In Montreal, the Committee for the Future of Print and Electronic Publishing and the Committee on Practicing, Applied, and Public Interest Anthropology co-sponsored sessions to expand the conversation about the future of the AAA publishing program. The first set of speakers discussed the services of the program and a second set of speakers spoke to the future directions and sustainability. Some speakers did not sign releases and so we did not record their papers.

We invite anyone who could not come to Montreal or who could not come to the sessions to view these papers, to look at earlier blog posts (October 18, October 25, and November 9), and to join us in thinking about the long-term options and opportunities.

Note: In the case of AAA journals, content will be freely available for September, October, and November of 2011. AAA members always have access to these articles amid the half-million full-text items available freely to AAA members on AnthroSource.

Each discussion node includes textbook materials, videos, articles and ethnographies.

• Introductions to Medical Anthropology
• Explanations of Health/Wellbeing and Disease/Illness (list includes a section on medical ecology and a section on ethnomedicine.)
• Healing
• Body and Embodiment
• Food, Nutrition, Diet, Growth
• Reproduction, Reproductive Health (this also includes a separate list on Gender and Health)
• HIV and Infectious Diseases
• Alcohol, Tobacco, Drug
• Mental Health
• Organ Transplants
• Inequality and Structural Violence
• Public Policies and Institutions of Care
• Research Methods

I’d be interested in your comments about the lists and any thoughts about medical anthropology classes you’ve taken or taught. Post your thoughts by leaving a reply (bottom) or tell me if you’d like to see any other lists developed by taking the poll.

Tina Moffat argues in a recent Medical Anthropology Quarterly article that some critical anthropologists and sociologists see the obesity “epidemic” as entirely “socially-constructed.”

By talking about obesity as an epidemic, Moffat points out that the implication is that obesity is a disease. The article interrogates this frame. On the one hand, such a frame may mean that health insurers in America can cover treatment and such may allow more research and policy money be made available in a society where medical research is robustly funded. But on the other hand, this conceptualization may focus solutions on the individual—rather than structural considerations like poverty and insufficient access to healthy food choices or ignoring socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and cultural factors. Rather than looking at obesity as an epidemic, childhood obesity would need to be examined “as part of larger societal and global forces that require multifaceted solutions that are thoughtful and directed at changes in social and economic policy, the environment, and our cultural milieu.”

The author concludes by exhorting a middle path:

One approach is to treat childhood obesity as a social and environmental problem that is in part fueled by a “toxic food environment,” as mentioned above. Or perhaps we should link it metaphorically to consumption, not just of food, but of material goods, related to concerns about global warming and environmental destruction.

What are the most effective rubrics? How can the medical community, public health researchers, and anthropologists all dialogue about the best ways to work together to reduce the prevalence of childhood obesity?

Enjoy free access to all 86 articles in this virtual issue through September 30, 2011; after that it will be accessible to AAA members, AnthroSource subscribers, and pay-per-view on Wiley Online Library.

The June 2011 issue of American Anthropologist, available now on AnthroSource (free to members of the AAA) to read full-text articles.

Don’t miss the latest from PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review

The November 2010 Special Issue on NGOs

…and a companion Virtual Issue on NGOs

PoLAR continues its OPEN ACCESS original on-line content: Follow our ongoing discussion of the emerging Anthropology of Crime:

• Interviews with Jean Comaroff, Stephanie Kane & Phil Parnell
• Ongoing anthropological conversations on the ethnographic study on trials, the legal issues facing Native Americans, and more

New and established authors join together in PoLAR’s innovative interactive formats.

We are proud to feature and mentor younger scholars. 

***COMING IN 2011: NEW ORIGINAL ON-LINE content***

PoLAR author Jennifer Curtis interviews James Ferguson and Akhil Gupta on NGOs.

If you are the author of an article and you want to announce publication on your Facebook or MySpace profile, you can use this tool to let others know about your work. If you disagree–or agree–with a piece, you can use this feature to tell others about it on your blog or in a tweet.

AnthroSource is free to AAA members, who can login here to access its content.

By looking closely at everyday interactions between mothers and children as they unfolded in a context of interested others, we were learning not only about the cultural world of the adults, but about how cultural orientations are communicated to children through these interactions.

In America, parents worry about “spoiling” their children. However, everyday worlds made rich with treats allow Ecuadorian mothers to make a point simply when goodies go missing. And indulgence provided with a grimace can cue Sri Lankan children to value restraint.

How do you discipline and reward your children? What feels “natural” to you and your family that will help convey cultural lessons in the fabric of your daily life? What defines a good mother or a good child? How do you discipline and reward your children? What feels “natural to you and your family and how does what you say or do convey a cultural lesson?

 Login to AnthroSource (free to members of the AAA) to read full-text articles

Read this powerful virtual issue from Museum Anthropology

The Deafening Silence:
NAGPRA, Repatriation, and
the Pages of Museum Anthropology

In the 20 years since the passage of the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), an astonishingly small number of contributions with “repatriation” or “reburial” in the title have been published in Museum Anthropology and its precursor, the Council for Museum Anthropology Newsletter. All are reproduced in this virtual issue of Museum Anthropology , which serves as a precursor of, and complement to, the publication of a special thematic issue of Museum Anthropology (vol. 33, no. 2) commemorating the 20th anniversary of the passage of NAGPRA.

Enjoy FREE access to the following articles from
this virtual issue: 

Edited by
Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh and Stephen E. Nash

Repatriation and the Reconstruction of Identity
Jordan Jacobs

Repatriation Reader: Who Owns American Indian Remains?
Dorothy Lippert

Prisoners of Conscience: Public Policy and Contemporary Repatriation Discourse
Amalia Rosenblum

The National Museum of the American Indian Repatriation Policy: Reply to William C. Sturtevant
Richard W. West

Repatriation Policy and the Heye Collection
Edmund Carpenter

Click here to access the full list of articles in this issue

 Museum Anthropology seeks to be a leading voice for scholarly research on the collection, interpretation, and representation of the material world. Through critical articles, provocative commentaries, and thoughtful reviews, this peer-reviewed journal aspires to cultivate vibrant dialogues that reflect the global and trans-disciplinary work of museums. Situated at the intersection of practice and theory, Museum Anthropology advances our knowledge of the ways in which material objects are intertwined with living histories of cultural display, economics, socio-politics, law, memory, ethics, colonialism, conservation, and public education.

Access to this article is available to everyone until November 1st. Article may then be accessed via Anthrosource for AAA members, or Wiley Online Library for non AAA members.