An editorial in the Economic and Political Weekly asks: Is the opposition to a proposed new BSc degree in community health course in the interest of the rural population?
“A Parliamentary Committee on Health recently asked that the government abandon its proposal to introduce a new educational course that will train healthcare providers for rural areas. The committee’s suggestion appears in tune with the Indian Medical Association’s (IMA ) shrill cries that this new course, the BSc in community health, will create “half-baked doctors” and with the general response of the MBBS doctors’ lobby that the government would be playing with the lives of the rural population.”
See also the best cultural anthropology dissertations of 2011, 2010, and 2009.
Again, this year, I did a key term search in Dissertation Abstracts International to find dissertations completed in 2012 that address topics related to the anthropologyworks mission and heart.
Trophies. Flickr/Snap®
I searched for anthropology dissertations related to human rights, justice, migration, gender, health, violence, conflict, environment, and energy. As someone commented last year, this post could be called “Best cultural anthropology dissertation abstracts” since I do not read every dissertation listed. It’s true — I choose my favorites on the basis of their abstracts, assuming that an abstract does have something to do with the body of the dissertation.
So, here are my 64 picks for 2012: cultural anthropology dissertations, mainly in the U.S., that address issues that I think are really important. I am sorry that I cannot provide a more global list, since so many excellent and important dissertations are written outside the U.S./Canada. Maybe others will address this gap?
All the best to my readers, and Happy New Year 2013!
Living in Limbo with Hope: The Case of Sudanese refugees in Cairo, by Gamal Adam. York University. Advisor Daniel A. Yon. This dissertation, about Sudanese refugees in Cairo, highlights the resilience and hope that distinguish refugees’ lives. The research has resulted in three key findings. First, the refugees have adopted a resource pooling strategy, which includes living in larger households, exempting the newcomers from rent and purchase of food for some time, and ensuring that the individuals who have more resources contribute more. Second, the traditional gender roles have changed and in some cases reversed, many spouses have separated, and children have lost the rights of play and education. Third, refugees are hopeful in celebrating events and setting plans for a better future despite the turbulent experiences they have gone through; most of them are resilient people who encourage each other and are rejuvenated by speeches delivered during various events which they celebrate.
Documenting and Contextualizing Pjiekakjoo (Tlahuica) Knowledges through a Collaborative Research Project, by Elda Miriam Aldasoro Maya. University of Washington. Advisors: Eugene Hunn and Stevan Harrell. People in Pjiekakjoo (Tlahuica), Mexico, have managed to adapt to the globalized world. They have developed a deep knowledge-practice-belief system, Contemporary Indigenous Knowledges (CIK), that is part of the biocultural diversity of the region in which they live. I describe the economic, social and political context of the Pjiekakjoo, to contextualize the Pjiekakjoo CIK, including information on their land tenure struggles, their fight against illegal logging and policies governing the Zempoala Lagoons National Park that is part of their territory. The collaborative research is influenced by the ideas of Paolo Freire and, as a translational work, it draws on the New Rationality proposed by Boaventura De Sousa Santos that appeals for cognitive justice.
Career Women in Contemporary Japan: Pursuing Identities, Fashioning Lives, by Anne Stefanie Aronsson. Yale University. Advisor William Wright Kelly. This dissertation explores what motivates Japanese women to pursue professional careers in today’s neoliberal economy and how they reconfigure notions of selfhood while doing so. I ask why and how it is that one-fourth of women stay on a career track, often against considerable odds, while the other three-fourths drop out of the workforce. I draw from interviews gathered during fieldwork in Tokyo between 2007 and 2010 with 120 professional women ranging in age from early twenties to mid-nineties. I organize these interviews along two main axes: the generation when each woman entered the workforce, and the work sector she entered. I look at five work sectors – finance, industry, entrepreneurship, government, and academia – that attract women because of the new career prospects that emerge as the sectors’ institutional policies change.
