Medical Anthropology
The Program in Medical and Psychiatric Anthropology is one of the core academic programs in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine. The Program bridges the Harvard Medical School (HMS) and the Department of Anthropology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), with some faculty having appointments both in HMS and FAS, students and fellows taking courses and working with faculty in both social medicine and anthropology, and degree programs (M.A. in Medical Anthropology and M.D./Ph.D. program in medical anthropology) and post-doctoral fellowship programs designed to cross the two faculties.
The Program in Medical and Psychiatric Anthropology was launched when Professor Arthur Kleinman came to Harvard in 1982 with appointments in both Social Medicine and Anthropology, and was joined one year later by Profs. Byron Good and Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good. Together they built a program that has supported more than 70 Ph.D. students in the Department of Anthropology, including 15 M.D./Ph.D. students, 40 NIMH-supported post-doctoral fellows, 75 post-doctoral fellows from East Africa and East and Southeast Asia, and numerous visiting fellows and scholars. For 25 years, the NIMH training program in clinically relevant medical anthropology – or culture and mental health services – brought together anthropologists, psychiatrists, and social scientists, fellows and graduate students, faculty, and clinicians from the community in a weekly seminar and collaborative activities that have helped define the program over the years. The “Friday Morning Seminar” continues into the present.
Medical anthropology is a subdiscipline of social anthropology focused on studies of illness, healing, medical care, and biotechnologies across societies. In the 1980’s, Harvard faculty, students and fellows collaborated around what was known as an “interpretive” or “meaning-centered” approach to theory, ethnographic research, and writing in medical anthropology. Today, medical anthropology has become a site within anthropology where wide-ranging issues crosscut – classical interests in local forms of medical knowledge and practice, the development of new biotechnologies and new forms of medicalization of human experience, reproductive technologies and the reshaping of kinship, the body and disciplinary practices, global inequalities in access to care, globalization of diseases (with HIV/AIDS a critical site for anthropology) and responses, emerging forms of governmentality enacted through medical institutions, critical studies of how race, ethnicity, and gender are embedded in medical knowledge and practice, violence and human suffering, pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical lifestyles – these and many other issues have become core to what now constitutes medical anthropology.
Faculty, students, and fellows at Harvard have actively engaged many of these issues now central to medical and psychiatric anthropology. Several core issues have emerged as particularly salient within the Harvard program in recent years. These include studies of contemporary modes of subjectivity and human experience; violence, suffering and humanitarian interventions; moral dimensions of medicine, illness, and global health; cultural studies of biomedicine and emerging biotechnologies; race, ethnicity, and health care disparities; anthropologies of infectious diseases and global health delivery; and anthropological studies of major mental illness, stigma, and mental health services. These core issues are being addressed in the research and academic writing and teaching by faculty, fellows and students in the medical anthropology program.
Research
Studies of Contemporary Modes of Subjectivity and Human Experience
Subjectivity: Ethnographic Investigations. Joao Biehl, Byron Good, and Arthur Kleinman (University of California Press 2007) – a continuing set of investigations of subjectivity in diverse settings
Postcolonial Disorders, Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good, Sandra Hyde, Sarah Pinto, and Byron Good (University of California Press 2007) – a continuing set of investigations of “postcolonial disorders” and subjectivity in diverse settings
Political Subjectivity of Indonesian Contemporary Artists (Art and Politics, Human Rights, Political Reformation), Mary-Jo D. Good and Byron Good
Studies in Javanese Subjectivity, Byron Good
Political Subjectivity of Acehnese in Post-conflict Aceh, Mary-Jo D. Good
Navigating Body, Self, and Society in Adolescence, Anne Becker
Violence, Suffering and Humanitarian Interventions
The Peace Process in Aceh: Remainders of Violence and the Future of Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, Byron Good and Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good
Violence, Trauma, and Mental Health Interventions in Post-Conflict Aceh, Byron Good, Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good, Jesse Grayman
Moral Dimensions of Medicine, Illness, and Global Health
Biomedicine and Caregiving, Arthur Kleinman
Japanese Military Medical Atrocities in China During the Second World War, Arthur Kleinman with JB Nie and N Guo
Values in Global Health, Arthur Kleinman with Stewart K and Keusch J.
Studies of End of Life Care in the United States and Indonesia, Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good
Cultural Studies of Biomedicine and Emerging Biotechnologies
(See also Cultural Studies of Biomedicine)
Doctoring in Crisis and Disasters: collaborative preliminary study with University of Gadjah Mada, Indonesia faculty, Mary-Jo D. Good
Harvard Bioscientists Talk About Social and Ethical Issues in New Biotechnologies and Translational Science, Michael Fischer, Mary-Jo D. Good, Byron Good
Race, Ethnicity, and Health Care Disparities
How Does Culture Make a Difference in American Health Care? American Health Care at the Interface of Ethnicity/ Race and Citizenship, Mary-Jo D. Good, PI
Race, Culture and Responses to Disparities in American Mental Health Care, Mary-Jo D. Good, with sub-studies by post-doctoral fellows and graduate students (Seth Hannah, Sarah Willen, Sadeq Rahimi, Ken Vickery, Elizabeth Carpenter-Song)
The Role of Culture in Care-Seeking for Early Psychosis in Boston, Byron Good, Larry Park, Constantin Tranulus
Anthropologies of Infectious Diseases and Global Health Delivery
(see also Infectious Diseases)
Asian Flus in Ethnographic and Political Context: A biosocial approach, Arthur Kleinman with Bloom B, Saich K, Mason K and Aulino F.
Assessing and Improving the Quality of Life of Cuban AIDS Patients, Arachu Castro, PI
Anthropological Studies of Major Mental Illness, Stigma, and Mental Health Services
Face and the Embodiment of Stigma in Chinese Culture, Arthur Kleinman and Lawrence Yang.
Mental Illness in Africa, Arthur Kleinman with Ayeampong E and Hill A.
"Deep China: Deep Troubles, Deep Hopes,” Arthur Kleinman and five former students, now university faculty, collaborating on a book, which will represent what medical anthropology and cultural psychiatry tell us about the changing experiences of Chinese people today.
Cultural studies of early psychotic experience in Java, Byron Good (with team from Gadjah Mada University, Jogyakarta, Indonesia)
An ethnographic study of a post-conflict mental health intervention program in Aceh, Byron Good, Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good, Jesse Grayman