MASA forum : panels
Meet the SMA Presidents
Carole H. Browner
I’m the most oldest (I mean most senior) of this otherwise illustrious group. I’m of the first generation of medical anthropologists to come out of the NIH training programs set up during the post-Sputnik Cold War era. The idea was to produce researchers and educators to help counter a perceived Soviet threat to US dominance in science and technology. This infusion of resources marked a sea change. The period following WW II period saw US anthropology fall into stagnation, a marked contrast from its importance in the war effort.
But in the 1970s, Berkeley’s Department of Anthropology was an exciting place. Our mentors -- luminaries like George Foster, Margaret Clark, Lucile Newman, Joan Ablon – and Fred Dunn and Virginia Ernster over at UCSF and Christine Wilson in the Dept of Nutrition, stoked our sense that we were pioneers in an endeavor as important for the future of our chosen discipline as for our own professional development.
Studying medical anthropology was pretty easy in those days – or so it seemed, at least from today’s vantage point. There were barely any courses, hardly any literature, and no specialized journals. Preparing for qualifying exams wasn’t all that challenging --which isn’t to mean we weren’t totally stressed!
But you could easily read all the English language literature written by anthropologists, and much of what we read was actually by sociologists, who’d done great work, ethnographic and otherwise studying medical institutions and health and sickness behavior. My own area of interest, women’s health and reproduction, didn’t even exist as a specialization and we actually had to formally petition for permission to study anything having to do with women.
Flash forward 30+ years. You’ll find graduate programs in medical anthropology at most major universities although, sadly, without the training grants to sustain them and suites of undergraduate courses throughout US and abroad. There’s even a new book on medical anthropology as it is taught and practiced in different parts of the world, published just last year.
What else is different today? Among the big changes in US culture is Americans’ progressively growing preoccupation with their bodies and their health. Whether mass media drives or reflects these processes, or they exist in dialectical opposition is, of course, an open question. More certain are the roles of the medical, pharmaceutical, beauty, and fashion industries in geometrically expanding these processes for the sake of—commerce and profit.
Our own discipline clearly reflects these larger processes. Surprising or not, the SMA is the 3rd largest society in the AAA, with about 1350 members, only the American Ethnological Society and the Society for Cultural Anthropology have more members. This means that we’re the largest specialized society, which in and of itself is a curious fact, kind of like the tail wagging the dog, or so it would seem! And presentations by medical anthropologists tend to dominate SfAA programs, even in years when there are no joint meetings.
My own areas of expertise: women’s health and reproduction are no longer marginal, as evidenced by Marcia Inhorn’s amazing conference in Ann Arbor last spring, which generated well over 200 volunteered abstracts, mostly from anthropologists.
I’m as certain as ever that there’s no better, more challenging, and ultimately more satisfying specialty for anthropology Ph.D.s than ours. This is partly because of a relatively more favorable job market in comparison with other sub-specialties, and because of the opportunities we have to make a real difference.
And so I’ll close with a plea that as you -- our students -- make your way through your careers -- and become even more visible than we’ve been – that your work not loose sight of the absolute centrality of the concept of culture a concept which has become much more prominent in public discourse than it was when I started out.
Not culture in the reductionistic sense that’s become all too standard in public health discourses and “cultural competency” training programs-- where race and ethnicity are simplistically reduced to one or a handful of variables; nor in its radical repositioning, where the emphasis is more upon the formation of subjects and subjectivities than on larger formations. Rightly or wrongly, in today’s world, processes labeled “cultural” will continue to drive debates and foreign and domestic policies. We medical anthropologists contribute unique and valuable perspectives and we must seek wider forums to make ourselves heard.
* See also Photos from Meet the SMA Presidents
Meet the SMA Presidents: Hot Medanth Topics, Skills, Opportunities, SFAA/SMA 2006 in Vancouver
Medical Anthropology: The Future is Now, by Mark Nichter (PowerPoint presentation)