Paper short abstract:

In the 1950s, anthropologists like M Marriott and R Redfield designed a theory of Indian civilization and urban studies exploring links between local communities across time and space. The paper fathoms its potential in today's fieldwork sites and connexions with theories of modernity and globalisation.

Paper long abstract:

In the 1950s, anthropologists such as McKim Marriott, Robert Redfield, Milton B. Singer or Bernard S. Cohn broke with the anthropological tradition of studying villages or small scale communities in India as isolated entities and designed an innovative theory of Indian civilization and new urban studies. This asked for a much stronger consideration of the links and connections of any given local community accross time, space and minds - with far reaching theoretical and methodological consequences for fieldwork.

This paper will fathom the potential of these seemingly dated approaches in todays translocally and globally entangled fieldwork sites and topics. Can these concepts, which were in their time marginalized by the strong tradition of village studies, be of any theoretical and methodological use today when tackling new challenges for anthropological fieldwork in contemporary India? Do these approaches anticipate much more recent theoretical frameworks?

To address these questions the focus of this paper will be on medical anthropology in India and its changing methodological and theoretical approaches. Are new objects and perspectives of research coming to the fore or are they just gripped in new theoretical terms? What are the research implications against the background of the outlined methodological-theoretical framework? On the basis of my fieldwork data gathered in the small town society of Kalimpong and Darjeeling (West Bengal) I will briefly illustrate how local medical practice of both biomedical doctors and so called "traditional healers" is linked to translocal discourses and draws upon different knowledge systems integrating them in a distinctive form of local modernity. This will allow me to point out connexions between the older theoretical concepts and current theories of modernity and globalisation.