Eric Ivan Karchmer（艾理克）
Position: Assistant Professor
Research Expertise: medical anthropology, science and technology studies, postcolonialism, anthropology of the body, ethnobotany
Profile
Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, Department of Chinese Medicine, BA
Contacts
E-Mail: eikarchmer@ntu.edu.tw
Office: Room 506, Department of Anthropology, Administration Building, Shui-Yuan Campus
TEL: (02)3366-4746
I am a medical anthropologist, whose research focuses on the postcolonial challenges confronting Chinese medicine. My work exams how doctors of Chinese medicine have responded to the social and political challenges of recent decades by incorporating Western medicine into their clinical practice. As part of my fieldwork experience, I spent five years as a student at the Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, giving me a unique perspective on the institutional foundations of contemporary Chinese medicine. I have also written about the early 20th century history of Chinese medicine and collaborated with scholars of Kampo medicine and Korean medicine.
In my new research, I have expanded my work on traditional healing to explore new interests in the anthropology of childhood, the body, and the environment. My current project investigates how Taiwanese families are turning to Chinese medicine to manage new pediatric illnesses that seem to be related to the dangers and uncertainties of modern society – including dietary changes, new social pressures, and environmental risks.
My research is also shaped by my other work. I have many years of experience teaching cultural anthropology and am a co-author of the anthropology textbook, The New Invitation to Anthropology, Fifth Edition. I have also practiced Chinese medicine clinically for more than 20 years, which has profoundly shaped my writing and teaching.
Books
| 2022 | Prescriptions for Virtuosity: The Postcolonial Struggle of Chinese Medicine. New York: Fordham University Press. |
Articles
| 2017 | “The Case of the Suzhou Hospital of National Medicine (1939-1941): War, Medicine, and Eastern Civilization.” East Asian Science, Technology, and Society 11(2): 161-183. |
| 2015 | “Ancient Formulas to Strengthen the Nation: Healing the Modern Chinese Body with The Treatise on Cold Damage,” Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity 8(2): 394-422. |
| 2013 | “The Excitations and Suppressions of the Time: Locating Emotional Disorders in Modern Chinese Medicine.” Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 37(1): 8-29. |
| 2010 | Chinese Medicine in Action: On the Postcoloniality of Medical Practice in China. Medical Anthropology 29(3): 1-27. |
| 2001 | 文化人类学与中医 (Cultural Anthropology and Chinese Medicine). 北京中医药大学学 (The Journal of Beijing University of Chinese Medicine). 6: 4-9. |
Book Chapters
| 2017 | “Double Truths and the Postcolonial Predicament of Chinese Medicine,” in The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Medicine. Miriam Solomon, Jeremy R. Simon, and Harold Kincaid, eds. New York: Routledge. 508-518. |
| 2016 | “History of Chinese Medicine, 1890-2010,” in Modern Chinese Religion II: 1850 – 2015. Vincent Goossaert, Jan Kiely, and John Lagerwey, eds. Leiden: Brill Press. 141-194. |
| 2015 | “Slow Medicine: How Chinese Medicine Became Efficacious Only for Chronic Conditions,” in Historical Epistemology and the Making of Modern Chinese Medicine. Howard Chiang, ed. Manchester: Manchester University Press. 188-216. |
| 2002 | Magic, Science, and Qigong in Contemporary China. Susan Blum and Lionel Jensen (eds,) China Off Center: Mapping the Margins of the Middle Kingdom. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. 311-322. |
Textbooks
| 2023 | The New Invitation to Anthropology, 5th edition. Washington DC: Rowman and Littlefield. （Lassiter, Luke Eric; Karchmer, Eric I.; and Powell, Dana E.合著） |
- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals
- Michel Foucault, The Order of Things
- Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish
- William James, Pragmatism
- Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern
- Bruno Latour, Science in Action
- Claude Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind
- E.E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande
- Edward Said, Orientalism
- Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice
- Judith Farquhar, Knowing Practice
- Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe
- Annemarie Mol, The Body Multiple
- C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins
- Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception
- Tim Ingold, Perceptions of the Environment
- Philippe Descola, Beyond Nature and Culture