Volume 61, No. 3, Fall 2002
Malinowski Award Lecture, 2002
Building Social Sciences and Health Research: A Decade of Technical Assistance in South Asia
Pertti J. Pelto
This paper describes main features of a program of technical assistance in South Asia (primarily India) designed to help comm -unity health researchers develop more effective data gathering and analysis in applied studies of reproductive health issues. The program was funded by the Ford Foundation (India) and organized under a grant to Johns Hopkins University. Recipients of the technical assistance have been mainly small nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and some social science researchers in academic institutions in India. In most cases, the participants have been involved in community-based intervention programs, so the research activities have had a directly applied focus. The increasing challenge of the AIDS epidemic brought about a shift in emphasis in the program, as many organizations and individuals took up research on sexual behavior to better understand the patterns of individual actions that are associated with higher risks of HIV infection. An informal “sexual behavior research network” has developed as the program of technical assistance and the communications among the various participants matured. The use of computers for data management and e-mail communication has facilitated these developments.
Key words: social mapping, sexual behavior, AIDS, sexual health, training, cultural scripts, India
When (Working) in Rome: Applying Anthropology in Caesar’s Realm
Kim Hopper
This roundabout apologia for alternative anthropological employment tackles issues of civil service, contract work, and litigation. It first argues that the dismantling of psychiatric state hospitals in the postwar U.S.—and the subsequent taking shape of a “de facto mental health system”—offer unprecedented opportunities for applying anthropological tradecraft to issues of pressing public concern, especially with respect to persons with severe psychiatric disorders. Five are highlighted: attitudes in action, supported work, recovery, coercion, and social solidarity. Because much of that research can be expected to proceed under contract, it next surveys some distinctive entanglements that arise under the terms and conditions of such work. And because the courts have proven so critical in recent policy changes toward homelessness and mental illness, it examines finally a troubled instance of the anthropologist as expert witness—here, as author of a legal affidavit in an ongoing right-to-shelter lawsuit. I argue, perilously, that owing to the peculiar circumstances surrounding its production and consumption, an affidavit effectively constitutes a distinctive documentary genre. In an anthropology so applied, certain ethnographic sins (“refusals” of thickness in Ortner’s terms) are both inevitable and, arguably, forgivable.
Key words: public interest, mental health, contract work, legal affidavit, narrative, U.S.
Poverty in Paradise: Development and Relative Income Poverty in Rural Tahitian Society
Victoria S. Lockwood
I compare rural income poverty on three developing Tahitian islands in France’s Overseas Territory of French Polynesia (Tubuai, Rurutu, and Raivavae). As French citizens and participants in the French welfare state, rural Tahitians have a high standard of living and social welfare. Nevertheless, economic opportunities are limited, development has been uneven, and social inequality and wealth differences are growing. Low-income families experience a relative income poverty in which they fail to achieve a culturally defined, minimum standard of living. I analyze the Tahitian social and ideological construction of poverty in which the existence of poverty is denied. I then describe the lived experience of poverty, showing that real structural constraints are ignored in islanders’ assertions that their society is egalitarian and that poverty is a personal moral failure. I then analyze variability in the structural characteristics of poverty across the three islands, focusing on significant differences in 1) its incidence, 2) the population segments most vulnerable, 3) the frequency of various family and household forms and their experience of poverty, 4) rates of out-migration and island demographic profiles, and 5) islanders’ strategies to avoid poverty. Finally, I discuss the roots of the inconsistency between Tahitian attitudes and the realities of rural income poverty.
Key words: income poverty, development, French Polynesia
Blue Crabs and Controversy on the Chesapeake Bay: A Cultural Model for Understanding Watermen’s Reasoning about Blue Crab Management
Michael Paolisso
Commercial fishers of the Chesapeake Bay, known throughout the region as watermen, have depended for centuries on the bay’s natural resources to support their families and communities. Recently, yield and population indicators have led marine scientists and natural resource managers to conclude that the blue crab population is at dangerously low levels and that reductions in commercial harvesting are key to protecting the blue crab. Watermen agree that the blue crab fishery is under intense pressure and see a role for science and regulations in helping to sustain the fishery and their livelihoods, but they question the scientific knowledge and are critical of the governmental regulations. Watermen’s knowledge, beliefs, and values have not been explored for their potential as an alternative or complement to scientific and regulatory approaches to addressing problems of the blue crab fishery. This paper uses a cognitive anthropology approach to enrich our understanding of watermen’s cultural and ecological knowledge and to analyze that knowledge to identify a cultural model of watermen’s reasoning about blue crab management.
