Unani Medicine in the Making by Kira Schmidt-Stiedenroth offers a nuanced account of the practitioners and practices of Unani medicine, a South Asian medicine often associated with Muslim communities, in contemporary India. Her book makes an important contribution to the interdisciplinary body of scholarship on Unani medicine and to vibrant scholarly discussions about the modernities of South Asian traditional medicines. Building on rich ethnographic fieldwork in Hyderabad and Mumbai and extensive interactions with Unani professionals, practitioners, and students, Schmidt-Stiedenroth shifts the scholarly conversation in exciting new directions by exploring “Unani's inherent multiplicity” (p. 253) and the many enactments of Unani medicine. Unani Medicine in the Making also follows the links between Unani's performative enactments and therapeutic shifts. Throughout the book, Schmidt-Stiedenroth builds a compelling case that the modernization of traditional medicines does not lead to inevitable biomedicalization and standardization.
The six chapters of Unani Medicine in the Making address Unani's...