“If ih noh beat mi, ih noh lov mi” [If he doesn’t beat me, he doesn’t love me]: An ethnographic investigation of intimate partner violence in western Belize, by Melissa A. Beske. Tulane University, advisor Shansan Du. I examine the cultural underpinnings which normalize gender-based intimate partner violence (IPV) in western Belize and efforts of local activists to diminish the problem. I use multiple methods to investigate why women in heterosexual dyads have come to begrudgingly accept or even justify abuse by their male partners with discourses that conflate “love” and “violence.” Joining forces with former NGO colleagues, I initiated a sustainable survivor assistance program. Continuing to incorporate new members since my time in the field, the group now offers occupational and educational assistance to survivors leaving abusive relationships, and the shelter has expanded as well and thus remains a vital resource for women across Belize and surrounding countries.
Infected Kin: AIDS, Orphan Care and the Family in Lesotho, by Mary Ellen Block. University of Michigan, Advisor: Elisha Renne. This interdisciplinary dissertation in anthropology and social work examines the intersections of HIV/AIDS and kinship and its impact on orphan care and the family in rural Lesotho. It is based on fieldwork in the rural district of Mokhotlong, Lesotho. I find that HIV is a fundamentally a kinship disease and therefore: interventions for AIDS orphans need to include caregiver support; the household should be considered as a salient unit of analysis, evaluation and intervention; and biomedical or biocultural interventions for HIV/AIDS that need to incorporate the underlying theoretical framework of HIV as a kinship disease in order to be effective.
To label Paul Farmer as a practitioner or theorist of any one field would be a disservice to the multi-faceted nature of his commentary and points of view. A self-described physician and medical anthropologist by training (Farmer 2001 [1999], 2005), Farmer’s career experiences highlight his other important roles as an academic, humanitarian activist, diplomat, and voice of the poor. Evidence of each can be found when tracing the development of Farmer’s theories through analysis of selected works published since the 1990s. Depending on the function and audience of the work, and its place in his timeline of experience, each book highlights different concepts, practices, and forms of theory.
Paul Farmer/Wikipedia
The categorization of Farmer’s writings into early, middle, and late periods helps to demonstrate the development and evolution of his core theories, how they build on each other, and how their progression is affected by each of his varied perspectives and audiences.
Analysis of selected works by Farmer traces the development of his main theories and arguments as they build on each other over time. Over the last two decades, Farmer’s central theories have evolved from studies of social suffering to practical analysis of political, social, and economic inequality and structural violence, and to pragmatic solidarity and the provision of tools of agency and targeted solutions to suffering stemming from tuberculosis (TB), HIV/AIDS, and poverty. The use of ethnography, local and international history, and the practice of actively bearing witness to violations of health as a human right facilitate what has become a collective, comprehensive approach and body of theory associated with Farmer. Consideration of his central concepts, writing style, and practical experiences serves to demonstrate how his unique approach came to be associated with the household name he is today.
Welcome to the new quarterly electronic newsletter from the Society for Medical Anthropology: Second Opinion: News and Ideas. The first issue features details on a joint international conference with a thematic focus on “encounters and engagements” in Tarragona, Spain, recent awards and achievements of SMA members, and a new anthropology and medical health interest group.
Food insecurity is considered by major aid agencies to be the world’s biggest health risk (World Food Programme 2011). Food insecurity, however, receives far less research attention and aid than other world health problems such as HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. This bias in attention holds true in cultural anthropology as well.
One-seventh of the world’s population goes to bed hungry every night. Yet anthropology does not have an edited volume that addresses the wide-ranging topics of food insecurity. The subfields of medical anthropology and nutritional anthropology are especially well-equipped to study food insecurity and its related issues in nuanced, reflective, and powerful ways.
This review, originally prepared for a graduate seminar in medical anthropology, examines works written about food insecurity in the anthropological and closely-related social science literature. I highlight what is, and is not, being spoken about within the anthropological food insecurity discourse. My review reveals three major connections and complications: Development Policy and Food Insecurity, Mental Health and Food Insecurity, and HIV/AIDS and Food Insecurity.
Development Policy and Food Insecurity
The Cauca Valley is in southwest Colombia.
