Gerke, Barbara et al.: Crafting Potency: Sowa Rigpa Artisanship across the Himalayas, Heidelberg: Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing, 2026. https://doi.org/10.11588/hasp.1494
Barbara Gerke , Jan M. A. van der Valk , Tawni L. Tidwell , Calum Blaikie
Crafting Potency
Sowa Rigpa Artisanship across the Himalayas
Crafting Potency investigates the intricate interweaving of knowledge, practice, and materials through which potency is sculpted in Sowa Rigpa (Tibetan medicine). Informed by Tibetan medical literature and extensive fieldwork with practitioners (amchis) from Ladakh, Dharamsala, and Kathmandu, the authors explore how potency is understood and manipulated in the making of multi-ingredient medicines. Taking inspiration from Tim Ingold’s ecologically attuned phenomenology and Pamela Smith’s concept of “artisanal epistemologies,” potency is presented as efficacy-in-becoming—a fluid capacity sculpted and layered through skilled artisanship, ritual, and environment, rather than a fixed property of stable substances. Highlighting the deep immersion of amchis in their social, ecological, technical, and spiritual lifeworlds—and exploring what changes when knowledge is transmitted through institutional rather than lineage-based training—the book contributes nuanced practice-based perspectives to the anthropology of craft and the history of science.
Barbara Gerke (MSc, DPhil, University of Oxford), works across the disciplines of medical and social anthropology and Tibetan studies. She is the Principal Investigator (PI) of the Austrian Science Fund research projects "Potent Substances in Sowa Rigpa and Buddhist Rituals" (2018–2024) and "Pandemic Narratives of Tibet and the Himalayas" (2022–2026) at the University of Vienna. She has published widely on Sowa Rigpa and is the author of Taming the Poisonous: Mercury, Toxicity, and Safety in Tibetan Medical Practice (2021, Heidelberg University Publishing) and Long Lives and Untimely Deaths: Life-Span Concepts and Longevity Practices among Tibetans in the Darjeeling Hills, India (2012, Brill).
Jan M. A. van der Valk is an independent scholar-practitioner working at the interface of traditional medicine and herbalism. Combining a multidisciplinary education in biology (MSc, KU Leuven), ethnobotany, and anthropology (MSc and PhD, University of Kent) with more than a decade of Tibetan medical training under Dr. Arya Pasang Yonten, he specializes in pharmacognosy and more-than-human ecologies. He contributed to the Austrian Science Fund projects "Potent Substances" and "Pandemic Narratives" as a postdoctoral researcher.
Tawni L. Tidwell is a biocultural anthropologist (MA, PhD, Emory University) and doctor of Tibetan medicine (Kachupa-level Tibetan Medical Degree (TMD), Qinghai University Tibetan Medical College; Men-Tsee-Khang, Batch 17). The first non-Asian to complete full medical training in Tibetan language alongside Tibetan peers, she sees patients in her private clinic. She is a Research Assistant Professor at the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and one of the three Principal Investigators of the Tukdam Study. Her research explores cultural practices for differential well-being and resilience, especially those cultivated over the life course from Tibetan medical and Buddhist approaches. She contributed to the Austrian Science Fund projects "Potent Substances" and "Pandemic Narratives".
Calum Blaikie (PhD, University of Kent) is a Researcher at the Institute for Social Anthropology, Austrian Academy of Sciences. He was the Principal Investigator (PI) of the Austrian Science Fund project "Integrating Traditional Medicine: Sowa Rigpa and the State in India" (2021–2025) and contributed in various ways to the "Potent Substances" project. His research explores contemporary patterns of continuity and transformation in Himalayan Sowa Rigpa, with a particular focus on the sourcing, making, and circulation of medicines. He is co-editor of Asian Medical Industries (2022, Routledge) and has published in numerous edited volumes and academic journals, including Current Anthropology, Social Science & Medicine, and Anthropology & Medicine.
Chapitres
Table des matières
Pages
PDF
Titelei
i-iv
Dedication
v
Contents
vii-ix
List of Tables and Figures
xi-xvi
Abbreviations
xvii
Acknowledgments
xix-xx
Author Contributions
xxi
Notes on Transliteration and Transcription
xxiii
Note on Texts
xxi
Introduction
Potency as Efficacy-in-Becoming
1-27
1 Menjor, Materiality, Artisanship
29-62
2 Learning, Making, and Becoming Medicine
63-88
3 Potency as Potential
Textual Theoretical Foundations
89-122
4 Institutions as (Im)Potent Modes of Education
123-149
5 Continuity Substances, Lineage, and Ritual Empowerment
