| My dissertation examines representational struggles over the legitimacy and practice of Kallawaya medical expertise following their UNESCO recognition as an `Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity." I show how conflicting ideologies of Kallawaya expertise spurred by the new title draw different community factions into high-stakes competition for symbolic recognition and economic rewards at local, national, and international levels. My analysis, which couples socially-informed linguistic analysis with a semiotic approach to political economy, focuses on the relationship between micro-level interactions through which this expertise is discursively negotiated and macro-level outcomes related to the dynamic reproduction of Kallawaya specialist knowledge and communities. Contrary to the egalitarian cultural profile depicted by UNESCO, I show that locally-constructed representations of Kallawaya expertise highlight intra-cultural distinctions that characterize "authentic" medical specialists as highly knowledgeable, "globally conscious," autonomous stewards of their medicinal heritage, who are committed to the protection of intellectual property in the face of perceived global encroachment. I argue that membership in this expert community is being locally redefined relative to these representational efforts and is embedded in discursive opposition to foreign investigation more generally. This view not only offers a novel account of Kallawaya medical expertise that contributes to our understanding of how social difference is fashioned from local experience and interests, but does so in a way that advances theoretical debates on the constitutive role of language in social and material life. |
