Ann Mcelroy
Biographic Data
| ID | 3600111 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ann Mcelroy |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ann |
| FAMILY NAME | Mcelroy |
| SIGNATURE | MCELROY A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University at Buffalo, State University of New York |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 217 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 33 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1975 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Introduction to Divergent Pathways in Applied Anthropology Careers
Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Ann McElroy, Renee Cadzow, Linda S. Kahn, Gemmae M. Fix; Introduction to Divergent Pathways in Applied Anthropology Careers. Practicing Anthropology 1 January 2020; 42 (1): 2–10. doi: https://doi.org/10.17730/0888-4552.42.1.2 Download ci…
Divergent Paths to Career Fulfillment in Applied Anthropology
Despite their academic training, most anthropologists do not work in tenure-track positions in departments of anthropology. While some systematic data indicate where these anthropologists are employed, we know less about their experiences or what led them to work outside the academy. This paper discusses examples of divergent career paths among the special issue contributors and analyzes key themes in their papers. While their histories vary gene…
Making Our Research Useful
Research Methods in Health Problems
Using medicinal plants is a very old behavioral adaptation found in many primate species, not just humans. This chapter looks at medicinal plants, a central component of traditional medicine. The study of plant medicines illustrates interdisciplinary collaboration among specialists in a host of disciplines, including archaeology, paleobiology, primatology, parasitology, and ethnobotany. The Berlins conducted long-term ethnosemantic research among…
The Ecology of Health and Disease
According to Hindu cosmology, a city is a microcosm of the universe. In the city of Kathmandu, at the foot of the Himalaya range, this microcosm contains sharp contrasts between ancient traditions and modern problems. One of the least-developed nations in the world, Nepal is a mountainous, landlocked country of 30 million people bounded by India to the south and China to the north. In 1995, Kathmandu had about 1,500 street children, including abo…
The Ecology of Nutrition
This chapter focuses on food: the way it is produced in different ecosystems, the way it is prepared in different cultures, and the way it is distributed in different economies. People need energy for maintenance and growth, as well as for the internal and external work their bodies do. Carbohydrates, fats, and proteins are sources of energy, which is measured in kilocalories. The combinations of foods that are eaten affect the absorption of nutr…
The Prehistory of Disease
Organisms that cause disease can also maintain themselves in small groups of people if pathogen lingers to infect newly susceptible individuals who are born into or join the group. The hunting-gathering way of life, free of modern influences, seems to have been a health-promoting lifestyle. Food was varied and nutritious. Infectious and parasitic diseases were less of a threat than they were in farming villages. The shift from food gathering to f…
The Global Economy of Food
At the beginning of the 21st century, nutrition in many of the poorer communities around the world presents a puzzle. In the 1970s, the Mexican government began to develop the economically marginal Yucatan peninsula into a tourist destination for air travelers and cruise ships. Back in the farming village of Yalcoba and other villages like it, women remained at home with extra burdens of household labor and child care for large families. Under th…
Human Biocultural Diversity and Health
Headache, low energy, lack of appetite, distorted vision, and nausea are symptoms of hypoxia, insufficient oxygen reaching the body&s;s tissues due to decreased partial pressure of oxygen in the air at higher altitudes. Entire populations have resided at high altitudes for several thousand years in the Himalaya, the Andes, and the Ethiopian Plateau. A prime example of human variability shaped by environmental stress. The Arctic hunter on the left…
First, Do No Harm
Bangladesh is "an emerging organ bazaar," where poor farmers and slum dwellers sell their body parts, principally kidneys, to wealthy Bangladeshi-born foreign nationals for transplant surgeries in India or other countries. Organ sellers find a different reality after they travel to India. The buyers confiscate their passports to prevent a change of mind and become violent toward anyone who asks to leave. Biological anthropologists frequently work…
Health Costs and Benefits of Globalization
Globalization brought many changes to people&s;s lifestyles. Daily life was "framed and balanced by the symmetry of Islamic prayers," agricultural cycles, and domestic tasks. The well-being of factory workers in Malaysia is affected by environmental and economic pressures linked to transnational systems of trade and production. Population mobility and migration are major parts of globalization, a process in which human activity within economic, p…
Emerging Diseases of the 21st Century
A lethal form of encephalitis broke out in Malaysia in September 1998. Oddly, its first victims were all ethnic Chinese who worked on pig farms. More than half of them died after suffering from fevers, headaches, and neurological symptoms such as confusion, convulsions, and coma. Epidemiologists considered several possible sources in Malaysia for the virus and determined that the reservoir species from which the pigs had been infected were two sp…
