Medicine – Religion – Spirituality
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Dorothea Lüddeckens, Monika Schrimpf (eds.) Medicine – Religion – Spirituality Religious Studies | Volume 13 Dorothea Lüddeckens, Monika Schrimpf (eds.) Medicine – Religion – Spirituality Global Perspectives on Traditional, Complementary, and Alternative Healing Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Na- tionalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No- Derivatives 4.0 (BY-NC-ND) which means that the text may be used for non-commer- cial purposes, provided credit is given to the author. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ To create an adaptation, translation, or derivative of the original work and for commer- cial use, further permission is required and can be obtained by contacting rights@ transcript-verlag.de Creative Commons license terms for re-use do not apply to any content (such as graphs, figures, photos, excerpts, etc.) not original to the Open Access publication and further permission may be required from the rights holder. The obligation to research and clear permission lies solely with the party re-using the material. © 2018 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld Cover concept: Kordula Röckenhaus, Bielefeld Cover illustration: Hari Prasad Nadig, 2010, Dhanvantari, known as an avatar of Vishnu, is the Hindu god associated with Ayurveda. Photo taken at a Ayurveda expo in Bangalore titled ‘Arogya’. Proofread & Typeset by Mirjam Aeschbach and Julia Swoboda Printed by Majuskel Medienproduktion GmbH, Wetzlar Print-ISBN 978-3-8376-4582-8 PDF-ISBN 978-3-8394-4582-2 https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839445822 Contents Preface and Acknowledgements | 7 Introduction Observing the Entanglement of Medicine, Religion, and Spirituality through the Lens of Differentiation Dorothea Lüddeckens and Monika Schrimpf | 9 Medicalized Healing in East Africa The Separation of Medicine and Religion by Politics and Science Walter Bruchhausen | 23 Medical Discourses and Practices in Contemporary Japanese Religions Monika Schrimpf | 57 Self-fashioning of the Hereditary Siddha Practitioner Semantic Structure and Structuring Conditions Nina Rageth | 91 Ayurveda and Discursive Formations between Religion, Medicine and Embodiment A Case Study from Germany Antony George Pattathu | 133 Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) as a Toolkit for Secular Health-Care The De-differentiation of Religion and Medicine Dorothea Lüddeckens | 167 Crossing Fields Anthroposophical End-Of-Life Care in Switzerland Barbara Zeugin, Dorothea Lüddeckens, Monika Schrimpf | 201 Mapping the Boundaries between Science and Religion Psychology, Psychiatry, and Near-Death Experiences Stephanie Gripentrog | 241 List of Authors | 273 Preface and Acknowledgements Healing is a contested field, and talking about healing from the perspective of the Study of Religion involves many risks. In our experience, studying traditional, complementary, and alternative medicines inevitably leads to ac- cusations of partiality: one is blamed either for taking sides in favor of bio- medicine and against alternative healing systems, or for advocating alterna- tive healing systems without pointing out the alleged risks they imply. In presenting papers on the topic, we have often felt that our audience tended to prick up their ears on hearing what they feared, expecting us to take sides in either promoting or condemning biomedicine or alternative medicine. This experience, which reinforced our desire to approach this topic from an unbi- ased perspective, is one reason why this publication is so important to us. This collection has benefitted from the support of many people. Laura Feldt und Gregory Alles shared our interest in not subjecting any kind of healing system to value judgements, and their comments helped us to im- prove the consistency of our arguments. We are also grateful to Johannes Quack for feedback on our initial drafts. Our sincerest thanks go to Robert Parkin for his linguistic proof-reading; his flexibility, patience, and feeling for language were of invaluable value. Julia Swoboda and Mirjam Aesch- bach undertook the task of formatting and formally proof-reading the manu- script. Our heartfelt thanks go to them both for their academic expertise and their invariable good spirits in having to cope with complex formatting rules. Finally, we thank all of our authors. Some of them revised their papers despite looming deadlines for their PhD theses or the challenges of preg- nancy and parenthood. By happy coincidence, three children were born dur- ing the preparation of this publication. Dorothea Lüddeckens and Monika Schrimpf, Zurich / Tuebingen, July 2018 Introduction