Key words: watermen, cultural models, blue crab, fisheries management, Chesapeake Bay
Predisposition Toward Adoption of Open Ocean Aquaculture by Northern New England’s Inshore, Commercial Fishermen
Torene Tango-Lowy and Robert A. Robertson
Aquaculture has been promoted as an enterprise that will provide regional economic development, new employment opportunities for displaced fishers, and the replenishment of commercially important fish stock. Conversely, how will open ocean aquaculture fit into the occupational life of the traditional Northern New England inshore, commercial fisher? Our objective was to identify those fishers with a predisposition to adopt the innovation, as determined by the relationship between the probability of potential adoption and particular explanatory variables. We drew upon adoption of innovations research and fishing-specific studies to establish the explanatory variables: fishers’ attitudes toward specific innovation attributes and their personal and situational characteristics. Results suggest that nearly one-third of those surveyed were willing to consider adoption of open ocean aquaculture. We found adoption research to be effective in formulating a model that yielded statistically significant explanatory variables relative to the dependent variable. Respondents’ fishing characteristics, communication behavior, and attitudes toward specific innovation attributes were the best predictors in the model. Open ocean aquaculture programs specifically designed to address the needs and interests of these fishers could serve to encourage adoption of the innovation and increase adoption success.
Key words: aquaculture, commercial fishermen, technology transfer, New England
Positioning Policy: The Epistemology of Social Capital and Its Application in Applied Rural Research in Australia
Andrea Whittaker and Cathy Banwell
Place, community, and identity have emerged as central issues in our ongoing research in a small rural community in Australia. We reflect upon the spatialization of the concept of social capital and the uncritical use of the term community and participation within this policy discourse. We describe the links between projects to improve community capacity and movements that are changing the nature of governance and forging new relationships between people and the state.
Key words: social capital, community, policy, rural anthropology, Australia
Mapping the Air-Bridge Locations: The Application of Ethnographic Mapping Techniques to a Study of HIV Risk Behavior Determinant in East Harlem, New York, and Bayamón, Puerto Rico
Denise Oliver-Velez, H. Ann Finlinson, Sherry Deren, Rafaela R. Robles,
Michele Shedlin, Jonny Andía, and Hector Colón
Ethnographic mapping plays an important role in learning more about the geographic location and temporal movement of hidden populations; it also aids in the exploration of drug use patterns and the social infrastructure of drug users. This paper presents a narrative account of the development and implementation of a mapping process for the ARIBBA project, a dual-site study of the HIV risk behaviors of Puerto Rican drug injectors and crack smokers. The overall goals of the project are to understand the differences in influences on HIV-related risk behaviors. Mapping provided the environmental context for data analysis and led to new insights on both the differences and the similarities between field locations and target populations. Mapping substantively enhanced the ability to make meaningful comparisons in the analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data.
Key words: ethnographic methods, Puerto Ricans, drug abuse, HIV/AIDS, New York, Puerto Rico
Improving Organizational Communication and Cohesion in a Health Care Setting through Employee-Leadership Exchange
Elisa J. Sobo and Blair L. Sadler
In the 1990s many health care organizations underwent reengineering. One of the unintended consequences of this process was a drop in employee morale. This article describes a project to improve morale in one hospital by fostering employees’ constructive expression of dissatisfaction and of innovative ideas to senior leaders in the context of Employee Leadership Council meetings. Importantly, although formulated on the basis of employee suggestions, the hospital’s president and chief executive officer initiated the project. After describing these councils, we examine the results of this experiment in employee-leadership exchange and explore the ramifications for the councils of the CEO’s intimate involvement. Finally, we review lessons that might be transferable to other organizational settings as well as those that have implications for managerial understandings of organizational culture.
Key words: organizational culture, participatory action research, employee satisfaction, leadership, organizational change, United States
Closing the Gap Between Anthropology and Public Policy: The Route Through Cultural Heritage Development
Robert A. Hackenberg
Anthropologists are returning to the field of public policy making. Recent work has focused attention on problems and “disorders” in the nonwestern world that could benefit from intervention by development anthropologists as both proponents and designers of appropriate strategies. Foreign aid resources available to multilateral lenders have been shrinking as the magnitude of the problems multiply. At the same time, the commitment of the World Bank to macroeconomic (“top down”) strategies had minimized dialog with anthropologists, whose research continues to take place at ground level and whose recommendations feature “bottom up” perspectives on change. Across the last decade, both Bank staffers and anthropologists have converged on the importance of cultural factors in development planning, the need for “inclusion” of presumptive beneficiaries in project design, and the testing of “participatory policy making” as a postmodern alternative to hegemony and hierarchy. In the economy of global capitalism, investment promotes trade, and trade properly managed promotes distributed benefits to the poor. This essay examines UNESCO’s cultural heritage sites (e.g., Angkor, Borobudur, Fez-Medina) as a proper venue for partnership between the World Bank and development anthropologists intended to produce income streams for the alleviation of “absolute poverty.” The “participatory policy generator” is proposed as a suitable instrument for testing at cultural heritage sites.
Key words: cultural heritage, development anthropology, public policy making, participatory policy generator, UNESCO, World Bank
