Miaw Ler Sim; Long Zhang
Miaw Ler Sim
University of Oxford, Year 1 MSc. candidate in Medical Anthropology
The reeducation, rediscovery and remodeling of Chinese Culture and Philosophy in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM)
Collaboration of East and West medical practices is common and highly encouraged, especially in China. However, there is an invisible power that is lying underneath. It is clear that there is an ongoing tendency to incorporate Western biomedicine theories into the Modern Chinese Medicine. Values and judgments are mainly based on Western Protocols. This affects the evolvement of the whole Chinese Medicine (CM) system and it makes me question the roles of Chinese Cultures and Philosophies (CCP) in CM. I am concerned that over time, the basis of CCP values will be lost in the art of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). I wish to discuss the origins of CCP in TCM (the connections of CCP and TCM), how these develop the basis of TCM (the dynamic motion of this evolution) and during this transformation process, CCP has lost its significance. The impacts of such transformations have to be studied closely for the future development and sustainability of the medical system. Can Modern Chinese Medicine be understood or known as the Traditional Chinese Medicine that have been passed down for three thousand years? This discussion would benefit the current and future practicing Chinese Physicians, TCM researchers and stakeholders, policy makers and TCM academia.
Long Zhang
The University of Hong Kong, Year 2 PhD candidate in Sociology
Pricing Injury and Death: Monetary Compensation in China’s Medical Disputes
Settlement of medical disputes provides ideal cases for us to probe into controversies surrounding pecuniary valuation of the “unevaluable”, like suffering, injury or death. During Maoist China (1950s-1970s), monetary compensation in medical disputes was rare or even prohibited. It was after China’s market reform in the 1980s that economic compensation in medical disputes revived. In contemporary China, the legal procedure for solving medical disputes and deciding monetary compensation is far from complete, while various and often contradictory logics can be found coexist in this area, such as the technical-economic logic, the administrative logic, and the social logic. The main research question for this study is: how is the monetary compensation of injury and death decided in medical disputes when contradictory logics coexist in practice? The more general question is how the monetary valuation of injury and death is constructed institutionally and culturally. Empirical data is collected through ethnographic methods in a hospital in Northern China. This study contributes to the existing literature of legal commensuration and social meaning of money through the China case.