Women in Health Innovation Spotlight: Judith B. Farquhar
Judith Farquhar is currently the Max Palevsky Professor of Anthropology and in the College, Emerita, at the University of Chicago. Trained as a medical anthropologist, Farquhar’s research focuses on traditional Chinese medicine and its social and cultural contexts. She authored Knowing Practice: The Clinical Encounter of Chinese Medicine (1994), which examines the theory and practice of traditional medicine in modern China, as well as five other books, the most recent being A Way of Life: Things, Thought and Action in Chinese Medicine (2020).
She was Chair of the Anthropology Department at the University of North Carolina and the University of Chicago. She served as the faculty director of the UChicago Center in Beijing for more than three years. She has done extensive fieldwork for her research in China and maintains scholarly exchanges with researchers in China.
1. How did your interest in traditional Chinese medicine and alternative medicine come about?
In my childhood, I often visited the Smithsonian Museum’s Freer Gallery and read Chinese classical literature in translation. Arthur W. Hummel, a renowned sinologist whom I knew when he was in his 80s, shared his books with me; he could see that I wanted to expand my perspective beyond my little rural world. In my 20s I worked at the National Institutes of Health for 10 years, where I learned key research skills that have continued to help me today. I had other mentors there who urged me to pursue anthropology and China as areas of study.
2. How has your understanding of and perspective on Traditional Chinese Medicine evolved over the years? What would our readers benefit from knowing about alternative medicines and the traditional practices they come from?
In my early research, I saw Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) as a very intellectual field (and I had many allies in this). Even then, though, I was pushed toward close attention to practice in clinics and classrooms. I first focused on the intellectual aspects of TCM while studying in Guangzhou, China, but later developed a deeper appreciation for the practicality and applicability to life in this field of practice.
I wanted to break out of the restrictive category of “medicine” and look at how people of all kinds lived healthy (or less healthy) lives. My book, Appetites: Food and Sex in Post-Socialist China, was really about the little passions of everyday life for ordinary people. Then there was Ten Thousand Things, which was about wellness techniques. I wanted these books to speak to readers who didn’t care about the history and anthropology of medicine but just cared about living a good life. After more recent research with rural ethnic healers in China’s southwest, I began thinking a lot about how East Asian medicines are profoundly empirical. They put the direct experience of sufferers and healers at the center of their practice. This is the central focus of TCM and what relates it to “non-Western” medicines in Asia and the world.
3. What do you think our readers would benefit from knowing about alternative medicines and the traditional practices they come from?
Those who are involved with traditional medicine therapies learn how to listen to their bodies and trust their direct experience, both doctors and patients. TCM involves understanding the nature of a patient’s symptoms and finding patterns that lead to understanding which therapeutics to use. For example, while TCM may not directly help treat cancer in a patient, it can still alleviate the symptoms and aid with the side effects of chemotherapy. Some illnesses respond very well to this empirical approach and others may need to be treated with the technological non-experiential methods of biomedical surgery, chemical medicines, advanced imaging, biochemical analysis, etc.
4. How do you see health innovation and technological advancement aiding in the integration of Western medicine and alternative/complementary medicine?
Medical system integration is a complex issue being addressed daily in institutions all over China. TCM practitioners find many ways to use biomedical technology in their clinical work, and scholars are beginning to appreciate the creativity and analytical insights of these experienced doctors. In some ways, though, I believe integration happens most smoothly through patients and their lives. In all kinds of medicine in China, patients tend to maintain control over the therapeutic systems they use. From a US point of view, one could call this a “lack of trust” in medical practitioners, but you could also think of this as a culture of personal control over the 生老病死 (birth, aging, ailing, and dying) process. “It’s my life, my body, I’ll decide on the basis of my experience what’s good for me.”
5. Could you share a moment during your fieldwork in China that shaped your understanding of the culture or medicine in some way?
In 1988, during a second-long period of fieldwork, I began to follow the work of Dr. Dong at his neighborhood clinic in Shandong. He was well-trained in TCM and thoughtful about addressing his patients’ problems using herbal medicines. I was interested that he often advised his middle-aged women patients, “Don’t get angry.” This was practical advice, I began to realize. Dr. Dong knew his patients, and their difficult lives, and he said “Getting sick from rage won’t solve any of their problems.” I was so impressed with this doctor’s humility and sensitivity to the personal experience of each patient.
6. How would you advise young students who are interested in learning about worlds that are fundamentally different from theirs?
This question is not only for future anthropologists, or only for future academics. I like to think I have influenced the next generation of leaders and thinkers in many fields through my teaching, at UNC, the University of Chicago, and in China. My advice would be to read critically, travel and do fieldwork, listen to everyone around you, even those you may not understand, and collaborate with those who live nearer to the worlds you want to understand. Above all, teach.
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