Toxic Care (?): Scepticism and Treatment Failure in Post-Soviet Mongolia

Abstract

In post-socialist Mongolia, unsuccessful treatment, or worse, interventions that result in worsened health conditions, are common concerns. Patients and clients direct scepticism towards a range of practitioners, from biomedical physicians to shamans and ‘folk’ healers (domch). The gap between the ideal treatment and the actual outcome—the prevalence of treatment misfires—invites analysis of infrastructural changes to (health)care and wider contexts of relationality. As state-owned medicine was restructured in the 1990s, healing ‘traditions’ such as shamanism and Traditional Mongolian Medicine considered essentialised aspects of national identity have gained new legitimacy. Many people find it challenging to navigate the multiple authorities on health and wellbeing that exist in contemporary public. Patients and clients often questioned efficacy in terms of toxicity and poison (hor, horlol). Toxicity’s associations with Soviet-era regulation and Buddhist medical contexts articulate the importance of both state-sanctioned regulation and the practitioner’s specialised knowledge.