Newsletter: February 2002
Ann Miles and Fred Bloom, Co-Contributing Editors
As published (to be published) in the Anthropology Newletter:
The SMA had much to be proud of during the 2001 AAA Annual Meeting. In addition to the very active participation of our members throughout the program, two medical anthropologists, Arthur Kleinman and Gay Becker, were honored by the AAA with very prestigious awards. We devote this column to honoring their contributions to medical anthropology through the words of two of their students.
Arthur Kleinman
By Paul Farmer (PIH/Harvard Medical School)The scene is Washington, DC, home to another frantic AAA Annual Meeting. About a dozen medical anthropologists are cloistered in a room, charting the future of the SMA. Some of us are a bit distracted, though, because we’re missing something momentous. It is not the thump of very loud disco, dead overhead, that causes our hearts to
wander. It is rather that Arthur Kleinman is receiving the Franz Boas Award for Distinguished Service to Anthropology.
Looking around the room, it was easy to see the SMA leadership was rather young (from early twenties well into the fifth decade, I’d guess—anthropologists, it is clear, just say no to Rogaine), still excited about medical anthropology and indebted to Arthur. No wonder, about half of us have been his students or trainees.
Arthur made it his job to create structures so that others—hundreds, really—could become medical anthropologists. The fact that he did this while creating a truly massive amount of original scholarship is astounding. He stands alone in his duel contributions—program-building and scholarly—to the growth of this field.
Arthur’s scholarship is of a breathtakingly broad range. From the minutiae of a Taiwanese healing ceremony to the less ethnographically visible forces of structural violence, it’s all there in Arthur’s work. For more than 25 years, he has been on a path not yet blazed, but the part behind him is well-lit and smooth, so that others may follow, or break off on new trails. Never afraid of the pragmatic—from his articles in biomedical literature to collaborative projects, such as the World Mental Health Report, aimed at changing policies—Arthur continues to climb a narrow and stony way. But he always has held that lantern high above him. To call Arthur Kleinman a “beacon intellectual” is merely to say that he is a teacher who truly enlightens.
Other personal traits make Arthur a great, if at times forbidding, teacher. He hates sloppiness and gratuitousness; he doesn’t hold with tardiness or incivility, either. But if, as his student, you are willing to listen with humility, there is much to be learned. To my profit, I still read his work as if I were his graduate student.
Arthur Kleinman is, above all, a believer. I’m sure such a claim would make him blush, or even scowl (uncompellingly, as a rule: those close to him know his heart is solid gold and are unfazed by his scowls). But he is a believer all right, one of the last great Enlightenment intellectuals to turn his attention to that borderland, as he called it, between medicine and anthropology. As a scholar, Arthur Kleinman could have done whatever he wanted. We are certainly lucky to have him in medical anthropology.
Gay Becker
By Abigail Kohn (U of Sydney)I am just delighted that Gay Becker has won the Robert B Textor and Family Award for Excellence in Anticipatory Anthropology for her book. Gay’s students have always known that she is an outstanding anthropologist and teacher, and it’s deeply gratifying to have the AAA also acknowledge her achievements. Her work exemplifies that rare combination of theoretical sophistication, profound insight and lucid, accessible writing style: she is a model who inspires and motivates us. For years, Gay has been one of the most sought-after advisers at the Joint Program in Medical Anthropology at UC-Berkeley and UC-San Francisco. Those of us fortunate enough to have studied with her recognize that the deep respect for human dignity and agency that she exhibits in her work also carries over into her warm, supportive work with students. She treats us like colleagues, encouraging us to pursue our own interests and reach our own conclusions. She never expected us to adopt her particular theoretical or methodological approaches; she only asked that we remain true to the basic principles and tenets of the anthropological endeavor.
More personally, Gay’s genuine care for her students makes the lonely and often challenging experience of graduate school a distinctly more humane experience. For these and her many other outstanding qualities, we are enormously grateful.
To submit to this column, contact Ann Miles at miles@wmich.edu.