Paper short abstract:

“Culture” is often uncritically used by public health researchers in an attempt to explain differences in health outcomes. We are arguing that culture, particularly in its bounded form, should not be used as a proxy for any type of social group. It obscures more than it explains.

Paper long abstract:

Although "culture" is a highly contested concept in anthropology, it is often not viewed as problematic in other fields of enquiry. The concept of culture, particularly in its bounded form, is commonly viewed and applied as an explanatory variable in public health research. The need to find discreet social categories that could be linked to particular health outcomes and used in quantitative data analysis is the motivation. In this context, the concept of culture is used to explain a wide variety of individual and group behaviours that impact on health and well-being in a measurable way. Also, culture is viewed to be something coherent, shared by all members of a group in equal, measurable terms. Culture signifies ethnicity and ethnicity is used as a proxy for "race", with these three terms often used interchangeably. Finally, culture is considered as having agency—it can do or cause things. We will use our experience as members of WHO panels and work groups on a range of issues to illustrate that anthropologists are commonly perceived as the experts and custodians of "culture"— we can give permission for its use. It then comes as a surprise to public health colleagues when we argue that culture is merely a "bundle" that masks complexities in the human experience, and is not very helpful (and often confounding) as a "causal factor" to explain differences in health outcomes. Instead we argue that unequal access to resources based on social or economic status, gender, religious or racial discrimination are the key drivers for differences in health outcomes.

Paper short abstract:

The idea of using anthropological research methods has influenced Thai HIV/AIDS research. However, interdisciplinary collaborations have muted anthropologists' contribution to AIDS research, and the borrowing of anthropological methods by other disciplines has failed to produce quality research.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on data from the Thai and other Southeast Asian HIV/AIDS epidemics I argue that medical anthropology and anthropology in general have played only very minor roles in the modelling of these epidemics and in the development and implementation of AIDS interventions. However, the idea of anthropological research and of the use of anthropological research methods such as ethnography has played an important role in the construction of the Thai and other regional AIDS epidemics and in AIDS interventions.

The fact that anthropologists have increasingly been finding employment in public health research and allied fields, has been viewed as a triumph for the discipline and, perhaps too, as a gift-horse whose limitations and deficiencies should not be examined too closely. Also, other disciplines are increasingly borrowing anthropological concepts and/or research methods, and at a time when the discipline has been under threat in universities some anthropologists have found comfort in this fact.

However, I suggest, that it is time to examine the limitations imposed on anthropological research in interdisciplinary collaborations, and the quality of research in other disciplines which claim to be influenced by anthropology. I argue that the epistemological and other limitations imposed on anthropological research in multidisciplinary collaborations often reduce anthropologists to little more than culture brokers and taxonomists - collectors and interpreters of exotica - an ironic (if largely unnoticed) return to the discipline's nineteenth-century roots, and that when other disciplines draw on anthropological research techniques the outcome is often merely "anthropology lite".

Paper short abstract:

This paper advocates the use of an evidence-based ethnography of indigenous perceptions, to investigate multidisciplinary scientific investigation in biomedical research. This approach is supported with data about the traditional mortuary rites of the South Fore, collected during investigations into the disease kuru.

Paper long abstract:

During traditional mortuary rites in the South Fore linguistic group the bodies of loved ones were normally disposed of by transumption, defined as:

"….the mortuary practice of consumption of the dead and the incorporation of the body of the dead person into the bodies of living relatives, thus helping to free the spirit of the dead..." (Alpers, M. P. (2007) A history of kuru. PNG Med J, 50, 10-19.)

As part of our investigations into the disease kuru, which was transmitted during traditional mortuary feasts, we have documented the Fore religion and the deep significance of transumption, as mortuary rite and one of several means of disposing the dead. This practice had deep significance for the Fore people and their neighbours.

We describe the interactions between the land, which is the creator, the founding clan ancestors, the guardian spirits, the immediate ancestors and 5 souls of the deceased, and the bereaved relatives during the practice of transumption. Our findings challenge western perspectives of cannibalism and the theoretical interpretations that anthropologists make, and document an elaborate relationship between the Fore people, their natural environment, their cosmology and their religion. We also show that these findings are common to other linguistic groups in the eastern highlands of Papua New Guinea.

Finally, we advocate, using the practice of transumption as an example, the use of evidence-based ethnography of indigenous perceptions and beliefs to invigorate multidisciplinary approaches to biomedical research.

Paper short abstract:

Described since its first appearance as the global disease par excellence, HIV/AIDS has often been dealt through internationally coordinated public health programmes. What are the outfalls into locales of the assemblage of global anti-AIDS interventions with local patterns of infection and national apparatuses and regulations?

Paper long abstract:

The one of anthropology with anti-AIDS public-heath programs is to day one of the happiest marriages in the field of applied social sciences. Over the past decades, public health interventions have often relied on anthropological insights into the social, geographical, cultural causes that ease the spread of HIV into locales. With the increasing perception of AIDS as a global disease, the analytical perspective has widen up, causing anthropologists to take the economic and political imbalances of the international scenario into account. The recognition of the global scale of causes has gone hand-to-hand with the globalization of responses to the epidemic. As a set of international principles has begun travelling and being taken up through the world, a compelling question is now emerging, calling anthropologists and public health experts alike for a careful consideration. Taken for granted the urge to unravel the causes of HIV, aren't we leaving something else out of the picture?

What are the outfalls of globalized public health responses to AIDS into locales?

Based on a 12-months fieldwork among patients groups in southwest China, this paper wishes to contribute to the dialogue between anthropology and public health. By exploring the assemblage woven around the implementation of the international principle of Greater Involvement of People with AIDS in China, this work aims to cast a light into the potential of anthropology to dig up not only the causative forces behind the epidemic, but also the generative social and political power of anti-AIDS interventions in the eve of globalization.

Paper short abstract:

Anthropologists and psychologists investigate stress and trauma in Mexico. Findings from a national epidemiological study are compared to the USA and Ecuador. We find differences in trauma, and the trajectory extreme event recovery. We discuss how anthropology interfaced with psychology to understand stress cross-culturally.

Paper long abstract:

In 1997, a team of social anthropologists began working with a team of community psychologists to investigate the nature and incidence of stress and trauma in Mexico and how stress and trauma compare to Mexican-American and other Latino populations in the United States of America. Between 1998 and 2000, the team carried out the first epidemiological study of stress in urban Mexico using four representative cities spread across the country (Oaxaca, Guadalajara, Merida and Hermosillo). Subsequently, we have carried out studies of post-disaster stress, trauma and recovery after Hurricane Paulina (Acapulco, Mexico), flooding and landslides (Teziutlan, Puebla and Villahermosa, Tabasco, Mexico), volcanic eruptions (Ecuador) and fire (Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico). The paper will explore the epidemiological findings from the national study, and compare those as well as recovery data to comparable data from the United States. The goal is to understand how stress and trauma manifest themselves in Latino, Latin American, and non-Hispanic populations. We have found differences in the levels of violence and trauma experienced by "normal" populations when compared to US populations as well as differences in the trajectory of recovery between the USA, Mexico and Ecuador as well as between subcultures in Mexico and Ecuador. Similarities include conceptualizations of post-traumatic stress, while differences include different expectations regarding expected support from informal networks. In the process the paper will explore how social anthropology has interfaced with community psychology in an effort to develop an understanding of the cross-cultural nature of stress and trauma.