I highly recommend every acupuncturist read Acupuncture as Revolution by Rachel Pagones. interestingly, Acupuncture was widely exported under Mao after the cultural revolution as a means of increasing national power and forming alliances with anti-capitalist revolutionaries and to bolster links with nonaligned countries. so in that sense, the Communist project strove to both scienctize acupuncture and to normalize Acupuncture as a modality outside China. TCM is a Maoist construction meant for those in the developed West and those in the global south, etc to perpetuate Chinese soft power. in that sense, white people practicing acupuncture is a success for Chinese nationalism, but paradoxically perhaps a loss of exclusive market dominance for the Chinese diaspora. I see this more of a function of capitalism, though, for if we were not competing for market share among educated, overproduced elites (those that practice acupuncture post-legalization), then I don’t think appropriation would have such weight to it. in that sense, capitalism is the issue rather than the loss of what essentially amounts to implicit racial/ethnic/feudal claims to IP -- a protected guild model such as existed under precapitalist Chinese tradition that the PRC under Mao
sought to end. I don’t think anyone, especially those interested in deep structural change, can make the case though that a valuable medicine should be only practiced by those with certain DNA belonging to certain families, just as it shouldn’t belong to those with DNA allowing for white identification either.
I highly recommend every acupuncturist read Acupuncture as Revolution by Rachel Pagones. interestingly, Acupuncture was widely exported under Mao after the cultural revolution as a means of increasing national power and forming alliances with anti-capitalist revolutionaries and to bolster links with nonaligned countries. so in that sense, the Communist project strove to both scienctize acupuncture and to normalize Acupuncture as a modality outside China. TCM is a Maoist construction meant for those in the developed West and those in the global south, etc to perpetuate Chinese soft power. in that sense, white people practicing acupuncture is a success for Chinese nationalism, but paradoxically perhaps a loss of exclusive market dominance for the Chinese diaspora. I see this more of a function of capitalism, though, for if we were not competing for market share among educated, overproduced elites (those that practice acupuncture post-legalization), then I don’t think appropriation would have such weight to it. in that sense, capitalism is the issue rather than the loss of what essentially amounts to implicit racial/ethnic/feudal claims to IP -- a protected guild model such as existed under precapitalist Chinese tradition that the PRC under Mao
sought to end. I don’t think anyone, especially those interested in deep structural change, can make the case though that a valuable medicine should be only practiced by those with certain DNA belonging to certain families, just as it shouldn’t belong to those with DNA allowing for white identification either.