Assunta Hunter is a long-time herbal medicine practitioner and teacher of herbal medicine who has recently completed a PhD in medical anthropology at the University of Melbourne on the modernisation and professionalization of Thai traditional medicine. Her doctoral research articulates a focus on globalization and knowledge creation in traditional medicine systems in particular the processes of hybridity at play in traditional medicine, which have been accelerated by state intervention and medical tourism.
She is currently working at the University of Melbourne on a large project exploring disability and employment. She has a long-term interest in the direction of the herbal medicine profession and the education of herbal medicine practitioners in Australia.
In this episode of AnthroTalking, we speak to Assunta Hunter about her ethnographic fieldwork in Thailand, her doctoral research, and the struggles anthropologists might experience while conducting fieldwork in Thailand. Hunter tells us about how the community of Thai traditional medicine practitioners have adapted to the changes associated with the modernisation and professionalization of Thai traditional medicine (see references, Hunter 2013). She describes a new breed of practitioners in Thailand, as well as in Australia, who move freely between ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ knowledge. As you will hear in the episode, the so-called ‘post-modern practitioners’ are at the forefront of novel patterns of knowledge creation – in which the state, the institutions of the profession and practitioners contest and cooperate in the creation of authoritative knowledge.
Published on:
February 5, 2016
Created by:
Fredrik Nyman
Key words:
Thailand, Chiang Mai Province, Southeast Asia, traditional medicine, herbal medicine, traditional medicine practitioners, medical anthropology, naturopathy, governmentality, social hierarchies, formality, informality, gender roles, University of Melbourne
Further information:
- Assunta Hunter, profile at the NHAA.
- University of Melbourne, Anthropology and Development Studies.
- University of Melbourne, Gender and Women’s Health Unit.
- AAS 2015 Conference.
References:
- Foucault, Michel (1991) Governmentality. In G. Burchell, C. Gordon & P. Miller (eds.) The Foucault Effect. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
- Hunter, Assunta (2013) Creating Post-Modern Practitioners: State Practice and Thai Traditional Medicine. PhD Diss. Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, University of Melbourne.
- Hunter, Assunta (2015) Moral dimensions of making modern Thai traditional medicine practitioners. Paper presented at the Australian Anthropological Society (AAS) Annual Conference, University of Melbourne, December 1-4, 2015.
- Morris, Rosalind C (2000) In the Place of Origins: Modernity and Its Mediums in Northern Thailand. London: Duke University Press.
- Tsing, Anna L (2005) Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
- Whittaker, Andrea (2015) Thai in Vitro: Gender, Culture and Assisted Reproduction. New York: Berghahn Books.
- Zhan, Mei (2009) Other-Worldly: Making Chinese Medicine through Transnational Frames. Durham: Duke University Press.
Cite as:
Nyman, Fredrik. “Assunta Hunter on her fieldwork in Thailand, and working as a practitioner of herbal medicine” AnthroTalking: Podcasts at Stockholm University’s Department of Social Anthropology, online February 5, 2016, http://www.socant.su.se/english/about-us/anthrotalking/assunta-hunter-on-fieldwork-in-thailand-and-working-as-a-practitioner-of-herbal-medicine-1.268943