Anthropology & Heritage Studies

THE POWER OF

“MAGIC NEEDLES”

.

TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE IN

POST-CONFLICT SUDAN

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 31, 2021

12-1:30PM  |  ZOOM LINK

For decades, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has been a significant component of China’s medical interventions in Africa. In this talk, I focus on the transmission of TCM to South Sudan and track the unexpected transnational connections of medicine between China and Africa. I pay special attention to pain, which lies at the heart of clinical practice and social life in post-conflict South Sudan. In South Sudanese conceptions, pain is a composite of body and mind, clinical and existential, speakable and unspeakable, social and religious, while also defying linguistic categorization. Despite the multiple non-somatic modalities that define pain and illness for South Sudanese, they are nevertheless drawn to TCM (acupuncture in particular) as a quick fix – a fast-track method for coping with pain. In this process, different agents participate in the production of desires, values, and symbols related with TCM. My talk explores these contradictions and reflects on the nature of ties between China and Africa today.

YIDONG GONG

NEW COLLEGE OF FLORIDA

Yidong Gong is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at New College of Florida, the State of Florida’s designated honors college for the liberal arts. Gong earned his PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Duke University in 2019 and was offered the current position. In AY 2019-20, he was a University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Irvine in the Department of Anthropology.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT PROFESSOR TORRES-ROUFF, CTORRES-ROUFF@UCMERCED.EDU