Asian medicine in Germany today: a sociological approach

Not a clash of civilisations, but a silent revolution has taken place in the German and west European health systems: Asian medical concepts have been absorbed into the complementary and alternative sectors of these systems, and have often become more prevalent than traditionally established practices such as homoeopathy, or naturopathy. This is especially true for acupuncture and, to a much lesser degree, for Ayurveda.

From a sociological point of view, these developments firstly form part of developing world society, and secondly form a hybridisation of knowledge. Globalisation has often been conceptualised as a global expansion of US economy, and of Western products such as Coca Cola and MacDonald’s burgers. Since the 1850s, in the field of medicine, Western biomedicine has indeed expanded to become global knowledge. However, Asian medical systems have left their native lands for the West in several waves over the same period. Biomedicine became dominant in most areas of the third world, while Asian practices remained marginalised in the West. World society consists of processes of eastward and westward expansion. While the West remains the focus and the source of developments in biomedicine, acupuncture and Ayurveda look to and are revitalised from the East. In these latter processes, new hybrid forms of Eastern medicine emerge in the West as acupuncture and Ayurveda are interpreted from biomedical perspectives and are taught by and for physicians who have been educated in biomedicine. As complementary forms of therapeutics, they become coordinated with biomedical diagnoses and practices. Parallel, complementary and alternative forms of application can be observed as hybrid forms of medical knowledge and practice arise.

Conclusion

I will outline a research project observing these processes in Germany and in the UK from a comparative perspective, and I will sketch the first results of this project.