Stephan Kloo
Biographic Data
| ID | 145676 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Stephan Kloo |
| GIVEN NAMES | Stephan |
| FAMILY NAME | Kloo |
| SIGNATURE | KLOO S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Austrian Academy of Sciences |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2603-8408 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 25 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Animal Substances in Contemporary Tibetan Medicine
One of the fundamental principles of Tibetan pharmacology is that all substances – correctly understood and used – have medicinal properties. This includes animal parts and products, which, like in other Asian medical traditions, constitute an integral part of Sowa Rigpa’s classical pharmacopoeia. But what about their use in contemporary Tibetan medical/pharmacological practice? How have these practices, most notably regarding animal products, be…
The Pharmaceutical Production of Tibetan Medicines
This photo essay documents the pharmaceutical production process of Tibetan medicine at the Dharamsala Men-Tsee-Khang in India. Tracing Tibetan medicine-making from the pharmacy gate to the clinics, and from the acquisition of medicinal raw materials to the prescription of pills, it offers rare visual and ethnographic insights into the largely invisible core of contemporary Tibetan medicine and its industry. By highlighting the expertise and expe…
The Indian Face of Sowa Rigpa
International audience
Chapter 4 Navigating ‘Modern Science’ and ‘Traditional Culture’
Asian Medical Industries
Introduction. The Indian Face of Sowa Rigpa
Healing at the Periphery
India has long occupied an important place in Tibetan medicine's history and development. However, Indian Himalayan practitioners of Tibetan medicine, or amchi, have largely remained overlooked at the Tibetan medical periphery, despite playing a central social and medical role in their communities. Power and legitimacy, religion and economic development, biomedical encounters and Indian geopolitics all intersect in the work and identities of cont…
Circulation and Governance of Asian Medicine
It is surely one of the paradoxes of medical anthropology that the industrial expansion of Asian medicines—a phenomenon of global scale and relevance by any measure—has coincided with a diminishing
The transnational Sowa Rigpa industry in Asia
This article advances the hypothesis that "traditional" Asian pharmaceutical industries are rapidly growing in size and prominence in contemporary Asia, and identifies a lack of empirical data on the phenomenon. Addressing this gap, the article provides a quantitative outline and analysis of the Sowa Rigpa (Tibetan, Mongolian and Himalayan medicine) pharmaceutical industry in China, India, Mongolia and Bhutan. Using original data gathered through…
Humanitarianism from Below
In this article I explore, for the first time, the relationship between Sowa Rigpa (Tibetan medicine) and global health, tracing "the global" in ethical discourses and pharmaceutical innovation practices of Tibetan medical practitioners. I argue that Sowa Rigpa's engagement with the world and its global health activities outside China can be understood as a form of "humanitarianism from below," while its industrialization in China aligns with glo…
Medicine and Memory in Tibet
The recent emergence of Asian “traditional” medicines as increasingly popular medical, economic, and cultural resources in national and international health care policies has coincided with a renew
The Politics of Preservation and Loss
This article analyzes the history and development of Tibetan medicine in exile from the perspective of the pervasive Tibetan exile narrative of preservation and loss. Through combined ethnographic and historical data, it shows how the preservation of traditional Tibetan medical knowledge in exile entails a process of a fundamental reinvention of its nature, not only rendering it modern but also (re)investing it with considerable hegemonic power. …
The Pharmaceutical Assemblage
Cutting-edge anthropological research on pharmaceuticals aims to trace the connections that link our health and subjectivity, via the drugs we ingest, to contemporary forms of science, governance, and market practice. Yet this research is mostly limited to biomedical pharmaceuticals, ignoring the vast and rapidly growing "traditional" pharmaceutical industry, which connects contemporary forms of culture, capitalism, and politics in arguably even …
The recognition of Sowa Rigpa in India
In 2010, the Government of India officially recognized Tibetan medicine as an 'Indian system of medicine' called 'Sowa Rigpa'. This article documents the processes that led to Sowa Rigpa's recognition, and situates them at the confluence of economic interests and political strategies within a larger historical and cultural context. Recognition emerges here as a twofold process that makes Sowa Rigpa legible to the state while simultaneously facili…
Markets of sorrow, labors of faith. New Orleans in the wake of Katrina by Adams, Vincanne
How Tibetan Medicine in Exile Became a “Medical System”
Tibetan medicine or Sowa Rigpa was largely ignored in classic publications on “Asian medical systems.” This article contends that one important reason for this oversight was that Tibetan medicine had not yet managed to establish itself as a recognizable medical system at that time. This has changed only recently with ongoing political and economic processes through which Tibetan medicine in exile has been transformed, since the 1990s, from a regi…
Humanitarian reason. A moral history of the present, by Fassin, Didier
Arrested histories
The Pharmaceutical Assemblage
Cutting-edge anthropological research on pharmaceuticals aims to trace the connections that link our health and subjectivity, via the drugs we ingest, to contemporary forms of science, governance, and market practice. Yet this research is mostly limited to biomedical pharmaceuticals, ignoring the vast and rapidly growing "traditional" pharmaceutical industry, which connects contemporary forms of culture, capitalism, and politics in arguably even …
The transnational Sowa Rigpa industry in Asia
This article advances the hypothesis that "traditional" Asian pharmaceutical industries are rapidly growing in size and prominence in contemporary Asia, and identifies a lack of empirical data on the phenomenon. Addressing this gap, the article provides a quantitative outline and analysis of the Sowa Rigpa (Tibetan, Mongolian and Himalayan medicine) pharmaceutical industry in China, India, Mongolia and Bhutan. Using original data gathered through…
The Politics of Preservation and Loss
