Skip to main content

Politics of Vegetaion!

In a previous posting, I talked to some extent about a teacher I had in school who died of breast cancer. She never sought biomedical treatment for her disease. She was afraid. She never tried local/ alternative health care in terms of homeopathy or Ayurveda. She went for the religious healing that did not help her save her life.

People subscribe to different ideologies and practices for their health outcomes. Their reasons are as varied as the ways they choose. But still, to a large extent the biomedical model has come to dominate the most of the world. As this week's readings elaborate more on this, we find out about the Flexner Report.
The Flexner Report (also called Carnegie Foundation Bulletin Number Four) is a book-length study of medical education in the United States and Canada, written by the professional educator Abraham Flexner and published in 1910 under the aegis of the Carnegie Foundation. Many aspects of the present-day American medical profession stem from the Flexner Report and its aftermath. (source)
At some point not too long ago I would not have thought twice about this information. But now the first thing that came to my mind was "Who asked for this study?" and "Whose agendas got pushed forward with this research/ study?" My newly forming critical mind wondered how different is Carnegie Foundation from today's leading institutions such as the JHU CCC which we know does a lot of things without actually doing anything worthy.

It was interesting to read about the politics of phytotherapy and the power of plants that heal people. As Mohan always says, "Nothing is apolitical in this world," and finding the politics of knowledge and power in plants almost amused me as I realized that it is true. Perhaps looing closely we will also be able to find the politics of power in the Mexican folk healers' use of spritual water and other faith based prescriptions to illnesses (such as the experiences of my teacher).

Finally, perhaps the grounds of biomedicine will actually become unstable once new grounds and players emerge in the market for health care, and the politics of knowledge will restructure complexly. Who will emerge as the new dominant health care option? Homeopathy? Spiritual healings? Or will the might of biomedicine simply increase?
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

The whiteness of binaries that erase the Global South: On Communicative Inversions and the invitation to Vijay Prashad in Aotearoa

When I learned through my activist networks that the public intellectual Vijay Prashad was coming to Aotearoa, I was filled with joy. In my early years in the U.S., when learning the basics of the struggle against the fascist forces of Hindutva, I came in conversation with Vijay's work. Two of his critical interventions, the book, The Karma of Brown Folk , and the journal article " The protean forms of Yankee Hindutva " co-authored with Biju Matthew and published in Ethnic and Racial Studies shaped my early activism. These pieces of work are core readings in understanding the workings of Hindutva fascism and how it mobilizes cultural tropes to serve fascist agendas. Much later, I felt overjoyed learning about his West Bengal roots and his actual commitment to the politics of the Left, reflected in the organising of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), a political register that shaped much of my earliest lessons around Global South resistance, collectivization, and orga...
Read more

Zionist hate mongering, the race/terror trope, and the Free Speech Union: Part 1

March 15, 2019. It was a day of terror. Unleashed by a white supremacist far-right terrorist. Driven by hate for brown people. Driven by Islamophobic hate. Earlier in the day, I had come across a hate-based hit piece targeting me, alongside other academics, the University of Auckland academic Professor Nicholas Rowe , Professor Richard Jackson at Otago University, Professor Kevin P Clements at Otago University, Dr. Rose Martin from University of Auckland and Dr. Nigel Parsons at Massey University.  Titled, "More extremists in New Zealand Universities," the article threw in the labels "terror sympathisers" and "extremist views." Written by one David Cumin and hosted on the website of the Israel Institute of New Zealand, the article sought to create outrage that academics critical of Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid are actually employed by universities in New Zealand. Figure 1: The web post written by David Cumin on the site of Israel Institute ...
Read more

Whiteness, NCA, and Distinguished Scholars

In a post made in response to the changes to how my discipline operates made by the Executive Committee of the largest organization of the discipline, the National Communication Association (NCA), one of the editors of a disciplinary journal Rhetoric and Public Affairs (RPA), Professor Martin J. Medhurst, a Distinguished Scholar of the discipline, calls out what he sees as the threat of identity (see below for his full piece published in the journal that he has edited for 20+ years, with 2019 SJR score of 0.27). In what he notes is a threat to the "scholarly merit" of the discipline, Professor Medhurst sets up a caricature of what he calls "identity." In his rhetorical construction of the struggles the NCA has faced over the years to find Distinguished Scholars of colour, he shares with us the facts. So let's look at the facts presented by this rhetor. It turns out, as a member of the Distinguished Scholar community of the NCA, Mr. Medhurst has problems wit...
Read more