The Hybrid Globalizations of Traditional Chinese Medicine. An Ethnographic Analysis of Practitioners in Milan

According to the World Health Organization, nowadays, more than 300,000 practitioners in about 100,000 Chinese medicine clinics in over one hundred countries worldwide practice traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). Beyond its flourishing application, TCM attracts the growing attention of anthropologists. If International scholars have shown how, in China, the Western biomedical model highly influences both the academic teaching and the practice of TCM, specific studies within Europe, especially in Italy, are still lacking today. Based on an analysis of how TCM is practiced in the city of Milan, my aim is to scrutinize the relation between TCM and biomedicine and, broadly, between modernity and tradition. Through an ethnography conducted in Milan between November 2020 and May 2021, I explore the diverse ways of translating the knowledge and interpreting the practices by local TCM doctors. By means of interviews and observations of medical practices of ten different practitioners, my research led me to identify three dissimilar categories in relation to TCM practitioners in Milan: the “Purists”, the “Integrators” and the “Hybridizers”. Within this contribution, I focus on their similarities and differences, showing how TCM assumes the shape of a hybrid and localized practice.