Human Reproduction as a Biocultural Process
While researching prenatal care in Greece, anthropologist Eugenia Georges discovered that ultrasound scanning—"putting the baby on television" in the words of women she interviewed—had become part of obstetrics care by the 1990s. The technical principles of ultrasound are similar everywhere, but the meanings and purposes of the procedure vary, depending on cultural contexts. Medical anthropologists who specialize in human reproduction are particu…
Applying Medical Anthropology in Health Careers
The impression that medical anthropology is an academic activity is misleading, because for every academic medical anthropologist there are several practicing anthropologists employed outside the university. Anthropologists have been engaged in international public health from earliest days of medical anthropology. Carol Jenkins is another medical anthropologist who, like Ted Green, worked to slow global spread of HIV/AIDS. The career path that l…
Health Resources for Vulnerable Populations
The Yahi Indians were a small tribe who lived in the foothills of Mount Lassen in Northern California. After years of conflict with white settlers, by the late 19th century, it was believed that the tribe had died out. Vulnerability refers to characteristics that influence a group&s;s capacity to resist and recover from the impacts of environmental change. Colonial policies also influenced contact history in various ways. In Latin America, native…
Stress, Trauma, and Mental Illness
Many people conceptualize stress as external to the body, but we define stress as an internal process involving normal physical responses of the body to challenging stimuli. Two pioneering scientists, Walter Cannon and Hans Selye, developed stress theory. Trained in different disciplines, both demonstrated the profound influence of fear, anger, and helplessness on the body. Walter Cannon&s;s work was influenced by Claude Bernard, a French physiol…
Changing Population and Environmental Hazards Throughout Human History
The Hadza are hunters and gatherers of wild foods in dry scrublands of east Africa. Culture shapes the environments in which people live and the hazards they face. The evolution of culture has three facets: population size and density, increase in complexity, and increase in energy flow. Each of these has significant effects on health and disease. Demographic anthropology uses the methods of demography to study population but is usually concerned…
Medical Anthropology in Ecological Perspective
Adaptability
The characteristically high potential of humans to cope with environmental adversity through a range of genetic, physiological, morphological, and cultural responses is termed “adaptability” in human biology. This trait facilitated prehistoric migrations to diverse biomes and survival in a wide range of climates and ecosystems. Human adaptability research began with comparative regional fieldwork, including the study of responses to hypoxia in th…
Culture and reproduction
Culture and reproduction are an interdisciplinary field that studies human fertility, pregnancy, labor and birth, and postpartum care. Uniquely, biocultural human reproduction involves species‐specific physiological traits as well as cultural diversity in ways of conceptualizing, experiencing, and managing pregnancy and birth. The field has grown from comparative studies of indigenous practices and beliefs to richly detailed, observational ethnog…
Cultural Variation in the Experience of Health and Illness
Evolution of Sickness and Healing
Evolution of Sickness and Healing. Horacio Fábrega Jr. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997 (cloth), xv. 364pp
Land of Plenty
Land of Plenty: Oklahomans in the Cotton Fields of Arizona, 1933‐1942. Marsha L. Weisiger. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 1995. $24.95 cloth
Should Medical Ecology Be Political
Ecology and adaptation
Schull, William J., and Francisco Rothhammer, eds. The Aymara: Strategies in Human Adaptation to a Rigorous Environment. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990. xiv + 261 pp. including references, glossary, and index. $74.00 cloth. Wenzel, George. Animal Rights, Human Rights: Ecology, Economy and Ideology in the Canadian Arctic. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991. ix + 206 pp. including appendix, bibliography, and index. $18.95 paper, $…
Women's Status in Egalitarian Society
The analysis of women's status in egalitarian society is inseparable from the analysis of egalitarian social-economic structure as a whole, and concepts based on the hierarchical structure of our society distort both. To see relations of power and property that characterize our society as present in band societies, although extremely weak, obscures the qualitatively different relations that obtained when, in place of dyadic lines of dependency, e…
Medical Anthropology in Ecological Perspective
Biocultural Models in Studies of Human Health and Adaptation
Biocultural studies, defined as research on questions of human biology and medical ecology that specifically includes social, cultural, or behavioral variables in the research design, offer valuable models for studying the interface between biological and cultural factors affecting human well-being. Two models of biocultural research predominate in health studies: one which integrates biological, environmental, and cultural data, and a second, mo…
Canadian Arctic modernization and change in female Inuit role identification
