asian medicine 9 (2014) 49–76 brill.com/asme Pervious Drugs Making the Pharmaceutical Object in Techno-Ayurveda Laurent Pordié National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) Research Unit on Science, Medicine, Health & Society (Cermes3), Paris [email protected] Abstract What makes it possible for ayurvedic pharmaceutical objects to come into being? To answer this question, this paper takes an ontological route in line with local epistemolo- gies, in which the objectness of the thing is itself taken as quite porous and susceptible to circumstances. This approach has much in common with science and technology studies: objects acquire meaning in a specific context, itself embedded in a relational network at a specific point in time and space. Here too, objects are unstable, tran- sient and circumstantial. This has serious consequences since the connections around objects question, even destabilise, the very idea of objectivity. This article examines what is omitted in the discussions and practices on objectivity in technologically driven ayurvedic drug discovery and manufacturing. It discusses innovation processes within and beyond the lab and the way in which pharmaceutical objects absorb ideas, episte- mologies, materials, or even policies. These considerations will provide a useful meth- odological framework to appreciate the kind of uncertainties and heterodoxies that characterise these therapeutic products. Keywords objects – innovation – absorption – pharmaceuticals – ayurvedic industry Introduction Social sciences studies on the encounters between biomedical science and healing traditions find it hard to escape the rhetoric of scientific hegemony and © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2�15 | doi 10.1163/15734218-12341292Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 09:42:03AM via free access 50 Pordié resistance,1 adaptation2 and, consequently, the analysis of these encounters in terms of domination or subordination.3 The fact that science, knowledge, and (political) power are deeply intertwined in practice has led to a remark- able number of works from both historians and anthropologists that highlight these asymmetries from colonial times to the present4 and the way that domi- nant expressions of power in the medical field have been vernacularised5 or domesticated.6 In most cases, local epistemologies and practices are seen to be suffering from a kind of violence that takes place when a domain of knowl- edge such as Ayurveda is recast or redefined in biomedical terms. Indeed, the categories of biomedicine tend to be imposed on other forms of knowledge. Postcolonial and subaltern studies have played a significant role in framing such ‘epistemic violence’,7 while at the same time freezing unequal relations of power over time. However, as the sites of political and economic power are historically rearranged, the dynamic nature of global asymmetries must be acknowledged. The rise of today’s ‘transition economies’, such as China, has dramatically modified the world scenario. To a certain extent, a reshuffling of asymmetries is also noticeable in the health field. Indian national policies, for that matter, are geared towards turning the country into a global healthcare destination by fostering the medical travel industry,8 by encouraging the devel- opment of biotechnologies9 and pharmaceutical production.10 Some Indian companies involved in the international wellness industry challenge taken- for-granted economic assumptions, and go as far as delocalising medicinal oil and cosmetic production from India to Australia or the UK.11 Contrary to the widespread use of asymmetry in postcolonial studies to describe relatively sta- ble inequalities of power, asymmetry in this paper will instead be viewed as an important driving force behind human agency. In this way, the contemporary reordering of global asymmetries is a transformative agent in healthcare. As a reaction to the fact that Science and Technology Studies (STS) have until now focused on the ways in which cultural values, everyday practices, and 1 Bala (ed.) 2001; Pannikar 2002. 2 Landy 1974; McMillen 2004. 3 Arnold 1993; Khan 2006. 4 Adams 2002; Cleetus 2012; Halliburton 2011; Sujatha and Abraham 2009. 5 Mukharji 2011. 6 Pordié 2008a. 7 Spivak 1998. See also Nandy (ed.) 1988. 8 Crooks et al. 2011; Pordié 2013; Turner 2007. 9 Bharadwaj and Glasner 2009. 10 Lögfren 2012. 