Entrance: Initial Positioning of Myself, the Field and Academia

If we want to understand the mechanics of power and organization it is important not to start out assuming whatever we wish to explain.

—(Law 1992, 380) I believe, ones´ own preunderstanding should be measured on the same strict scale as the social reality under the study (cf. Latour 2005). Hence why, I dedicate some space here to my positionality within the field of (nonconventional approaches to health and) body.

I have been always close to nonconventional medicine, but in a rather superficial way. My mum used to make extra money by dealing Herbal Life⁵² food supplements, in addition to her regular

52 Originally American, by the 1990s, it had already become an international company with a direct seller based distribution of nutritional supplements (https://www.herbalife.com/about-us/).

job in a hospital. As a daughter of a single mother, I spent a lot of evenings in the radiology department waiting for my mum to finish her shift, developing a rather close and positive home- like relationship to the place—most people I know try to avoid it. Moreover, my mother’s library counted several CAM books written by practitioners, be it medical doctors like Jiří Janča⁵³, one of the main promoters of nonconventional medicine in 1990s Czech Republic, or the famous Austrian (known around Europe since the 1980s) herbalist Maria Treben⁵⁴. When I moved into my own place, I bought both these books, not being able to imagine life without them—referring to them when I get a cold, or when I want to know which herbs to pick (and at what time they are ripe) when I am in the wilderness.

Growing up as, from my perception, a big girl engaged in several sport activities (and preferably female collectives), the body was and still is one of the main topics in my life. I have always concentrated excessively on how my body looks and how it functions. Or, more precisely, I have been disciplining my body intentionally since I can remember having had any power over my body-related decisions. As a child, I also suffered from a brutal pollen allergy, that got bearable only after going through several vaccination procedures. Still, soon after, I discovered I have congenital hip dysplasia, a hip condition which assumes early arthrosis development. As a consequence, I have always cared about what kind of physical exercises I do and what kind of food I eat in terms of what they may do to me. Of course, and in great accordance with most of my informants, I usually fooled myself into believing I just wanted to be healthy. However, at the core of all this work was craving to be slim, slimmer, or at least not fat. It an idea which has been drastically changing since my teenage years and which has weakened in importance over time. It has not however disappeared completely. Despite that, I do not hate my body anymore. I made peace with it even though I still sometimes whine over not looking good enough.

Naturally, body has always been and still is one of my most favourite (sometimes in a masochist sense) topic of discussion with my close and even more distant friends.

In this fashion, my friend Gina, a girl of my age with a long history of digestion issues and connected dietary experiments, told me in summer 2012 that she had visited an Ayurvedic practitioner. He diagnosed her bodily constitution and advised her to wear high waist pants an d eat rather moist and fatty food. These recommendations sounded rather unconnected and weird to me. So much so that I became curious. I knew nothing about Ayurveda apart that it was supposedly a traditional Indian medicine. Considering the locally shaped

Luckily, my colleague had a friend named Jakub, who, being still somewhat of a student, empathized with me. Jakub was one of the oldest apprentices to the leader of contemporary Ayurveda’s biggest school, its main lecturer, and, as some students address and perceive him, a Teacher, in a sense very close to a guru (spiritual leader). I arranged a meeting with the Teacher and thanks to Jakub, who put in a good word for me, he agreed to a research project in his school. This situation is illustrated in following fieldnotes’ excerpt.

53 https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ji%C5%99%C3%AD_Jan%C4%8Da 54 https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Treben

I arrive slightly late, ring the bell nervously, and instead of the classic “crrrrrr”, the chanting of a mantra starts. The door is opened by the teacher’s wife [Sára], who made it clear to me on the phone that email is not the best way to ask the Teacher for something. She then welcomed my proposal for a personal meeting... From behind the desk in a small office, the Teacher, who could not be bothered to stand up to greet me, is looking directly at me. I see him for the first time in my life, thinking to myself that, although he may seem like a nice person, in other circumstances this is not the case. His expression conveys that I have miscalculated and overestimated myself... I knew I had to pay respect to him in certain ways. I was told not to speak when unrequested and basically not to do anything else uninvited.

As expected, I didn’t feel very natural or comfortable. “Good day”, I said. “Good day”, the teacher replied with a slightly raised eyebrow. “Sit down.” A long pause followed... It was the end of June, but even if it was ten degrees in here, I was sweating like hell. “So, tell me what’s on your mind” (no specific question). I start with a short pre-prepared description of my plea and the purpose of the research, edited into an understandable form for someone outside of my field... He's been looking me in the eye the whole time. Another, perhaps even longer pause follows.

Then the Teacher’s monologue begins with the words: “You can’t study Ayurveda if you don’t know anything about it...” It would go on for twenty long minutes.

