Newsletter: October 2002
Beyond a Meeting and a Journal: Envisioning the SMA as a Network
Mark Nichter, SMA President
It is customary for each incoming president of the SMA to provide a vision statement that reflects what they hope to accomplish during their tenure in office, subject to the guidance of the SMA Board. Before doing so, let me thank Bill Dressler for his outstanding service as the past president of the SMA We owe Bill a vote of thanks. Under his stewardship, the SMA has grown and prospered. It is because I have inherited a sound foundation, that I am able to offer some plans for remodeling and expansion of SMA activities. I do so after having conducted interviews with a number of SMA members at various stages of their careers and on different career trajectories.
In my campaign platform I made it clear that I am equally committed to the training of medical anthropologists, academic research, and an engaged anthropology that is proactive when it comes to issues of national and international health importance. I also expressed the opinion that the SMA needs to offer members more than a meeting, prizes, and a journal. My vision for the SMA is that we reframe our identity from primarily being a society of scholars, which indeed we are, to a network of scholars. More is involved than mere semantics. In these times of rapid communication and information overload, hybridization and appropriation, medical anthropologists will fare better if we pool our resources, inform one another of our activities, and increase our visibility as a profession. To do this, we need a home base where we may congregate, exchange information, and stay in touch between meetings. To some degree, SMA special interest groups (SIGS) serve these functions. However, the activities of SIGS have been uneven and many members of the SMA have interests which cross-cut or lie outside established SIG parameters.
What is needed, in my opinion, is a virtual space where we can meet. We require a website that is at once a repository for medical anthropology resources (syllabi, topical reference lists, links to relevant journals and web sites etc.) and an interactive website responsive to the activities of members and fast breaking news. Over the past few years Elisa Sobo, Ruthbeth Finnerman, and Craig Janes have maintained a rudimentary SMA web site which has served the SMA's basic needs. They should be recognized for the time and effort they put into this endeavor. What I have in mind is a site which serves as a hub for SMA activities, a site which members will want to visit often and for a variety of practical, intellectual, and social purposes -- a site which will help us build community.
"If you build it, they will come". I hope so, because this site is not imaginary. It has been a work in process since the 2001 SMA meeting when the SMA Board approved the ambitious project that I presented to them. Over the last six months, we have come a long way. Through the influence of board members Jim Kim and Paul Farmer, Partners In Health agreed to host the new site. This gives us considerable freedom to develop, expand and experiment without having to wade through university bureaucracy. The SMA Board was also fortunate to find an experienced and energetic webmaster, Betsey Brada, who is an anthropology graduate student. We have been able to jump start the project using resources from the previous SMA web site as well as the University of Arizona's medical anthropology site. SMA Board members and a select group of advisors have contributed to the design of the new site, keeping in mind the needs of both novice and expert web users.
I am happy to report that much of the architecture needed to support the site has been built, and if all goes as planned, we will launch www.medanthro.net in late August. We will then spend several months responding to the suggestions of members, ironing out problems, and adding content. From day one, we will be offering SMA members and friends a substantial amount of content on the web site as a way to raise interest and encourage exploration. To date, the content has been contributed by a relatively small number of SMA members. Proof that the site is serving its intended purposes will be the number of people visiting/revisiting the site, SMA member contributions to the site, and the number of activities facilitated by the site. At present literature on "health culture" (etc.) is proliferating at a rapid rate. An important role that members of the SMA can play is to filter resources found on the site (and the web) associated with medical anthropology and such applied subjects as cultural competency training for heath practitioners. Quality control on the SMA website will be left to members whom we hope will screen materials and give feedback to a web site advisory committee composed of two SMA board members and our webmaster. Commentaries on the use and abuse of "culture" on health related sites on the web will be invited.
It is our hope that the web site will also help minimize some of the more tedious aspects of the SMA business meeting. Posting reports on the web site prior to the meeting should allow us to conduct our business more efficiently . Posting additional information on candidates running for the SMA Board will enable members to vote more conscientiously. As on the earlier SMA site, the activities of SIGS will be prominently featured proving visitors with easy access to information about what these groups are doing.
