integrating these into
the processes of socialization.
Important roles that women played in biological and social reproduction, have been ignored
and marginalized in time. Villages have grown; socio-economic organizations have changed
over the decades. The indigenous health culture -related knowledge and practices, which was
socially knit into people’s daily lives even till mid- 20 Century, has been later threatened by
aggression of ‘development’ and profit making markets. Scattered small initiatives in
reintegrating traditional knowledge and practices into individual, family and community lives
for achieving ‘self-reliance’ now compete with the policy drives for promoting ‘medical
tourism’ associated with utter failure in regulation of the unaccounted and unethical growth of
a range of private institutions. My presentation will focus on all these in context of social
change.
Paper 3
Policy Gaps in the Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Intellectual
Property Regimes : The Case of Medicinal Plants Development in the
Philippines
Dennis B. Batangan
Abstract
Traditional knowledge on medicinal plants includes information, whether documented or
non documented, of the different kinds and functions of plants developed in or known
since ancestral times but subjected to contemporary improvements and adaptations. The
utilization and management of traditional knowledge on medicinal plants follows
customary laws enforced by a collective of elders who exercise leadership in a
community or tribe. These body of knowledge surrounding traditional medicine systems
are based on the group’s historical experience with health and illness situations and
confirmed by their common usage and societal norms. The continuing use and further
development of medicinal plants in the Philippines rests on the basis of this collective
traditional knowledge, the routine use of the said plants and social usage observed by
these communities or tribes on these natural resources. However, the commercial use
and trading of these medicinal plants outside the customary norms and contexts has
appropriated under an intellectual property rights regulatory system these traditional
knowledge with minimal if any compensation provided to the knowledge creators and
owners. The intellectual property system in the Philippines based on patents, industrial
designs, trademarks and copyrights does not offer adequate protection of the
indigenous knowledge systems for medicinal plants and other traditional knowledge
domains. A policy gap exists on how to link the knowledge base of traditional and
indigenous groups to the demands of current regulatory regimes. A sui generis system
on the registration of traditional knowledge and practices on life forms has been
proposed to protect and push for the development of the indigenous knowledge
systems on medicinal plants in the Philippines.
Paper 4
Commodification of Goods and Services for Pregnant Women and New
Mothers
in
Hong
Kong
Caplan Victoria F
Abstract
The
acquisition
and
consumption
of
goods
and
services
for
pregnant women and new mothers in Hong Kong are enmeshed in a local and
global market. "Traditional" practices and products from Hong Kong and
other places are repackaged, playing both on nostalgia and trendiness.
This presentation looks at how goods and services on offer for pregnant
women and new mothers in Hong Kong and how new products, practices, and
ideologies meld with older concepts and practices to forge a 21st century
Hong Kong way of pregnancv and new motherhood.