Love of Plants: Comparative Botany and Local Worlds of Healing

Herbalist healers in Southwest China talk enthusiastically about climbing into the mountains to gather medicinal plants. Their love of local herbal medicines has much in common with botanizing in history and in many parts of the world. This talk considers love of plants as both a global and a local phenomenon and as an occasion for sometimes conflictual encounters in China.

Judith Farquhar is Max Palevsky Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Chicago. Her previous work has focused on traditional medicine and everyday health in China. She is currently co-authoring, with Lili Lai of Peking University, a book tentatively entitled Gathering Medicines in the Mountains: Nation, Body, and Knowledge in China’s Ethnic South. Lili Lai is an Associate Professor in Anthropology in the Institute of Medical Humanities at Peking University. She received her PhD in Cultural Anthropology from UNC-CH in 2009.