Author(s)	McGuire, Gabriel
Title	Cultural histories of kumiss: tuberculosis, heritage and national health in post-Soviet Kazakhstan
Publication Type	Journal Article
Language	eng
Number of Pages	18
Location	Kazakhstan
Keywords	umiss tuberculosis folk medicine traditional food
Relevance to ICH Safeguarding	revitalization others
ICH Genre	ecological knowledges and practices food culture traditional medicine
Description	In the nineteenth century, European doctors began to credit kumiss (fermented mare’s milk) for the apparent absence of tuberculosis among the nomads of the Eurasian steppe. As European and American medical journals published articles on the "kumiss cure" and Russian doctors opened kumiss sanatoria, praise for the drink’s curative powers was wound together with romanticized images of the nomadic pastoralists whose creation it was. In Soviet and now in post-Soviet Kazakhstan, kumiss came to hold the double status of medicine and of national heritage. Yet if in the nineteenth century, the steppe was notable for the absence of tuberculosis, in the late twentieth century, it is notable for its presence: Kazakhstan, like many post-Soviet countries, is currently the site of an epidemic of drug-resistant tuberculosis. Discussions of the epidemic now tangle together concerns over the physical health of the population with concern over the cultural health of the body politic.
Book/Journal Title	Central Asian Survey
Publisher	Routledge, Taylor & Francis
Place of Publication	New York, US
Date of Publication	2017
Volume	36
Issue	4
Pages	493–510
ISSN	ISSN 0263-4937 ISSNe 1465-3354
Academic Field	Traditional knowledge Cultural Studies
Contributor	Kazakhstan National Committee for Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage
Active Contribution	Kazakhstan, FY 2023
Data Collection Project	Sustainable Research Data Collection for ICH Safeguarding: Focusing on Central Asia and Small Island Developing States