Another area which the SMA Board and I have been working on is better linkage to sources of funding. Toward this end, the SMA Board has invited medical anthropologists working for federal agencies and private foundations to form an advisory group. A representative of this group will be invited to attend board meetings and keep the SMA abreast of funding as well as job opportunities. Members of this ad hoc group will post funding initiatives to the web site as soon as they occur. They will also inform the SMA leadership when opportunities arise to lobby for greater SMA presence on national task forces, committees, etc. Board member Suzanne Heurtin-Roberts (NCI) is playing an instrumental role in putting this advisory group together and Sabra Woolsey (NIMH) has agreed to be the group's first representative.
Over the last two years, the SMA graduate student representative, Sabrina Chase, has been proactive in organizing special sessions at the AAA and SMA meetings to inform students about career opportunities, where they can get funds, and how to get published. These sessions have been so successful that the SMA Board has decided to make them a routine part of our conference activities. To provide greater outreach, the new web site will serve as a repository for materials presented during these sessions. To further encourage graduate student outreach and exchange, a graduate student area on the web site has been designed and will be moderated by members of an international graduate student group presently forming. The SMA Board voted to extend the tenure of the graduate student representative to the board from 2 to 3 years allowing the incoming board representative the opportunity to work with the outgoing member for a year.
Another initiative which the SMA Board has agreed to pilot, is an activity loosely termed "SMA Takes a Stand". In my discussions with SMA members, several spoke to me about the SMA's low level of involvement (as an organization) with issues having national and international health importance. I think it is time that we remedied this. Yes, we are a very diverse group and No, I am not suggesting that we attempt to reach consensus on an issue and draft a resolution. What I would like to introduce is a participatory process enabling SMA members to spend a year considering an issue in depth. Here is the process I envision. The SMA Board will select one issue each year for deliberation. During this year, a task force will be formed to facilitate this process of consciousness raising. Background readings will be made available to all SMA members on the website, and a bulletin board will be established allowing members to express opinions and exchange ideas. At the end of the year, an invited session will then be organized at the AAA (or SMA meetings) and a policy paper will be written by members of the task force explaining the role(s) that anthropologists can play in addressing the focal issue. To start the ball rolling, the SMA Board has agreed to take up "the ethics and politics of clinical trials" as our test issue this coming year. A task force to be chaired by Kate McQueen is presently being constituted. I am in the process of approaching more active SIGS and encouraging them to take a stand on an annual issue as well. If some version of the process laid were to work, the SMA would be able to address several issues a year. This would also give us something exciting to discuss at annual meetings.
Another agenda taken up by the SMA Board is improved relations with the AAA Public Policy Committee and other sections of the AAA. SMA Board members have taken on liaison positions with respect to major AAA sections (Biological: Wenda Trevathan, Cultural: Vincanne Adams, Linguistic and Psychological Anthropology: Cherly Mattingly) and I have agree to serve on the AAA/SFAA task force constituted to look for better ways to serve practicing anthropologists and bring them into the fold. Linda Hunt will serve as SMA liaison to the public policy committee, and we have plans to create a SMA data base this year identifying experts in various areas of medical anthropology. This will enable the AAA to identify members who can mount rapid responses to news events, offer expert testimony, serve on advisory committees, etc.
The SMA also wishes to establish closer relations with medical anthropologists (and graduate students) in Europe, Australia and New Zealand. At present, there is talk of a European medical anthropology network being formed. We welcome this effort and look forward to posting information about it on the SMA web site in addition to information about Australian and European medical anthropology training programs, international funding opportunities, etc. Board member Catherine Panter-Brick will serve as SMA liaison to medical anthropology organizations in Europe. We also look forward to sharing resources with medical anthropologists in Africa, Asia, Latin and South America, etc. Thomas Jefferson once said that Information is the currency of democracy. I think there is much truth in this. In the field of medical anthropology some of us are in institutions which are far more privileged then others when it comes to access to information. It is my hope that in the next decade we can grow the field of medical anthropology by helping colleagues in less advantaged contexts gain access to key resources enabling them to review what has been done, engage in critical thinking, and carry out more effective problem solving.
Finally, I think that medical anthropology can provide the field of anthropology with a shining example of how different subfields of our discipline can engage and enrich one another. As a focal area within anthropology, medical anthropology is informed by and informs biological, cultural and linguistic anthropology. At a time when some anthropologists have raised concern about the balkanization of anthropology into an array of insular subfields, medical anthropology illustrates the strength of an integrated approach to anthropology which is broadly conceived, creatively practiced, attentive to the past, and in touch with the pulse of social change.