Multiplicities in a Medical System: Examining the Changing Nature of Ayurvedic Practices and Products in India and the UK

AYUR aims to examine and compare the changing nature of forms and practices of Ayurveda (a traditional Indian medical system) in

different socio-political and cultural contexts, at local-national-global levels. While in India Ayurveda is getting active state support as

an indigenous and traditional medical system, it is seen as complementary and orientalist medicine-informed by spiritualism and

ancient medicine in the UK and other European countries (Cant 2020). AYUR will compare and contrast the changing forms and

practices of Ayurveda that are driven by the ideologies of market, religion and nationalism in India and the UK. The aim is to see how

these ideologies influence consumers' health choices and service providers' practices. With a comparative perspective and multi-sited ethnography, the study will examine its changes in local, national and global contexts.

AYUR will take an interdisciplinary and comparative approach drawing particularly on sociological and anthropological/historical theories.

By examining Ayurveda in different locations, the aim is to analyse the merger of medicine, wellness and preventive care and how this

merger creates a commodity called Ayurveda. AYUR will conduct ethnographies (participant-observation and in-depth interviews,

examine promotional materials) of Ayurvedic wellness Centres to examine the similarities and differences between the centres and

the variations at the local- national-global contexts in terms of their mission, approaches and promotional strategies. By focusing on

these factors, AYUR will contribute in developing a deep reimagining of the anthropological understandings of health, illness and medicine in local-national-global contexts.