Suchergebnisse

Abstract
Across the Tibetan ethnographic region, not only marriage but kinship more broadly is formed, maintained and explained in heterogeneous and sometimes contradictory ways. Following studies of marriage, this article takes these myriad ways as forming a continuum of kinship principles and practices that can be foregrounded and backgrounded in different localities and at different times, in ways that both respond to and shape external and internal factors, concerns and forces. The aim of the article is to suggest a more nuanced model of Tibetan kinship and relatedness, in which houses, lineages and lateral kin, as well as assistance and trade networks, are understood in terms of flexibility, pragmatism and potentiality. The inherent flexibility of Tibetan marriage and kinship could be seen as the core organisational principle, forming what I call a kinship of potentiality.

Although spirit possession is generally considered a psychiatric illness, the class of conditions designated as dön (Tib. gdon, "afflictive external influences," often glossed as "spirit affliction") in Tibetan medicine represents a distinctive paradigm for an etiology where physical and mental facets inhere in every illness. This study draws upon ethnographic fieldwork in eastern Tibet to examine two conditions that represent illness presentations at both ends of the dön spectrum: one that maps onto a biomedical etiology of stroke and another that presents in a way similar to schizophrenia. The case studies illuminate the forms of harmful external influences that (1) have physiological and psychological impacts that present as symptoms and (2) contribute to a pathogenesis common to both conditions. Our analysis considers the dual role of cultural affordances and bio-looping in the cultural presentation of the two conditions, as well as how the Tibetan medical tradition draws upon cultural, social, biological, and psychological determinants to understand this class of conditions. We also explore the implications the dön illness category has for biomedically oriented paradigms through the way in which it accounts for cultural models for both diagnosis and treatment of several chronic inflammatory conditions that have significant concomitant mental health presentations.