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Archive for politics

Episode 23 Psychiatric Culture Clashes with Dr. Beatriz Reyes-Foster

Anthropologist on the Street
Anthropologist on the Street
Episode 23 Psychiatric Culture Clashes with Dr. Beatriz Reyes-Foster
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Dr. Beatriz Reyes-Foster (photo courtesy of Dr. Reyes-Foster)

Medical Anthropologist Dr. Beatriz Reyes-Foster returns, this time to discuss her experiences researching a psychiatric hospital in Mexico, looking at how culture shapes the diagnoses, care, and outcomes of mental illness.

How is mental illness cultural? Medical Anthropologists have long demonstrated how a phenomenon categorized as a disorder, like schizophrenia, is understood and experienced very differently from culture to culture. How the illness is viewed in society, what support structures are available, and which ideologies dominate, such as individuality or the importance of family, all play roles in how a person with illness is treated. When these circumstances are situated in a location where the history of colonialism continues to dominate the lives and identities of indigenous patients, what is often narrowly defined as mental health becomes an issue of national economic, race, and identity systems.

Dr. Reyes-Foster documents how staff at a mental hospital in the Yucatan in Mexico struggle to be human in inhumane conditions, which are set from on high at a governmental level, the results of contemporary politics and the long-standing impacts of colonialism.

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Episode 14 Political Divisiveness & the Encouragement of Violence with Dr. Jennie Burnet

Anthropologist on the Street
Anthropologist on the Street
Episode 14 Political Divisiveness & the Encouragement of Violence with Dr. Jennie Burnet
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Dr. Jennie Burnet (Photo courtesy of World Affairs Council of Atlanta, 2016)

When multicultural societies begin dividing into factions based on ethnic identities, assigning blame to the “other” and emphasizing the differences among us rather than the similarities, the stage is set for political violence… or worse.

Dr. Jennie Burnet researches the causes and consequences of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, two ethnic groups, the Hutus and Tutsis, lived side-by-side as neighbors and friends, until policies implemented under European colonization redefined the ethnic identities and shifted the power dynamics between them. After independence, the legacy of those changes created bitter divides that widened under political leadership.

Dr. Burnet is a Professor of Global Studies and Anthropology at Georgia State University, and the Associate Director of the Global Studies Institute. In her research she examines the causes of the genocide, how people pieced the country together afterwards, and what lessons can be learned about the role political leadership plays in preventing, or triggering, violence.
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Episode 5 God, Politics, and Anthropology – with Rev. Dr. Miranda Hassett

Anthropologist on the Street
Anthropologist on the Street
Episode 5 God, Politics, and Anthropology - with Rev. Dr. Miranda Hassett
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Rev. Dr. Miranda Hassett (photo courtesy of Rev. Hassett)

Rev. Dr. Miranda Hassett received her Ph.D. in anthropology before becoming an ordained priest in the Episcopal Church. In her book, Anglican Communion in Crisis: How Episcopal Dissidents and Their African Allies are Reshaping Anglicanism, she explores how political polarization drove a global wedge in the Anglican church, driving some conservative white American Episcopalians to break from the broader American church, instead allying with conservative African congregations. Rev. Hassett continues using anthropological methods today to better understand her congregants at St. Dunstan’s Episcopal Church in Madison, Wisconsin, and discusses how anthropology can help people foster more meaning in their lives.
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