The commercial development and modernizing practices in two Eastern Arctic settlements of Canada have influenced the socialization of Inuit children. Decreased emphasis placed on the traditional role of females in subsistence techniques is reflected in the patterns of acculturation and vocational aspirations of female children and adolescents. Responses to a modified Instrumental Activities Inventory and data on education, employment, legal offen…
Toward an ecology of women's reproductive health
Medical ecology has been one of the dominant theoretical strands in medical anthropology since the 1960s. It has come to be identified with a rather narrow range of research issues, concerning such matters as adaptation to climate and infectious disease, and has dealt with small-scale foraging societies. An ecological model has potential for dealing broadly with other health issues, in the case explored here, women's reproductive health, a topic …
Should Medical Ecology Be Political
Culture and reproduction
Culture and reproduction are an interdisciplinary field that studies human fertility, pregnancy, labor and birth, and postpartum care. Uniquely, biocultural human reproduction involves species‐specific physiological traits as well as cultural diversity in ways of conceptualizing, experiencing, and managing pregnancy and birth. The field has grown from comparative studies of indigenous practices and beliefs to richly detailed, observational ethnog…
Divergent Paths to Career Fulfillment in Applied Anthropology
Despite their academic training, most anthropologists do not work in tenure-track positions in departments of anthropology. While some systematic data indicate where these anthropologists are employed, we know less about their experiences or what led them to work outside the academy. This paper discusses examples of divergent career paths among the special issue contributors and analyzes key themes in their papers. While their histories vary gene…
Canadian Arctic modernization and change in female Inuit role identification
The commercial development and modernizing practices in two Eastern Arctic settlements of Canada have influenced the socialization of Inuit children. Decreased emphasis placed on the traditional role of females in subsistence techniques is reflected in the patterns of acculturation and vocational aspirations of female children and adolescents. Responses to a modified Instrumental Activities Inventory and data on education, employment, legal offen…
Women's Status in Egalitarian Society
The analysis of women's status in egalitarian society is inseparable from the analysis of egalitarian social-economic structure as a whole, and concepts based on the hierarchical structure of our society distort both. To see relations of power and property that characterize our society as present in band societies, although extremely weak, obscures the qualitatively different relations that obtained when, in place of dyadic lines of dependency, e…
Ritual as puffery / empiricism as defense
Karen Erickson Paige and Jeffery M. Paige. The Politics of Reproductive Ritual. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981. xii + 380 pp. $25.00
Infra-Cultural Diversity and Change among Migrant Farm Workers in Northern California
Culture, Behavior and Personality
Boundaries and Breakdowns
This paper discusses a methodology for observing and describing interactions between clinicians and patients in an inner-city pediatric clinic serving families of diverse ethnicity. The framework is derived from Michael Agar's concept of ethnography as an interpretive, problem-resolving method. In Agar's model, the participant-observer moves cognitively and analytically from focusing on breakdown (awareness of a problem in understanding) to resol…
Origins
Biocultural Models in Studies of Human Health and Adaptation
Biocultural studies, defined as research on questions of human biology and medical ecology that specifically includes social, cultural, or behavioral variables in the research design, offer valuable models for studying the interface between biological and cultural factors affecting human well-being. Two models of biocultural research predominate in health studies: one which integrates biological, environmental, and cultural data, and a second, mo…
Toward an ecology of women's reproductive health
Medical ecology has been one of the dominant theoretical strands in medical anthropology since the 1960s. It has come to be identified with a rather narrow range of research issues, concerning such matters as adaptation to climate and infectious disease, and has dealt with small-scale foraging societies. An ecological model has potential for dealing broadly with other health issues, in the case explored here, women's reproductive health, a topic …
Ecology and adaptation
Schull, William J., and Francisco Rothhammer, eds. The Aymara: Strategies in Human Adaptation to a Rigorous Environment. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990. xiv + 261 pp. including references, glossary, and index. $74.00 cloth. Wenzel, George. Animal Rights, Human Rights: Ecology, Economy and Ideology in the Canadian Arctic. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991. ix + 206 pp. including appendix, bibliography, and index. $18.95 paper, $…
Should Medical Ecology Be Political
Land of Plenty
Land of Plenty: Oklahomans in the Cotton Fields of Arizona, 1933‐1942. Marsha L. Weisiger. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 1995. $24.95 cloth
Evolution of Sickness and Healing
Evolution of Sickness and Healing. Horacio Fábrega Jr. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997 (cloth), xv. 364pp
