Causation as Strategy: Interpreting Humours among Tibetan Refugees

The article focuses on the incidence of humoural wind ( rlung ) disorders among Tibetan exiles in India. It investigates the reasons behind the emergence of rlung as a significant problem among Tibetan exiles, and seeks to unpack some of the local meanings of this 'epidemic'. Previous studies have generally described rlung disorders as symptomatic of political and moral concerns, highlighting the connections that Tibetans make between physical, moral and psychological states in the context of Buddhist practice and everyday life. This paper aims to further nuance these findings by showing that, while Tibetan exiles include complex causes linked to morality and psychosocial wellbeing in their explanations of rlung disorders, they also 'cut' into this explanatory network in strategic ways, sometimes bypassing religious or psychosocial interpretations of illness altogether. Drawing on this analysis, the article warns researchers against literal readings of general religious precepts when analysing people's everyday negotiations of illness and wellbeing: the attribution of causation is always strategic, and religious observance should never be assumed to be uniform, or taken as a given.