CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2011
| Author | Feher, Zsuzsanna Monika |
|---|---|
| Title | A TIBETAN HEALING CULTURE IN HUNGARY: PRANANADI |
| Summary | This MA research paper seeks to analyze the adoption of a Tibetan healing method known as Prananadi in Hungary. It is based on ethnographic fieldwork, interviews with Prananadi practitioners, auto-ethnography and literature analyses. My argument is that Prananadi has its own special traits which singles it out and makes it a very different healing technique from what Westerners are perhaps used to, even exotic, especially in contemporary Hungary. Hungarian circumstances have also made it possible for Prananadi to grow into an increasingly popular healing culture and community. All the way through my thesis I will be searching for information that can help map these hypotheses. Therefore, as possible information base for later research, I map Prananadi in a way that I emphasize its traits, which make Prananadi different from other non-conventional healing techniques; and highlight three analytical units, which also mirror the unique characters of Prananadi. These three analytic units are: 1. Organizational structure & dynamics, 2. Bodily practices, and 3. Knowledge production. The first analytical unit includes organizational structure, hierarchy, and also the characteristics of the internal relations between the people within the Prananadi community: practitioners, teachers and their assistants. Their relations to the people outside of the organization will be examined: their patients, and other people working within medicine; as well as its dynamic aspects, which include the global diffusion of ideas from the East. The second basic category is the bodily practices, also known as embodiment, which includes elements of phenomenology. The knowledge production constitutive element addresses the question of how knowledge is produced and spread within the organization; there are also other related aspects, like the migration of knowledge from Tibet to Hungary and its relation to secrecy, training and authority. The resulting healing culture draws on a hermeneutic practice of medicine predicated on secret knowledge, and there are no other healing techniques or culture, which has similar combinations of these three elements. |
| Supervisor | Monterescu, Daniel; Vlad, Naumescu |
| Department | Sociology MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2011/feher_zsuzsanna.pdf |
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