(fielnotes; first meeting with the Teacher, 6/2013)

After the initial consultation with Jakub and the Teacher, I had to abandon my naïve idea of researching the consultation practice and accepted school as the main field site. In the end, situating the research in an Ayurveda school seemed to be the only option for me to meet with any kind of group of people engaged in its practice regularly and continuously. However, since the Teacher agreed out of a courtesy and was not willing to make any exceptions for me, I, of course, had to pay a tuition fee like any other student.⁵⁵

When I was first applied for the funding of my (master’s) research in an Ayurveda school to cover the tuition fees, the application got rejected. Back then, it was⁵⁶only 10,000 Czech crowns. True, to get financial support for master’s research was quite rare almost ten years ago. Nevertheless, it was rather a bummer. The real shock came anyway when it somehow leaked to me via informal channels that it got refused because, “of course, they will not pay me for some hobby course in alternative medicine”. This anecdote has turned, in the end, into an amusing story about what people can ask funding for. (recollection based on the field diary, 2013) This situation resonates with an old experience of Elisabeth Hsu: When planning her fieldwork on Chinese medicine in 1985, she was perplexed over the reaction of some anthropologists, who were suspicious that she just wanted to take a trip to China (Hsu 2006, 150–51). I assume new fields, topics and methodologies must always fight for their legitimacy at first, field of science being no exception—novelties are not introduced organically.

55 Back then it took me rather by surprise, but now I find it fair, considering that I can practice Ayurveda, on some level, based on this education.

56 Approx. €400/£300.

Still, the results of my initial negotiations upon entering the field predetermined not just the character of the research in terms of field and topic, which goes hand in hand with methodology, but also the related ethical issues. These are twofold and relate to my status as a student in a school for Ayurveda practitioners and to the slow establishment of my complete research membership (L. Anderson, 2006). The chapter is therefore highly reflexive as I am convinced it is the best tool not just for dealing with procedural ethics (Fassin 2009) but for understanding better the process and, therefore, the character of anthropological knowledge production, which is only situated and thus also partial (cf. Haraway 1988).

Geert De Neve and Maya Unnithan-Kumar (2006) coined the term “critical journey” for an anthropology understood as movement, in terms of a research process which transforms not just the researcher’s self and field but also the discipline itself as a still reconfiguring entity (cf.

ibid., 1). These journeys need to be critically reflected upon and evaluated so as to “render them collectively visible and more comparable” (ibid., 2). According to some authors, reflexivity is beneficial for the research and discipline itself only when it provides insight into the inter- relationship between the personal domains of the anthropologist and the informants on the one hand, and the collective anthropological conscience on the other (ibid.) Hence, I dedicate the main space of this chapter to these two groups of ethical issues: the first is introduced by dilemmas and limits related to the dynamics of myself and the field, while the second regards academia, that is, the local Czech anthropology context and its overlap with the general field.

I was moving to a different place. And since I was basically moving the whole flat, furniture included, the process had taken me several days. I remember that adrenaline rush. I could not sleep well, my body had not showed enough usual interest in food. I just wanted it to be over, to have stability again, to have a home.

When I finally unpacked the last box, and my new place started to look liveable, I breathed out and calmed down. I also noticed my skin was very dry and my lips were full of bloody cracks that hurt. I again had again that feeling that I understand exactly what is happening with my body and that I just have to calm down, sleep, stay in one place for a while and start regularly eating and drinking water again, to get into shape. In recent years, I have often found myself in situations like this.

Persuading me, Ayurveda has left a deep trail in my mind and my body.

(autoethnographic note, remembering my first move in 6/2022)

Nowadays, it is more than clear that ethnographic data are not collected but rather created by the researcher and that the researched phenomenon is due to the researcher’s participation, which is influenced by the researcher’s presence during the empirical phase of the research and after. The researcher leaves imprints on the place, on the people’s lives and sometimes on institutions or even the character of transmitting the phenomenon under study, as it was in my case. But the researcher is influenced by the research too. Sometimes the object of study sneaks under the researcher’s skin, blends her way of thinking about and relating to herself and the world around (cf. Kohn 2007). More importantly, it affects how the research is accommodated in the researcher’s mind and, most likely, other aspects of life, having a profound effect not just on what is observed but what and how interpretations are communicated. Far from a substitution for therapy or narcissist projects, as some see its promoters, what is called a reflexive turn was introduced, for example, in James Clifford and George Marcus (1986) textual/hermeneutic

approach to the poetics and politics of ethnography. I however agree with its critics (e.g. Abu Lughod 1991; Haraway 1988; Bourdieu 2003) that we must employ this instrument such that it enables a better understanding about the character of anthropological knowledge production.

The knowledge being produced is, at the same time, determined by “what takes place in the field as an intersubjective practice” (De Neve 2006, 73) as by the discipline introducing the biggest authority framing this process.