Cultural Variation in the Experience of Health and Illness
Culture and reproduction
Culture and reproduction are an interdisciplinary field that studies human fertility, pregnancy, labor and birth, and postpartum care. Uniquely, biocultural human reproduction involves species‐specific physiological traits as well as cultural diversity in ways of conceptualizing, experiencing, and managing pregnancy and birth. The field has grown from comparative studies of indigenous practices and beliefs to richly detailed, observational ethnog…
Research Methods in Health Problems
Using medicinal plants is a very old behavioral adaptation found in many primate species, not just humans. This chapter looks at medicinal plants, a central component of traditional medicine. The study of plant medicines illustrates interdisciplinary collaboration among specialists in a host of disciplines, including archaeology, paleobiology, primatology, parasitology, and ethnobotany. The Berlins conducted long-term ethnosemantic research among…
The Ecology of Health and Disease
According to Hindu cosmology, a city is a microcosm of the universe. In the city of Kathmandu, at the foot of the Himalaya range, this microcosm contains sharp contrasts between ancient traditions and modern problems. One of the least-developed nations in the world, Nepal is a mountainous, landlocked country of 30 million people bounded by India to the south and China to the north. In 1995, Kathmandu had about 1,500 street children, including abo…
The Ecology of Nutrition
This chapter focuses on food: the way it is produced in different ecosystems, the way it is prepared in different cultures, and the way it is distributed in different economies. People need energy for maintenance and growth, as well as for the internal and external work their bodies do. Carbohydrates, fats, and proteins are sources of energy, which is measured in kilocalories. The combinations of foods that are eaten affect the absorption of nutr…
The Prehistory of Disease
Organisms that cause disease can also maintain themselves in small groups of people if pathogen lingers to infect newly susceptible individuals who are born into or join the group. The hunting-gathering way of life, free of modern influences, seems to have been a health-promoting lifestyle. Food was varied and nutritious. Infectious and parasitic diseases were less of a threat than they were in farming villages. The shift from food gathering to f…
The Global Economy of Food
At the beginning of the 21st century, nutrition in many of the poorer communities around the world presents a puzzle. In the 1970s, the Mexican government began to develop the economically marginal Yucatan peninsula into a tourist destination for air travelers and cruise ships. Back in the farming village of Yalcoba and other villages like it, women remained at home with extra burdens of household labor and child care for large families. Under th…
Human Biocultural Diversity and Health
Headache, low energy, lack of appetite, distorted vision, and nausea are symptoms of hypoxia, insufficient oxygen reaching the body&s;s tissues due to decreased partial pressure of oxygen in the air at higher altitudes. Entire populations have resided at high altitudes for several thousand years in the Himalaya, the Andes, and the Ethiopian Plateau. A prime example of human variability shaped by environmental stress. The Arctic hunter on the left…
First, Do No Harm
Bangladesh is "an emerging organ bazaar," where poor farmers and slum dwellers sell their body parts, principally kidneys, to wealthy Bangladeshi-born foreign nationals for transplant surgeries in India or other countries. Organ sellers find a different reality after they travel to India. The buyers confiscate their passports to prevent a change of mind and become violent toward anyone who asks to leave. Biological anthropologists frequently work…
Health Costs and Benefits of Globalization
Globalization brought many changes to people&s;s lifestyles. Daily life was "framed and balanced by the symmetry of Islamic prayers," agricultural cycles, and domestic tasks. The well-being of factory workers in Malaysia is affected by environmental and economic pressures linked to transnational systems of trade and production. Population mobility and migration are major parts of globalization, a process in which human activity within economic, p…
Emerging Diseases of the 21st Century
A lethal form of encephalitis broke out in Malaysia in September 1998. Oddly, its first victims were all ethnic Chinese who worked on pig farms. More than half of them died after suffering from fevers, headaches, and neurological symptoms such as confusion, convulsions, and coma. Epidemiologists considered several possible sources in Malaysia for the virus and determined that the reservoir species from which the pigs had been infected were two sp…
Human Reproduction as a Biocultural Process
While researching prenatal care in Greece, anthropologist Eugenia Georges discovered that ultrasound scanning—"putting the baby on television" in the words of women she interviewed—had become part of obstetrics care by the 1990s. The technical principles of ultrasound are similar everywhere, but the meanings and purposes of the procedure vary, depending on cultural contexts. Medical anthropologists who specialize in human reproduction are particu…
Sociology (15 works) · Political science (12 works) · Anthropology (10 works) · Computer Science (9 works) · Geography (9 works) · Psychology (9 works) · Biology (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Ecology (6 works) · Indigenous Studies and Ecology (6 works)