Critical Medical Anthropology

Critical Medical Anthropology. Merrill Singer and Hans Baer. Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Company, 1995. + 406pp.     

Medical Anthropology and African American Health.

Medical Anthropology and African American Health. Eric J. Bailey. Westport, CT: Berginand Garvey, 2000.255 pp.     

Cultural Psychiatry and Medical Anthropology: An Introduction and Reader

Cultural Psychiatry and Medical Anthropology: An Introduction and Reader. Roland Littlewood and Simon Dein. eds. London: Athlone Press, 2000.398 pp.     

Medical Anthropology in Ecological Perspective. Third Edition

Medical Anthropology in Ecological Perspective. Third Edition. Ann McElroy and Patricia K. Townsend. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996. xxiv. 434 pp.     

Magic, Science, and Health: The Aims and Achievements of Medical Anthropology and Culture, Health and Illness: An Introduction for Health Professionals. 3rd ed.

Magic, Science, and Health: The Aims and Achievements of Medical Anthropology. Robert Anderson. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1996. + 454 pp.
Culture, Health and Illness: An Introduction for Health Professionals. 3rd ed. Cecil G. Helman. Oxford, England: Butterworth-Heinemann Ltd., 1994. viii. 446 pp.     

Anthropology in Public Health

Anthropology in Public Health. Robert A. Hahn. ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. xxii +384 pp.     

2009 Society for Medical Anthropology Conference: Changing Anthropology,Changing Society

Fifty years after the founding of the field of medical anthropology, the Society for Medical Anthropology of the American Anthropological Association held its first independent meeting on September 24-27, 2009, at Yale University.Fifty years after the founding of the field of medical anthropology, the Society for Medical Anthropology of the American Anthropological Association held its first independent meeting on September 24-27, 2009, at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. The conference, Medical Anthropology at the Intersections, drew an international audience of more than 1,000 scholars.In her opening remarks, program Chair Marcia Inhorn noted that medical anthropology has been interdisciplinary since its inception. This assertion was supported at a roundtable discussion, Founding Medical Anthropology and the Society for Medical Anthropology, which featured four of the field’s founders.Asked to identify the factors that led to the development of medical anthropology, the panelists emphasized the role of changes in the practice and landscape of medicine in the late 1950s and early 1960s in the United States. According to Hazel Weidman, who helped spearhead the Society for Medical Anthropology, medical personnel sought social scientists’ guidance in the new clinical environments created by the increasing involvement of U.S. physicians in global development work and by the community-oriented approach to mental health encouraged by the Community Mental Health Act of 1963. The novel inclusion of lifestyle as a determinant of health at this time also played a role, according to Clifford Barnett. Norman Scotch, author of a 1963 review that had helped define medical anthropology as a field, noted that physicians at the time were very interested in the possible applications of the social sciences to medicine [1,2]. Joan Ablon recalled that this emphasis on application led some academic anthropologists to dismiss the medical anthropologist as a “handmaiden to the doctors.” Despite such resistance, interest in medical anthropology as a sub-field was clearly growing among anthropologists. When Weidman helped organize the first gathering of medical anthropologists at an anthropology conference in 1967, attendance was twice what was expected. Panel organizer Alan Harwood noted that the Society for Medical Anthropology transformed its newsletter into a professional journal, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, in 1983. According to Inhorn, the society has 1,300 members today.For the panelists, medical anthropology’s potential for application makes it a compelling scholarly pursuit. As Barnett stated in explaining his decision to work in anthropology: “If you know how a society works, you can change it.”     

Seeing Anthropology: Cultural Anthropology through Film

Seeing Anthropology: Cultural Anthropology through Film. Karl G. Heider. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1997. 347 pp.,. videotapes.     

