Registration Link: For HKU members / For non-HKU members
MH Conversations and Connections Series – Lunchtime Seminar
Title: An Ayurvedic Drug For COVID-19? Alternative Medicine and The Politics of Choice in Indian Media
Date: 2 Dec 2024 (Monday)
Time: 12:30 – 1:45 pm HKT
Venue: 3SR-SR4 = Seminar Room 4 (Room 403), 4/F, 3 Sassoon Road
Mode: In-person
Registration Link: For HKU members / For non-HKU members
Abstract:
In June 2020, media outlets in India reported the launch of Coronil – an alleged novel coronavirus treatment based on the principles of an Indian medical tradition of ayurveda. Described as the first ayurvedic drug to “cure” COVID-19 at a time when no biomedical treatment was available, Coronil quickly became the focus of public attention in India. In this talk, I present the findings of a joint research on Coronil discourse based on the analysis of four national English-language newspapers in India. Among other things, our analysis reveals what we call the rhetoric of populist medical pluralism, i.e., the government’s endorsement of an untested drug was justified in terms of the neoliberal economy of “choices” and the Indian people’s “need” for homegrown treatments, thus shifting the responsibility for the health crisis management from the state to the citizens.
Speaker:
Prof Venera R. Khalikova
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
Chinese University of Hong Kong
Prof Venera Khalikova is Assistant Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is a cultural anthropologist researching alternative medicine in India and the transnational migration of South Asians in Hong Kong. Her work has been funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, and the University Grants Committee of Hong Kong, and appeared in Medical Anthropology, Journal of Asian Studies, and Food, Culture & Society, among others.
Discussant:
Dr Anna Iskra
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Centre for Culture and the Mind, University of Copenhagen
Welcome to join us!
Enquiry: Please contact Mr Edison Cheng (mehu@hku.hk).