Ontology, Medicine, and Sociopolitical Practices: An Ontological Anthropology of Medicine

This is a hybrid seminar.

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Medicine is inevitably ontological as it involves a fundamental matter of human existence: the body. Medical practice is inseparable from the issues of what the body is and what constitutes the body in each medical tradition. Built on these medical, simultaneously ontological, questions, a medicine employs diagnostic methods seeking to identify and treat “what,” such as over-numbered glucose, cancerous cells, and stagnated qi (氣鬱). Despite its potential to contribute to medical humanities, as exemplified by Annemarie Mol’s pathbreaking work, The Body Multiple, ontological matters of medicine have remained conspicuously underexamined. However, increasing interest in ontology in medical practice and the rise of the turn to ontology and materiality in the social sciences and humanities have provided unprecedented momentum for investigation of the ontological constituents of medicine. By juxtaposing biomedicine and East Asian medicine, and focusing on realities of medicines and associated sociopolitical practices, this talk exemplifies and promotes ontological discussion of medical humanities.

Taewoo Kim is an anthropologist whose research interests include medicines in social, historical, and onto-epistemological conditions. He has conducted anthropological fieldwork in the United States, South Korea, Belize, and Kiribati. Taewoo Kim is the author of An Anthropology of Korean Medicine Clinics: The Thought and Practice Connecting the Body, Mind, and Nature (in Korean (2021) & in Japanese (2024)) and The Body is Climate: An Ontological Anthropology’s Practice of Climate (in Korean (2024)) and research articles including “Experiences, Expressions, and Boundary-Crossings: East Asian Tactile Diagnostics in South Korea” (2023) and “Ontology and Acupuncture: East Asian Analogism and an Emerging Acupuncture Method in South Korea” (2025). He is currently a professor at the College of Korean medicine and the director of the Institute of Climate-Body at Kyung Hee University in South Korea.