2009 Society for Medical Anthropology Conference: Reflections on the Future of Anthropology

In his plenary session entitled Five Questions on the Future, Harvard anthropologist Arthur Kleinman capitalized on the 2009 Society for Medical Anthropology Conference’s theme of Medical Anthropology at the Intersections to speculate on the future of the discipline.As he reflects on the field of anthropology, which had lacked theory, ethnography, and strong ties to public health and medicine, Harvard anthropologist Arthur Kleinman celebrates the accomplishments made by his contemporaries by saying, “My generation has made medical anthropology what it is today.” However, he is now looking to the future of the discipline, saying it must re-examine itself as a field.During the 2009 Society for Medical Anthropology Conference at Yale University, Kleinman capitalized on the theme of Medical Anthropology at the Intersections in his plenary session entitled Five Questions on the Future. Casting the conference itself as a kind of intersection, Kleinman not only lauded its size and diversity, but asserted that it marked a pivotal moment in which medical anthropology must re-evaluate its central questions.     

"Visual Anthropology Is Dead, Long Live Visual Anthropology!"

Rethinking Visual Anthropology. Marcus Banks and Howard Morphy. eds. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997. 306 pp.
Principles of Visual Anthropology. Paul Hockings. ed. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1995. 562 pp.
Fields of Vision: Essays in Film Studies, Visual Anthropology, and Photography. Leslie Devereaux and Roger Hillman. eds. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. 362 pp.     

Medical Anthropology: Contemporary Theory and Method, Revised Edition

Medical Anthropology: Contemporary Theory and Method, Revised Edition. Carolyn F. Sargent and Thomas M. Johnson. eds. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1996 (cloth and paper), xxi. 557.     

Seeing Anthropology: Cultural Anthropology through Film

Seeing Anthropology: Cultural Anthropology through Film (book and video). Karl G. Heider. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1997. 347 pp.; 190:58 running time, VHS, color.     

Applications of Anthropology: Professional Anthropology in the Twenty-First Century

Applications of Anthropology: Professional Anthropology in the Twenty-First Century . Sarah Pink, ed. New York: Berghahn, 2006. 244 pp.     

Tree Leaf Talk: A Heideggerian Anthropology

Tree Leaf Talk:. Heideggerian Anthropology. James F. Weiner. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2001. 190 pp.
Kant, Herder, and the Birth of Anthropology. James H. Zammito. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. 576 pp.
Anthropology and Antihumanism in Imperial Germany. Andrew Zimmerman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. 364 pp.     

The Anthropology of Globalization: Cultural Anthropology Enters the 21st Century

The Anthropology of Globalization: Cultural Anthropology Enters the 21st Century. Ted C. Lewellen. Westport: Bergin and Garvey, 2002. 282 pp.     

Millennial Medical Anthropology: From There to Here and Beyond,or the Problem of Global Health

While much of Medical Anthropology was and is what we can call “Normal” (following Kuhn) Medical Anthropology, I coined the term Millennial Medical Anthropology for that branch of the discipline that, in the 1990s, was departing from the Normal research paradigms and was deserving of a distinct sobriquet. This paper considers the Strong Program in Medical Anthropology’s Millennial Medical Anthropology and its key subdivisions, the Cultural Studies of Science and Cultural Bioethics. Specifically it considers Medical Anthropology’s movement from the past into an ethical future wherein Normal Biomedicine, Bioethics and Global Health are problematized. This provides the basis for the construction of a truly anthropological global health (i.e., Global, Global Health or Global Health 2.0).     

On the Medicalization of Medical Anthropology

The following address was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Medical Anthropology (SMA), November 21,1997, Washington, DC, by outgoing SMA president Carole Browner. It has been edited slightly for publication.     

From Margin to Center: From Medical Anthropology to Cultural Studies of Science

Writing at the Margins: Discourse between Anthropology and Medicine. Arthur Kleinman. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. 314 pp.
Sickness and Healing: An Anthropological Perspective. Robert A. Hahn New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995. 327 pp.
The Harmony of Illusions: Inventing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Allan Young. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995. 327 pp.     

Gender and Anthropology

Gender and Anthropology. Frances E. Mascia-Lees and Nancy Johnson Black. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 2000. 128 pp.     

On the History of British Social Anthropology

After Tylor: British Social Anthropology 1888-1951. George W. Stocking Jr. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995.570 pp.
The Expansive Moment: The Rise of Social Anthropology in Britain and Africa 1918-1970. Jack Goody. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 238 pp.