Food insecurity is often the subject of policy and those development projects that attempt to enact policy. Taussig (1978) in his classic article “Nutrition, Development, and Foreign Aid” is one of the first to demonstrate the complex interplay between food insecurity of a population, outside political and economic intervention, and its consequences.
Taussig focuses on the Community Systems Foundation (CSF) which found that in the Cauca Valley, “50 percent of the children under six years were malnourished” (1978:109). The CSF’s solution was to increase peasant’s consumption of soya, which would close both the protein and caloric gaps.
Taussig examines three important points that exemplify why the CSF intervention failed to work. He first explains that the caloric and protein gaps that the CSF were concerned with were based on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) daily requirements (1979:110). That is, the CSF came up with a guideline, without basing those guidelines on their population’s actual energy expenditures and what they needed to consume. Continue reading “State of hunger: Food insecurity’s place in anthropology”→
I am organizing a panel for the Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA) conference in Denver on youth and food justice programs. If you are interested in participating or know someone who would be good to have on the panel, please let me know at the email below.
Here is the session abstract:
Working with Youth to Grow a More Just Food System
Research on food justice and related topics – including food security, access, farmworker rights, health disparities, and sustainable land use – has continued to explore new and innovative ways to empower communities and create a more equitable food system. Youth, particularly teenagers, are an important demographic in the food justice movement; however, the social capital and potential of youth as agents of change are often overlooked. This panel will present research involving youth and food justice and discuss ways of involving youth in research and activism to build a more just food system.
Dan Jordan
Prevention Researcher/Educator
Participatory Action Research at ICR
Institute for Community Research
Hartford, CT 06106
(860) 278-2044 ext. 268
dan.jordan@icrweb.org http://www.incommunityresearch.org
The Council on Anthropology & Reproduction (CAR) Award is one of very few awards given to edited volumes, yet it helped establish and foment topics of reproduction as central fields of anthropological inquiry. The “Most Notable Recent Collection” Award seeks to recognize and celebrate recent (published within 3 years of the nomination deadline) collections of anthropological works addressing: human reproduction, reproductive technologies, population policy, birth control and contraception, pregnancy, the study and application of genetics, childbirth, adoption, and the roles of parents, among others.
Like the populations of many African countries, Mauritians are football mad. The game played in stadiums and streets all over the palm-fringed Indian Ocean island is a legacy of 19th century British colonialism — administrators, missionaries, soldiers and sailors introduced the game to locals — whereas in other African nations it was popularized by the Portuguese and French.
Mauritius football players. Flickr/llee_wu
Traditionally, Mauritius split into two more or less equal groups — those who supported Liverpool and those who supported Manchester United. Now, because of increased television coverage and the easy availability of football merchandise, especially branded t-shirts, other UK Premier League teams like Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City are gaining support as younger people choose different football clubs as vehicles for sporting and other identities appropriate to their age sets.
But Mauritians from all of the country’s diverse ethnic groups — Hindu, Muslim, Creole, Chinese and French — know that a Frenchman of Mauritian descent — in fact, of Hindu Telugu heritage — Vikash Dhorasoo, a member of the French team at the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany, was one of the most gifted midfielders in modern times.
The former AC Milan, Lyon and Paris St Germain player is also the most prominent footballer of South Asian descent in the history of the game, and very well known for his views on the importance of combating racism, homophobia and gender discrimination in sport. The regret among Mauritian football fans is that Dhorasoo never played for a Premier League team before his retirement in January 2008. However, he did visit Mauritius in May 2009 to promote FIFA’s Grassroots programme, which was inaugurated on the island.
The Mauritius football team did not make it to the current African Cup of Nations, the finals of which are being co-hosted by Gabon and Equatorial Guinea. But the country is following the championship closely through local and international TV channels and local press coverage.
Significantly, Mauritius along with Zimbabwe, another former British colony, has been part of the FIFA Medical Assessment and Research Centre’s research into “11 for Health”, a football-based health education programme for young and teenage children. It had previously been piloted in a smaller study in Khayelitsha township in South Africa in 2009.
