Newsletter: October 2001
Ann Miles and Fred Bloom Co-Contributing Editors
2001 SMA Invited Sessions
Suzanne Heurtin-Roberts (SMA Program Co-Chair, with Andrea Wiley)
The Society for Medical Anthropology will sponsor five invited sessions this year. Four of the sessions are co-sponsored by other AAA sections, providing some exciting opportunities for expanded discussions in medical anthropology. “New World Disorders: Exploring the Intersections of Medical and Environmental Anthropology,” chaired by Krista Harper, is co-sponsored by the Anthropology and Environment Section. Anthropology’s growing concern for human rights draws attention to environmental issues and the topical and theoretical interests shared by both medical and environmental anthropology. Presenting recent ethnographic research, the panel examines how power relations of gender, race, class, and knowledge affect environments and bodies. Panelists will explore shifting roles of the ethnographer as social scientists witness and advocate for communities facing environmental health risks.
“Rewriting Disability: Agency, Silences and Social Landscapes” is co-sponsored by the American Ethnological Society, and chaired and organized by Sumi Colligan, Gelya Frank, Faye Ginsburg, Gail Landsman, and Rayna Rapp. The session seeks to discuss anthropological perspectives on politics and social activism in disability studies while placing disability within the production and reproduction of broader forms of social inequality. Papers will map the interrelationship of governmentality with commercial, scientific, medical, and kinship institutions in producing and transforming disability.
Daniel Lende and Claire Sterk will chair “Anthropology and Addiction,” a session co-sponsored by the National Association of Student Anthropologists. The session will explore how anthropology can help to explain addiction and how it can inform interventions, including prevention, treatment and policy. Presenters will draw upon a broad range of theoretical approaches coupled with holistic, person-centered research to understand and address fundamental issues of drug abuse. Emphasis will be placed upon bringing greater definition and consistency to anthropological approaches to the study of drug abuse.
The anthropology of aging and later life is explored in the session “Will Anthropology Grow Up Before It Grows Old?” Chaired and organized by Jay Sokolovsky and Dena Shenk, the session brings together scholars who have conducted long-term research on aging related issues in diverse cultural settings. Each paper will address how anthropological studies of aging and maturity can force our field to reassess an understanding of classical issues that anthropology has addressed over its history.
“Suffering, The Body, and Religion” is co-sponsored by the Anthropology and Religion Section, organized by Betty Wolder Levin, and chaired by Sara Bergstresser and Margaret Souza. The panel, exploring the importance of both the secular and the religious in the experience of suffering and pain, includes discussions of physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual aspects of suffering.
“Illness and Illusions of Control” will be explored in a session chaired by Cameron Hay. The session seeks to understand how anxiety over perceived chaos and control (or illusions thereof) are related to illness. This issue will be addressed by medical, psychological, and biocultural anthropologists, using ethnographic and comparative data. The session’s goal is to draw these diverse points of view into a dialogue about the insights a focus on control can provide. All SMA members are encouraged to attend all of these sessions.
Joint SMA/SfAA 2002 Meetings in Atlanta -- Last Call for Abstracts
Ruthbeth Finerman (Memphis)
As reported in last month’s column, the Society for Medical Anthropology will hold meetings in conjunction with the Society for Applied Anthropology in Atlanta in Spring 2002! This gathering will be special. In addition to the medical anthropology sessions at the SfAA meetings, the SMA will hold an independent plenary session and series of panels. The SMA portion of the meeting will begin on Wednesday, March 6, with a plenary session for all participants followed by a reception for our membership.
Additionally, there will be special sessions interwoven throughout the SfAA Meeting organized by the SMA Board Members. As always, the SMA also welcomes active participation of medical anthropologists in the main SfAA program through volunteered papers, posters, and sessions. The deadline for submission of abstracts is October 15th. Please see the SMA and the SfAA website at www.sfaa.net, for further information.
To submit to this column, contact Ann Miles at miles@wmich.edu.