11 Pordié 2011. asianDownloaded medicine from Brill.com09/27/20219 (2014) 49–76 09:42:03AM via free access Pervious Drugs 51 forms of subjectivity in the West have been transformed by scientific and tech- nological developments over the past few centuries, a recent body of literature has situated STS in different social and cultural environments and in this light examines the relationship between techno-scientific knowledge and postco- lonial orders.12 Known as postcolonial science studies, this endeavour clearly shows that the material discussed in STS is relevant to other contexts, such as Asia. However, this subgenre remains largely embedded in issues of hegemony, power, and domination. This is a welcome addition to the study of science and technology which has never really been driven by such issues, nor does it take much interest in ‘dispossession’,13 but there are options for the practice of STS in non-Western countries other than those inspired by postcolonial studies. By examining the advent of science and technology in ayurvedic pharmacy, this paper takes such a route. It is centred on what makes it possible for global pharmaceutical objects to come into being. I shall start with a provocative reconciliation: science and technology studies and Asian worldviews, as found in Buddhist scholasticism and vari- ous branches of Hinduism, share a similar stance on objects. ‘All objects are without self-substance’, writes Daisetz Teitarō Suzuki,14 underscoring the illu- sionary nature of the phenomenal reality that was significantly developed in Buddhism. The objectness of the thing (la choséité) is itself always in question and always ephemeral. A beginner’s version of an otherwise highly elaborate and complex subject in both Buddhist and Hindu traditions would qualify this absence of self-substance as emptiness (śūnyatā in Sanskrit)—the object is ‘empty’ in itself and, concomitantly, only exists through an array of relation- ships to other things. STS scholars, on the other hand, have insisted on the fact that objects acquire meaning in a specific context, itself embedded in a relational network at a specific point in space and time.15 These objects are bounded to their environment because it is this environment and the practices that take place within it that ultimately define the object.16 This assertion sug- gests that objects-by-themselves can also be seen as ‘empty’. They are context- specific; the qualities, the usages, the functions, the relations/associations, the locations, and of course the perception of a particular object, are unstable and 12 Anderson 2002; Harding 1998; Philip et al. 2012; Seth 2009. 13 Law 1991. 14 Suzuki 1998, p. 168. 15 Latour 2005; Law 2002; Law and Hassard (eds) 1999. 16 For other examples on the context-specificity of objects stemming from social anthropol- ogy, see Appadurai 1986, as well as classical studies on gift exchanges, e.g. Godelier 1996 and Mauss 1950. asian medicine 9 (2014) 49–76 Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 09:42:03AM via free access 52 Pordié circumstantial. The materiality of an object is imperative and crucial but it does not suffice in making the object what it is. Of course, a medicine is a concrete, palpable thing with real material effects, and there is no point ques- tioning this. This paper does not intend to overemphasise fluidity to the point where any tangible thing would disappear, but rather to highlight pharmaceu- tical objects as variable entities. This has serious consequences. The fluidity of the object challenges the very idea of objectivity. Because objectivity is of paramount importance in all attempts at understanding in the medical/pharmaceutical realm, it may be appropriate to examine what is meant by objectivity in situations that con- verge in material formations—from the body structure to its physiological functioning or from individual medicinal substances to industrial pharma- ceutical compounds. No room remains to account for subjectivity or ‘non- measurable stuff’, and even less the idea that the material formation under scrutiny is fluid, changing and, ultimately, ‘empty’. Take, for example, clinical research in pharmaceutical research and development (R&D). Not only is the production of scientific facts based on material assemblages, measurements, dosages, and observations, it also ‘literally “screams” the conclusion to which they lead with undisputed authority’.17 Thus trying to reach some form of objective truth naturally fails to draw attention to whatever is omitted in the discussion—notably, the importance of the unplanned, the unthought-of, or the hidden. Attempts at objectivity are therefore as much an ethos—bringing in its wake habits, choices, modes of decision-making, and the like—as an epistemology.18 And when this applies to objects such as drugs—considering their context-specificity, their instability, and their transient character—the situation is rendered all the more complex. This situation is not avoided in the contemporary invention of drugs in Ayurveda. The aim of this paper is to examine what is overlooked in the dis- cussions and practices concerning objectivity in the ayurvedic pharmaceutical industry.