Medicine, Healing, and Mourning: Cultural Negotiations of Immigrants Under the Western Bio-Medical Gaze

Abstract

The human body is deeply rooted as being a complex entity. "A soul must always find its way back into the rightful body," (Lama, personal communication, December 17th, 2018). For many western doctors, this may mean nothing; however, for those who believe in the natural world, this is their entire existence. This study outlines concepts of the way our bodies, especially an immigrant's body, is negotiated as they enter into the western bio-medical gaze. It analyses how bodies are conceptualized through modernity when dealing with medicine, healing, and dying. The research explores the ramification of health by changes in location as people leave their homeland and are forced to a new lifestyle. There is a clash between allopathic and homeopathic medicine, leaving a gap for those who do not see the efficacy of the other. By highlighting their perceptions on allopathic versus homeopathic medical practices among the Himalayan immigrants in NYC, in addition to analyzing interviews and participant ethnography, we will uncover the cultural apparatus of life, death, and liminality in a time of healing found in cultural rituals.