Dr. Matthew Wolf-Meyer and Dr. Nancy Chen, both of the Department of Anthropology at the University of California-Santa Cruz, will convene two linked workshops, one in Santa Cruz and the other in Los Angeles. At each of these workshops they will bring together researchers whose work informs understanding of the contemporary practice and experiences of medical pluralism in the United States. Medical pluralism refers to the coexistance of different medical systems in a single societal context. While most previous research on medical pluralism has been on the extension of allopathic or western medicine into non-western societies, Wolf-Meyer and Chen will focus their workshops on consumer choice in contemporary western, market-driven contexts. Because of its long tradition of diverse immigration and multiple established medical treatment options, California is a particularly apt site for this undertaking. The outcome of the workshop will be a special issue of a professional journal on medical pluralism in the United States, and the establishment of a network of researchers who can pool their collective knowledge and resources for future research, grant applications, and publications.
We were awarded $8346 from NSF to host a workshop that would bring together many of the UC system anthropologists who conduct research on pluralist medical traditions. In addition to the NSF funds, we received an additional $4500 from the University of California Humanities Research Institute, which allowed us to significantly expand the size of the meetings, as well as include some non-UC faculty. We hosted the first meeting at UCSF and the second at UCSC. The need for these meetings was that despite having a large number of medical anthropologists in the UC system, and having some of the most prominent scholars in the field, to date there has been no previous effort to bring UC medical anthropologists together. The UCSF meeting brought together a small group of faculty from nearly all the UC campuses (UCSF: Whitmarsh, Joseph; UCB: Holmes, Briggs; UCSC: Chen, Wolf-Meyer; UCSB: Caldwell; UCLA: Garro, Landecker; UCI: Montoya; UCSD: Csordas, Jenkins). The meeting served as an informal means for faculty from across campuses to become familiar with one another and their work. Faculty presented their current and future research plans as the basis for developing multi-institutional, multi-PI research efforts. The UCSC meeting brought together many more scholars, both from the UCs and outside institutions (a full list is attached). The meeting was two days long, and included nine presentations from faculty on their research, as well as three roundtable discussions, which featured additional faculty. The meeting was public, and included attendees from nearly all of the UCs (except UCSB and UCM), as well as Stanford and the CSUs. Funds were used to support travel and hotel costs for the participating faculty. Participants presented current research and discussed themes which shape emerging research in medical anthropology for the 21st century. We also discussed strategies for graduate student mentoring and cross campus research initiatives. The outcomes of our meetings are as follows: first, one of the participants (Celina Callahan-Kapoor, a PhD candidate in anthropology at UCSC) has posted two thematic summaries of the event on the blog Somatosphere;[1] a third entry is currently being prepared. These posts are both meant to promote the work of UC medical anthropologists, as well as provide a summary of the event as public outreach. Secondly, and ongoing, is the development of multi-campus initiatives that will build upon our shared expertise. The next UC cross campus meeting is planned for February 2014. There are currently two National Science Foundation grants being planned. The first is a multi-institution, multi-PI research grant focused on how Americans from diverse backgrounds understand ‘stress’ and its biological effects; the planned submission date is February 2014. The second grant is for a Research Coordination Network, which is planned to support graduate student training across campuses, and to provide funding for annual workshops; our plan is submit this grant application in August 2014. [1] http://somatosphere.net/2013/06/medicine-and-science-unpredicted.html; http://somatosphere.net/2013/07/invisible-interlocutors-and-the-savage-slot-conversations-at-medicine-on-the-edge.html