This article analyzes the history and development of Tibetan medicine in exile from the perspective of the pervasive Tibetan exile narrative of preservation and loss. Through combined ethnographic and historical data, it shows how the preservation of traditional Tibetan medical knowledge in exile entails a process of a fundamental reinvention of its nature, not only rendering it modern but also (re)investing it with considerable hegemonic power. …
The recognition of Sowa Rigpa in India
In 2010, the Government of India officially recognized Tibetan medicine as an 'Indian system of medicine' called 'Sowa Rigpa'. This article documents the processes that led to Sowa Rigpa's recognition, and situates them at the confluence of economic interests and political strategies within a larger historical and cultural context. Recognition emerges here as a twofold process that makes Sowa Rigpa legible to the state while simultaneously facili…
Humanitarianism from Below
In this article I explore, for the first time, the relationship between Sowa Rigpa (Tibetan medicine) and global health, tracing "the global" in ethical discourses and pharmaceutical innovation practices of Tibetan medical practitioners. I argue that Sowa Rigpa's engagement with the world and its global health activities outside China can be understood as a form of "humanitarianism from below," while its industrialization in China aligns with glo…
Humanitarian reason. A moral history of the present, by Fassin, Didier
Arrested histories
How Tibetan Medicine in Exile Became a “Medical System”
Tibetan medicine or Sowa Rigpa was largely ignored in classic publications on “Asian medical systems.” This article contends that one important reason for this oversight was that Tibetan medicine had not yet managed to establish itself as a recognizable medical system at that time. This has changed only recently with ongoing political and economic processes through which Tibetan medicine in exile has been transformed, since the 1990s, from a regi…
Markets of sorrow, labors of faith. New Orleans in the wake of Katrina by Adams, Vincanne
The recognition of Sowa Rigpa in India
In 2010, the Government of India officially recognized Tibetan medicine as an 'Indian system of medicine' called 'Sowa Rigpa'. This article documents the processes that led to Sowa Rigpa's recognition, and situates them at the confluence of economic interests and political strategies within a larger historical and cultural context. Recognition emerges here as a twofold process that makes Sowa Rigpa legible to the state while simultaneously facili…
The Politics of Preservation and Loss
This article analyzes the history and development of Tibetan medicine in exile from the perspective of the pervasive Tibetan exile narrative of preservation and loss. Through combined ethnographic and historical data, it shows how the preservation of traditional Tibetan medical knowledge in exile entails a process of a fundamental reinvention of its nature, not only rendering it modern but also (re)investing it with considerable hegemonic power. …
The Pharmaceutical Assemblage
Cutting-edge anthropological research on pharmaceuticals aims to trace the connections that link our health and subjectivity, via the drugs we ingest, to contemporary forms of science, governance, and market practice. Yet this research is mostly limited to biomedical pharmaceuticals, ignoring the vast and rapidly growing "traditional" pharmaceutical industry, which connects contemporary forms of culture, capitalism, and politics in arguably even …
Medicine and Memory in Tibet
The recent emergence of Asian “traditional” medicines as increasingly popular medical, economic, and cultural resources in national and international health care policies has coincided with a renew
Circulation and Governance of Asian Medicine
It is surely one of the paradoxes of medical anthropology that the industrial expansion of Asian medicines—a phenomenon of global scale and relevance by any measure—has coincided with a diminishing
The transnational Sowa Rigpa industry in Asia
This article advances the hypothesis that "traditional" Asian pharmaceutical industries are rapidly growing in size and prominence in contemporary Asia, and identifies a lack of empirical data on the phenomenon. Addressing this gap, the article provides a quantitative outline and analysis of the Sowa Rigpa (Tibetan, Mongolian and Himalayan medicine) pharmaceutical industry in China, India, Mongolia and Bhutan. Using original data gathered through…
Humanitarianism from Below
In this article I explore, for the first time, the relationship between Sowa Rigpa (Tibetan medicine) and global health, tracing "the global" in ethical discourses and pharmaceutical innovation practices of Tibetan medical practitioners. I argue that Sowa Rigpa's engagement with the world and its global health activities outside China can be understood as a form of "humanitarianism from below," while its industrialization in China aligns with glo…
Asian Medical Industries
Introduction. The Indian Face of Sowa Rigpa
Healing at the Periphery
India has long occupied an important place in Tibetan medicine's history and development. However, Indian Himalayan practitioners of Tibetan medicine, or amchi, have largely remained overlooked at the Tibetan medical periphery, despite playing a central social and medical role in their communities. Power and legitimacy, religion and economic development, biomedical encounters and Indian geopolitics all intersect in the work and identities of cont…
The Indian Face of Sowa Rigpa
International audience
Chapter 4 Navigating ‘Modern Science’ and ‘Traditional Culture’
The Pharmaceutical Production of Tibetan Medicines
This photo essay documents the pharmaceutical production process of Tibetan medicine at the Dharamsala Men-Tsee-Khang in India. Tracing Tibetan medicine-making from the pharmacy gate to the clinics, and from the acquisition of medicinal raw materials to the prescription of pills, it offers rare visual and ethnographic insights into the largely invisible core of contemporary Tibetan medicine and its industry. By highlighting the expertise and expe…
Animal Substances in Contemporary Tibetan Medicine
One of the fundamental principles of Tibetan pharmacology is that all substances – correctly understood and used – have medicinal properties. This includes animal parts and products, which, like in other Asian medical traditions, constitute an integral part of Sowa Rigpa’s classical pharmacopoeia. But what about their use in contemporary Tibetan medical/pharmacological practice? How have these practices, most notably regarding animal products, be…
Political science (10 works) · History (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (6 works) · Indian and Buddhist Studies (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Medicine (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · China (5 works)