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Accepted Paper:

Questions of cultural genocide and the intellectual property of western herbal medicine  
Tass Holmes (University of Melbourne)

Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses research findings about ongoing reliance on folk herbal medicine among poor consumers. Challenges to the intellectual property of western herbal medicine and its heritage provide a moral framing of biomedical norms.

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses anthropological research findings about complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in Australia, in light of questions around the intellectual property of Western Herbal Medicine and the difficult issue of 'cultural genocide'. Herbal medicine or folk medicine, is a leading branch of CAM, with a long, colourful history. The knowledge base of herbal medicine was partially attenuated during 13th-17th centuries, due to the impact of the black plague in Europe and the fearful 'witch-burning' frenzy of the subsequent Reformation era. Recent challenges to the time-honoured status of herbal medicine have occurred due to new ideologies and dominant political alliances established concurrently with the development of biomedicine, and through the uptake of complementary medicines by 'integrative medicine' doctors.

The historical position and evolving standing of herbal medicine in relation to biomedicine, invites critique of this process of social change as an aspect of a sweeping cultural imperialism or 'deep colonisation', verging on cultural genocide. The marginalisation of herbal medicine is bolstered by a moral framing of policy directives, within an enclosing capitalist social structure.

Against this dramatic background, ethnographic research in a rural Victorian community revealed frequent consumption of self-provided complementary and alternative medicines among poorer consumers. Interviewees chose self-prescribed folk herbal medicine as an effective, economic means to manage their own health when unable to afford private-sector practitioner consultations. There was evidence of the persistence of grass-roots use of traditional herbal medicine, and of the holistic, nature-focused and often staunchly resistant philosophical outlook that informs it.

Panel Med03
Moral dimensions of health, illness, and healing in a globalised modernity
  Session 1