University of Heidelberg

Research Area C focuses on the transfer between Asia and Europe of practices concerning, institutions for, ideas about, and perceptions of health and environment. Practice is the privileged point of access in this Research Area because the processes underlying both health and environment are juxtaposed here with the often pressing need to find a working solution. These observations give plausibility to a hypothesis about the dynamics underlying the massive transfer, exchange, and adaptation of medical and environmental practices and their accompanying concepts and institutions between Asia and Europe.

The exchange of health knowledge between Asia and Europe has been described as extremely asymmetrical: “the West” gave the concepts, institutions and practices of individual and public health with biomedicine at the centre, while “the rest” (including Asia) received. This description and its underlying paradigm have suffered unforeseen complications in recent decades. These have been the result of a cultural revolt among patients in the “West” that led to a strong validation of alternative “Asian” medicines, which in turn had a major impact on their standing in East and South Asia. Even within this circular flow, however, the old asymmetry prevails for the time being because the revalidation of Asian medicines was prompted by patients in the West. At the same time, recent studies in the history of medicine and public health have brought to light the ways in which medical practitioners in Asia and Europe have merged different medical practices of different origins and claims to efficacy in their effort to achieve results. These developments highlight a number of challenges that will also be found in earlier transcultural flows of health and environment related features.

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