Cogent Arts & Humanities (Dec 2016)

Arts in health revisited: A sketch of art practices in ancient and contemporary Chinese healthcare from an intercultural perspective

  • Cornelia Bogen

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2016.1256116
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 3, no. 1

Abstract

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Recent efforts to internationalize the discourse on art practices in health have neglected Asian countries and China in particular. This is due to language barriers on the side of Western researchers, as well as the pilot stage and isolation of Chinese research within its own native publication platforms. Similarly, the discourse of arts in health is marked by a Euro-American perspective presenting this area of practice as a modern invention of the West. Firstly, the paper provides a sketch of the ancient medical canon to recount the Chinese history of art practices used alongside health. Next, based on a systematic review of current literature, I develop and apply an analysis grid to survey the functions of arts in health in contemporary China. Given that some art practices apply East Asian medical thought and have culture-specific functions, future research needs to investigate the non-Western world to develop cross-cultural approaches to art-in-health interventions.

Keywords