Vikash Dhorasoo playing with school girls from Birmingham, Flickr/Housing and Sport Network
In Mauritius, 389 schoolchildren, boys and girls, aged 12-15 years, at 11 secondary schools took part in eleven 90 minute sessions which combined learning or refining a football skill with linked information about 10 health issues – for example, heading a football and avoiding HIV infection, defending well and washing one’s hands, shooting for goal and vaccination for self and family, building fitness and eating a varied diet, and good teamwork and fair play. The study was conducted between February and June 2010.
Questionnaires assessed participants’ pre and post-intervention health knowledge as well as views about the “11 for Health” programme. The results carried out in co-operation with the Mauritius Football Association and the Mauritius Ministries of Heath and Quality of Life, Education, Culture and Human Resources, and Youth and Sport were extremely positive. The results among a similar group of children in an out-of-school setting In Zimbabwe were also excellent. Continue reading “Football drives health education among schoolchildren in Mauritius and other African nations”→
Sustainable creativity in healthcare When: May 16-18 Where: Lyric Theatre Belfast
The aim of the conference is to explore, celebrate, share and gain in-depth knowledge of international working models of best arts in health practice and research development. Exploration of the Arts Care model of engagement will provide delegates with insight into how an arts organisation can successfully develop authentic creative communities within healthcare environments.
For those of you (including me) who enjoy watching TV cooking contests, we know that the worst that can happen is that an aspiring winner is perspiring, or the presentation was chaotic, or the judges made nasty comments about the taste of one of the dishes.
For millions of women who cook family meals, especially in developing countries, the challenges are quite different. There is no panel of judges and no “time’s up” called out to arrest the work of the contestants in their well-equipped stainless-steely kitchen. Rob Bailis speaks at the Elliott School of International Affairs, Nov 3, 2011.
Instead, there is a “killer in the kitchen” which calls time’s up for mothers and children who spend a lot of time inhaling cook stove fumes.
On November 3, Rob Bailis, assistant professor of environmental social science in the department of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University, gave a CIGA seminar entitled, “Arresting the Killer in the Kitchen: The Promises and Pitfalls of Commercializing Improved Cookstoves.”
Bailis took the audience on a rich and insightful tour of how improved cook stoves could have a major positive impact on women, children, and the environment. His talk drew on knowledge about the effects of various types of fuel for daily cooking on the cooks and the wider environment.
His slides included maps of types of household fuel in various regions of the world. He brought together data from the fields of environmental studies, public health, and local surveys.
He discussed the “energy ladder hypothesis” which says that as people get wealthier, they use cleaner fuels. As I was listening, I was thinking: okay, this doesn’t sound good for the earth, given the way the economy is going.
Another point to share is this: Bailis said that Western development experts have been pushing improved cook stoves for three decades but there is very little evidence about their effectiveness in terms of reducing health risks for cooks/children and reducing deforestation and other environmental problems.
China is the country to watch on improved cook stoves. Of the 200 million improved cook stoves in the world, 80 percent are in China. Let’s hear about the “best practices” there and how they might be replicated elsewhere.
Thirty years is a long time, especially without much to say in terms of what works. Time to switch channels and get back to the cooking throw-down.
Maybe we need a TV show about what works in development?
Update from Professor Rob Bailis:
In fact, there is evidence that some improved stoves certainly improve quality and, based on that, we can justifiably hypothesize that if families adopt such stoves and use them regularly, then their air quality will improve and their health risk will be reduced. More importantly, there is evidence of this – just last week (about a week after my presentation) a paper was published in the Lancet by Kirk Smith and his team. This reports the results of the first randomized control trial based on improved cookstove adoption. They found that the stoves they promoted reduced the incidence of severe forms of respiratory infection by around 30%. So the evidence exists. What is lacking is program-specific follow-up to understand whether a given intervention is resulting in effective and long-term stove adoption. But, like I hinted at in my talk, the carbon markets are having an interesting influence on project monitoring by creating elaborate protocols to make sure stoves are actually used.
anthropologyworks 