3. Victoria Sheldon, University of Toronto, Canada.
關鍵詞
humanitarianism; emergent care; medical camps; Sowa Rigpa; Buddhism
摘要
This article examines the circulation of humanitarian ideas, materials, and actions in a non-biomedical and non-Judeo–Christian context: Sowa Rigpa or Tibetan medical camps in India and Nepal. Through these camps, practitioners and patients alike often overtly articulate Sowa Rigpa medicine as part of a broader humanitarian “good” motivated by a Buddhist-inflected ethics of compassion and a moral economy of care, diverging from mainstream public health and conventional humanitarian projects. Three ethnographic case studies demonstrate how micro-political interactions at camps engage with ethical and religious imaginaries. We show how the ordinary ethics of Sowa Rigpa humanitarianism gain distinct political meaning in contrast to non-Tibetan forms of aid, reconfiguring the relationship between Buddhism, essential medicines, moral economies, and politics. While Sowa Rigpa as a medical system operates transnationally, these camps are organized around local logics of emergent care, employing narratives of “charity” and Buddhist compassion when addressing health needs.
目次
Introduction 174 Case Study 1: Medical Camps as an Algebra of Compassion 177 Case Study 2: Medical Camps as a Politics of Religion in Exile 180 Case Study 3: Medical Camps as Slow Humanitarianism at the Margins 183 Between “Local Moral Worlds” and a Global “Politics of Compassion” 187 Conclusion 188 Notes 189 References Cited 190