Observing the Entanglement of Medicine, Religion, and Spirituality through the Lens of Differentiation Dorothea Lüddeckens and Monika Schrimpf In the history of religions, tasks such as curing bodily ailments, treating the sick, and dealing with dying were often assigned to religious experts. Con- cepts such as the body, illness, and health were anchored in the world views and practices of the respective religious traditions. As Pamela Klassen (2016: 401) writes: “Medical knowledge and techniques have often emerged di- rectly from religious traditions, making the line between these two admit- tedly unstable categories—religion and medicine—particularly hard to draw with any certainty.” In historical contexts, the disentangling of medicine, re- ligion, and spirituality is seemingly impossible. With regard to contemporary societies, one may take Klassen’s observation a step further and ask whether it is at all possible to draw a clear line between “religion” and “medicine.” Research in medical anthropology tends to emphasize that on the emic level, actors often do not distinguish between religion and medicine.1 Besides, de- bates on secularization theory discuss the question of whether and in what ways the functional differentiation of modern societies that is observed in Europe and North America, including the differentiation of religion and ————— 1 In cases of medical pluralism, Krause et al. (2012: 17–18), for example, refer to the work of Murray Last and David Parkin, who argue against the concept of “medical systems” and point out that actors often make use of a variety of medical (and religious) traditions without differentiating between “medical” and “reli- gious” practices and knowledge. 10 | Dorothea Lüddeckens and Monika Schrimpf medicine, can also be claimed for non-European countries and cultural tradi- tions (cp. Wohlrab-Sahr/Burchhardt 2017; for Japan cp. Rots/Teeuwen 2017; Schrimpf 2018). Taking up these reflections, we raise the questions of whether it makes sense to refer to “religion” and “medicine” as two different realms, and whether it is acceptable for etic academic research to make use of concepts (or differentiations) that do not reflect self-perceptions and concepts on the emic level. 1 DOES IT MAKE SENSE TO DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN RELIGION AND MEDICINE? In contrast to the considerations sketched out above, we argue that it is im- portant to maintain the paradigm of differentiating between “religion” and “medicine,” at least in contemporary societies, for the following reasons. 1.1 The Contemporary Differentiation between “Religion” and “Medicine”: A Global Paradigm Social differentiation is a characteristic of modern societies, including the social systems denoted by “religion” and “medicine,” though to different de- grees. In the following, we argue that, thanks to the specific evolution of modern academic medicine (cp. Lüddeckens)2 and the worldwide spread of biomedicine, differentiating “religion” and “medicine” has become a global paradigm. Nevertheless, there are many cases of non-differentiation or of the entangling of religion and medicine. When we talk about the entangling or de-differentiation of “religion” and “medicine”, we are not referring to cases in which religious and medical ac- tors or actions coexist, as, for example, in a hospital where physicians deal with the physical needs of their patients and chaplains deal with their spiritual needs. Nor are we dealing with cases where a physician talks with his or her patient first about an impending operation and afterwards about the patient’s fear of dying. ————— 2 All references without a year designation refer to contributions in this volume. Introduction | 11 Such cases are in line with the global development of social differentia- tion. Our interest is rather directed at practices and concepts that involve medical and religious arguments and aims at the same time, that take medical as well as religious concepts into account, or that deal with both the physical and the transcendent aspects, including transcendent entities, thus pursuing medical and religious goals within one and the same framework. The entangling of “medicine” and “religion” may therefore be observed in cases where religious concepts, such as spiritual development, are guiding principles for medical treatment, as in an anthroposophical hospital (cp. Zeugin et al.), or where, as in Transpersonal Psychology, religious experi- ence is induced on purpose in order to support therapeutic aims (cp. Gripen- trog), to name but two examples. These de-differentiated entanglements can be observed especially at the margins of either “religion” or “medicine,” as we will outline below. Such cases of entanglement rather confirm