Paper short abstract:

Based on WHO documents, this ethnography deals with the institutionalization of the concept of “tradition” as a characteristic of contemporary health systems. The paper aims to show how this concept starts to produce new identities, limits and possibilities for modern medicine and pharmacy.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, we undertake an ethnography based on documents of the World Health Organization (WHO) that deal with the institutionalization of the concept of “tradition” as a characteristic of contemporary medicine and pharmacy. Our interest is focused precisely on the way in which this term has been mobilized within the scope of global health recommendations and, not least, on its effects while being instituted as a therapeutic category. We follow the flow of this concept through physical and digital documents, produced from the organization's headquarters, to regional branches in Africa and Asia, paying attention to how the idea of tradition/traditionality--as an identity and cultural aspect; also geographical and temporal, affective and invented, sometimes very localized but generally more universal--starts to produce new identities, limits and possibilities for modern medicine and pharmacy. We show that new modes of therapeutic legitimation are now validated in the context of global health, where "traditional use" presents itself as a turning point for a new stage in the life and history of medications. Contrary to the path that led to the purification of a drug that was separate from both nature and culture, we identify the hybridization policies inscribed in the documents of the World Health Organization as a new regime of truth instituted in the therapeutic field.