This dissertation project is a cultural analysis of the process by which traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is reinvented and transformed through its integration into biomedical mainstreams in China and the U.S. This study examines how transnational contexts shape the configurations of TCM at specific appropriate science in daily practices to negotiate their medical legitimacy. By conducting fieldwork among TCM communities in Shanghai and in San Francisco respectively, and by foregrounding the translocal nexus between these two locales, this project is both comparative and transnational. It will use participant observation, interviews, statistical surveys and archival research to compare the structure and practice of TCM at various medical institutions in Shanghai and San Francisco, and to trace how practitioners travel across institutional and national boundaries to forge translocal communities. This project aims to develop a processual, interactive model of culture which at once dislodges the primordialist representation of TCM, and looks beyond the `West` to analyze the production and practice of science. At a broader level, the study will shed light on the processes by which specific forms of knowledges, identities, and communities are produced in the increasingly transnational world.
