Newsletter: November 2005
Janelle S. Taylor, Contributing Editor
Medical Anthropologists Speak Out on Katrina Disaster
SMA Statement Released 9/13/05
The Society for Medical Anthropology, the nation's largest organization of medical anthropologists, expresses its heartfelt concern and support to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. While the SMA recognizes that the disaster began as a natural event, it is clear to us that it rapidly became a human-made disaster of horrific proportions.
As medical anthropologists whose professional focus is understanding and improving human well-being, we conclude that the catastrophic extent of the damage was the result of inadequate planning and preparedness to meet a major natural disaster that had been predicted for years beforehand, and when it occurred, insufficient attention to and resources for many tens of thousands of people. These people - primarily poor, black, sick, in nursing homes, elderly, and/or disabled - were not provided with basic human rights and essentials, such as clean water, food, medical care, and decent shelter for days on end after the storm had ended.
People died waiting for help that never came. Despite the billions of taxpayer dollars that have been spent in recent years on homeland security, weak links in the infrastructure of American cities have been neglected, now with tragic results in New Orleans and the region. The vulnerability of New Orleans was widely known and generally ignored by those who hold responsibility to protect and serve the American people.
The SMA recommends that officials at local, state, and national levels, in combination with concerned citizens, assure that those at fault be subject to the full legal consequences. We also call for a national examination of the response failures, social and environmental vulnerabilities, and lack of compassion exposed by Hurricane Katrina, including the role of both active and passive racism and disregard for poor, aged, disabled, and working people in this tragedy. The SMA urges our government to define homeland security in terms of adequate prevention as well as response, and to include all the American population, regardless of age, class and ethnicity, in its promise of security.
The SMA asks our members and affiliates to consider the multiple ways that they may contribute to mitigating the cultural, social, economic, and health effects of the disaster. It is critical that we, as a community of concerned scholars, committed to the relevance and applicability of our discipline, get involved. Such activities may involve donations, offers to house displaced students, faculty, researchers or practitioners, or volunteering in relief efforts.
SMA Website Developments
Lauren Wynne, U Chicago
The SMA website (www.medanthro.net) has some exciting new additions, we would like to request your assistance in building them:
- A practicing medical anthropology section that illustrates how anthropologists are contributing to medical and public health related research, care provision, evaluation, and policy studies.
- An ethnographic film section that catalogues visual resources useful in teaching.
- An expanded publication section, please send book titles and links to published reviews.
- A collaboration section revised to provide a place to post opportunities for research internships.
- A personal webpage database to facilitate networking between scholars – please send us a link to your webpage.
- A travel section for posting information about research-related travel and field survival tips.
We also need your help in keeping central areas of the website up to date. News, conference announcements, and job postings are always welcome. Please send recent (last two years) course syllabi, and updates regarding graduate programs. Finally, we are still trying to reconstruct a comprehensive archive of SMA history. If you have served as SMA board member in the past, let us know when and in what position.
All of these initiatives need your support! Please check the site for the appropriate forms or just send an email to webmaster@medanthro.net.
RAI Honors SMA Career Achievement Award Recipient
Dr. Cecil Helman, who last year received the SMA’s first ever Career Achievement Award, has been awarded the 2005 Lucy Mair Medal for Applied Anthropology, by the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. This award is given “to recognize outstanding achievement in the application of anthropology to human wellbeing, with particular reference to the relief of poverty and suffering and the active recognition of human dignity.” Congratulations Dr. Helman!
Please send column contributions to the SMA Contributing Editor, Janelle Taylor (jstaylor@u.washington.edu)