Newsletter: January 2007
Kathleen Ragsdale and Janelle S. Taylor, Contributing Editors
Congratulations to the winners of the 2006 prize competitions held by the Society for Medical Anthropology and its interest groups!
SMA Awards
The SMA Career Achievement Award was awarded to Arthur Kleinman (Harvard) for his numerous contributions to theory and method in medical anthropology, in particular his pioneering research in cross-cultural studies of healing systems; depression and the experience of chronic illness; the anthropology of social suffering; global pharmaceuticals and international mental health; and social experience and subjectivity.
The George Foster Memorial Award for Excellence in Practicing Medical Anthropology went to Spero Manson (U Colorado), who was recognized for his extensive substantive and developmental contributions to medical anthropology, as well as being an advocate for the mental health of Indian people not only within anthropology, but also across disciplines and in the policy arena. Dr. Manson is Director of American Indian and Alaska Native Programs, University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.
The Graduate Student Mentor Award went to Mac Marshall (U Iowa) in recognition of the exceptional guidance and outstanding support that he has provided as a mentor to graduate students in medical anthropology.
The first New Millenium Book Award for excellence in medical anthropology, intended to honor significant and potentially influential contributions to the field that are also books of exceptional courage and potential impact beyond the academy, went to Adriana Petryna (U Pennsylvania) for Life Exposed: Biological Citizens After Chernobyl (Princeton U Press, 2002). Honorable mention went to Margaret Lock (McGill U) for Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death (U California Press, 2001).
The Eileen Basker Memorial Prize, for excellence in research on gender and health, was awarded to Michelle Rivkin-Fish (UNC Chapel Hill) for Women’s Health in Post-Soviet Russia: The Politics of Intervention (Indiana U Press, 2005).
The Steven Polgar Prize for the best paper published in the SMA’s journal Medical Anthropology Quarterly during the most recent complete volume year has been awarded to Vincanne Adams (UCSF) and co-authors Suellen Miller, Sienna Craig, Nyima, Sonam, Droyoung, Lhakpen, & Michael Varner for "The Challenge of Cross-Cultural Clinical Trials Research: Case Report from the Tibetan Autonomous Region, People's Republic of China" (v.19, no.3, pp.267-289).
The winner of this year’s Charles Hughes Graduate Student Paper Prize was Elise Andaya (NYU) for her essay entitled “The Gift of Health: Cuban Medical Practice, Socialist Morality and the Post-Soviet Economy.” Her advisor for this project was Rayna Rapp (NYU).
This year’s WHR Rivers Undergraduate Paper Prize goes to Hayder Al-Mohammad (SOAS/UCL) for his essay, “Excremental Encounters: The Case of Basra and the Anthropology of Excrement,” written with the guidance of advisors Andrew Irving and Kostas Retsikas. Emily Ng (UCLA) received honorable mention for her essay “Madness after Mao: Generationality and Bipolar Disorder in Urban China.”
Critical Anthropology for Global Health Caucus
The 2006 Professional award : Charles L. Briggs, the Alan Dundes Distinguished Professor in Folklore in the Department of Anthropology, (UC Berkeley) for his article, “Critical Perspectives on Health and Communicative Hegemony: Progressive possibilities, lethal connections.”
Two graduate student awards were granted. Seth Holmes (UCSF – Berkeley), won recognition for his paper, “Oaxacans Like to Work Bent Over: The naturalization of social suffering among berry farm workers.” His advisor was Philippe Bourgois. Alexa Dietrich (Emory U) was recognized for her paper “Corrosion in the System: The Community Health By-Products of Pharmaceutical Production in Northern Puerto Rico”, written under the guidance of Peter Brown and Peggy Barlett.
The 2006 undergraduate student award went to Keerthika Subramanian (Emory U) for her paper, “A Different Kind of Medicine: Women’s experiences with opthalmic diseases in rural and urban Tamil Nadu, India.” Her advisor was Irene Brown, in Sociology and Women’s Studies.
Council on Anthropology and Reproduction
The Council on Anthropology and Reproduction (CAR) is proud to announce the winners of this year's book and paper prize competitions. The award for Edited Collection of Most Enduring Influence was given to Linda Layne (Rensselaer Polytechnic), editor for Transformative Motherhood: On Giving and Getting in a Consumer Culture (NYU Press, 1999). The Most Notable Recent Collection Award went to Carrie Douglass, editor for Barren States: The Population Implosion in Europe (Berg Publishers, 2005).
This year, two winners will share Graduate Student Paper Award. They are Heide Castaneda (U Arizona) for "Pregnancy, Race, and Citizenship: Undocumented Migrant Women in Berlin, Germany" and Elise Andaya (NYU) for "Reproducing the Revolution: Local Practices and Global Politics in Prenatal Care in Havana, Cuba".
Please send column contributions to Contributing Editor Kathleen Ragsdale (ragsdale@ndri.org)