Tashi thought they were his kids. They were his kids. He was the only father they had ever known. He had been their father since the day each of his four children was born. After being recognized as a Convention Refugee in Canada, he applied for permanent residence and listed his wife and children as his “overseas dependents” on his …
Tag Archives: Central Asia
Informality as an analytical category in research on healthcare
In November 2013, the Academic Swiss Caucasus Net (ASCN) and the Interfaculty Institute for Central and Eastern Europe at the University of Fribourg hosted a conference that aimed to “identify and compare forms, functions and meanings of informal structures and practices in Eastern Europe and Central Asia” (SOYUZ list-serv, call for papers). In this essay, I comment on conversations that …
Book review – Sienna Craig’s Healing Elements: Efficacy and the Social Ecologies of Tibetan Medicine
Healing Elements: Efficacy and the Social Ecologies of Tibetan Medicine
University of California Press, 2012
344 pp., US$34.95 paperback
It is a truism that the world we live in today is increasingly interconnected. Yet, when it comes to medicine – and particularly “traditional” or alternative medicine – the tendency is often to delimit its study along …