Irritable Bowel Syndrome Through the Lens of Culture and Local Discourse: Sociocultural Investigations from India

Since the early 2000s, Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), a
functional gastrointestinal disorder (FGID) with no known
cure, has become an increasing global health concern.
The condition has been intensely examined in Western
(Allopathic) settings, but only limited accounts are
available from other world areas. Such accounts may yield
fresh insights and even new treatment modalities for this
troublesome and intractable condition. This project, based
on collaborative research in South Asia, promises to shed
new light on this topic. The Indian context provides a
number of challenges to IBS research: diagnostic criteria
and explanatory models adopted in Western medical
discourse are not unconditionally applicable, whether the
communities are following Allopathic or Ayurvedic
treatment modalities. By the same token, research in the
multicultural context of contemporary India offers scope
for deepening and extending scientific understandings of
gastro-intestinal disorders, which constitute a complex
nosological category (Sperber et al. 2016). Drawing on
theories of local biologies (Lock 1994; Lock & Nguyen
2010; Niewöhner & Lock 2018) and on concepts from
sensorially engaged anthropology (Nichter 2008), this
PhD project will provide an ethnographic account of IBS in
India from both Allopathic and Ayurvedic points of view,
and explore the sociocultural discourses implicated in
patients' illness narratives.