2003 Annual Reports
Anthropology News Column Report
Report from Janelle Taylor and Nancy Vuckovic, contributing editors
The SMA column serves a number of purposes. Several months of each year, the column is taken up with time-sensitive announcements regarding conferences, fellowships, awards, and so forth. Beyond its important function as a vehicle for conveying such information, our goal for the SMA column this past year was first, to use it as a space for substantive intellectual exchange and debate on matters of importance to all medical anthropologists, and second, to make it function as a portal to the SMA website.
Taking the second of these goals first, we did devote one month’s column to featuring the “SMA Takes a Stand,” and encouraging readers to log on to the website and take part in the discussion taking place there. We will have to leave it to the webmasters to assess what results this achieved. We should also discuss with the webmasters whether/how the column can best coordinate with or contribute to the website, as we plan for the upcoming year.
Regarding our first goal, during this past year we proposed as a topic of discussion and debate “Institutional Research Boards,” and asked readers to write in with IRB stories and other contributions. We did receive one volunteered contribution on this subject, from Maureen Fitzwater, describing her ethnographic research project focusing on ethical review as a cultural process; that column will be forthcoming in November’s issue. We also invited contributions from Patricia Marshall (last April) and Helen McGough (forthcoming in January 2004).
We have, in other words, had some success, in the sense that we have been able to sustain a topical focus on a substantive matter of concern; but we have not thus far been very successful in attracting unsolicited submissions from the SMA column’s readers.
For the upcoming year, we would like to maintain as our primary goal to foster substantive intellectual exchange, but shift the topical focus of the column from “IRBs” to “the politics of funding.” This seems to us timely and appropriate, given the recent controversies surrounding NIH-funded health research, and initial conversation with Mark Nichter and Craig Janes suggests that they both endorse this idea as well.
SMA Board members are perhaps among the most knowledgeable and active participants in such debates; we would like to encourage all of you to consider contributing your views and insights to be shared in the SMA column.