SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Calum Blaikie is a postdoctoral researcher at the ISA. His work explores the interface of medical, pharmaceutical, economic, political and environmental anthropology, primarily concerning Sowa Rigpa (Tibetan medicine) in Himalayan India and Nepal. After gaining his PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Kent (UK), his research has focused on the sourcing, production, circulation and regulation of Tibetan medicines; shifts in the way Sowa Rigpa is taught, practiced and legitimized; and the integration of Sowa Rigpa practitioners into public healthcare. He is co-editor (with Stephan Kloos) of a volume entitled Asian Medical Industries: Contemporary Perspectives on Traditional Pharmaceuticals (2022, Routledge), which examines the emergent dynamics of traditional pharmaceutical industries in China, India, Japan, Mongolia and Nepal. He is currently leading the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) project Integrating Traditional Medicine: Sowa Rigpa and the State in India, focusing on Sowa Rigpa institutions as contested sites of political representation and for the negotiation of state–ethnic minority relations. He has published extensively in leading journals such as Current Anthropology, Social Science & Medicine, Anthropology & Medicine, East Asian Science, Technology & Society, Asian Medicine, and Culture, Medicine & Psychiatry.
MAIN RESEARCH AREAS
- Sowa Rigpa (Tibetan medicine) in Himalayan India and Nepal
- Anthropology of pharmaceuticals – production, circulation and governance
- Traditional medicine, public healthcare and the politics of integration
- Anthropology of the state, state-ethnic minority relations, political representation
- Building craft traditions in Tibet and the Himalayas
PROJECTS (LEADER)
PROJECTS (COLLABORATION)
- Craft and craft traditions in Tibetan Architecture (Innovationsfonds “Forschung, Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft”, ÖAW). Project Leader – Dr. Hubert Feiglstorfer
Selected Publications
Selected Publications
- Kloos, Stephan and Calum Blaikie (eds.), 2022 (in press). Asian Medical Industries: Contemporary Perspectives on Traditional Pharmaceuticals. Abingdon: Routledge.
- Blaikie, Calum and Sienna Craig. 2022 (in press). ‘Making Tibetan Medicine in Nepal: Industrial Aspirations, Cooperative Relations, and the Limits of Production’. In Stephan Kloos and Calum Blaikie (eds.) Asian Medical Industries: Contemporary Perspectives on Traditional Pharmaceuticals, Abingdon: Routledge.
- Blaikie, C. 2022 (in press). ‘Conclusion: Assembling Asian Pharmaceuticals’. In Stephan Kloos and Calum Blaikie (eds.) Asian Medical Industries: Contemporary Perspectives on Traditional Pharmaceuticals, Abingdon: Routledge.
- Blaikie, C. 2022 (in press). ‘Where there is No Amchi: Tibetan Medicine and Rural-urban Migration amongst Nomadic Pastoralists’. In L. Pordié and S. Kloos (eds.) Healing at the Periphery: Ethnographies ofTibetan Medicine in India, Durham: Duke University Press.
- Feiglstorfer, Hubert and Calum Blaikie (eds.). Forthcoming. Building Craft Traditions in Tibet and the Himalayas. Vienna: OEAW Verlag.
- Kloos, Stephan, Harilal Madhavan, Tawni Tidwell, Calum Blaikie, and Mingji Cuomu, 2019. ‘The Transnational Sowa Rigpa Industry in Asia: New Perspectives on an Emerging Economy’. Social Science & Medicine 245. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2019.112617
- Blaikie, Calum. 2016. ‘Positioning Sowa Rigpa in India: Coalition and Antagonism in the Quest for Recognition’. Medicine, Anthropology, Theory 3(2): 50-86. https://doi.org/10.17157/mat.3.2.352
- Blaikie, Calum. 2015. ‘Wish-fulfilling Jewel Pills: Tibetan Medicines from Exclusivity to Ubiquity’. Anthropology & Medicine 22 (1): 7-22. https://doi.org/10.1080/13648470.2015.1004504
- Blaikie, Calum, Sienna Craig, Theresia Hofer, and Barbara Gerke. 2015. ‘Co-Producing Efficacious Medicines: Collaborative Ethnography with Tibetan Medicine Practitioners in Kathmandu, Nepal’. Current Anthropology 56 (2): 178-204. https://doi.org/10.1086/680464
- Blaikie, Calum. 2013. ‘Currents of Tradition in Sowa Rigpa Pharmacy’. East Asian Science, Technology and Society 7: 425-451. DOI: 10.1215/18752160-2332223