Doctors of Plural Medicine, Knowledge Transmission, and Family Space in India

The transmission of traditional medical knowledge - either institutionally or through established lineages - is assumed to involve one single tradition or another. In India however, families of doctors often engage with multiple traditions, including Ayurveda, Unani, homeopathy, yoga, and biomedicine. Parents, children, siblings and spouses trained in different medical systems occasionally share knowledge and clinical space, producing versatile therapies. By exploring such cases, I challenge studies focused on single traditions and propose to examine "family space" as the physical and relational proximity that enables kin doctors to experiment with plural therapies while negotiating legitimacy and authority within the changing institution of the Indian family.