Читать книгу A Companion to Medical Anthropology - Группа авторов - Страница 31

The emphasis on interdisciplinarity has been accompanied by a new appreciation for applied research: practicing anthropologists who have not contributed to anthropology through publications became eligible for SMA awards in 2004, when the George Foster Practicing Anthropology Award was instituted. Concurrently, the subfield began to address constructively its low profile by engaging more thoughtfully in discussion regarding dissemination. Although public and clinical health professionals have increasingly appreciated the anthropological perspective, work for hire has commonly been appropriated without attribution; and many in the subfield continue to find writing for non-anthropologists quite a challenge (see Sobo 2009).

An important recent trend in dissemination has been toward “public anthropology,” which seeks to break free of academic “intellectual isolation,” engaging straightforwardly with issues and audiences beyond the discipline’s self-imposed boundaries (Borofsky 2000). One aim of public anthropology is to spread knowledge and understanding, and rising scholars are increasingly groomed for public dissemination via -op-eds and podcasts. But public anthropology also seeks to compete directly with journalists and scholars from other disciplines who have succeeded at repackaging and selling – often at quite a profit – our anthropological insights. Marcus (2005) specifically sees the call for public anthropology as a quest for recognition from the media, which has become, for many, “the most prestigious realm” of authoritative knowledge. Marcus attributes this need to the fact, as he sees it, that anthropology is currently paradigm-poor and therefore authority-weak. In this light, public anthropology serves as “a place-holder, an attractive surrogate” and “a source of solidarity” much needed (p. 687).

Public anthropology might indeed do these things. It also reflects – but at present, with its focus often more on the expression of passion than praxis or pragmatic engagement (Rylko-Bauer et al. 2006), has not convincingly addressed – a desire, felt quite strongly in medical anthropology today: to have an impact on the world around us. Medical anthropologists have been fairly vocal when it comes to taking stands on issues of concern, such as how health inequities have increased already disadvantaged populations’ vulnerability to COVID-19. However, a thin line separates taking a stand based on careful study, and activism masquerading as academics. Marcus’s warning about the need to “rearticulate” anthropology (2005, p. 694) may be overstated, but we must certainly avoid further disarticulation, demanding of ourselves – and rewarding – more original, pragmatically engaged, theory-generating scholarship.

We cannot deny that what Marcus calls a “strong wave of critical thought” (2005, p. 679) ran through the humanities and then into anthropology in the 1980s. We cannot ignore how so many recent developments in medical anthropology have been built upon ideas from without the anthropological field. Whether medical anthropology can claim future kudos as a key theory generator rather than a mere recipient remains to be seen. But it does seem that much of today’s theory-relevant activity in anthropology is indeed enacted by, and channeled to the parent discipline through, the medical anthropology subfield. The COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced this trend, and it has done so in ways that suggest medical anthropology has staying power, particularly in regard to questions of privilege and deprivation, rights and responsibilities, and governance and resistance.