the (inner) workings of the brain

     It should come to no one's surprise that the brain is a major point of public interest. While the 'Decade of the Brain' was declared over twenty years ago, now is the moment when neuroscience is being popularized and the brain is taking up more and more visual space in our world. Today's world is a visual world as images become increasingly meaningful, sharing human experience globally, and instantly. One important aspect of this imagification is the generative representations of such intangibles as feeling, thought and processes. The brain encompasses all three of these representations and within this neuro-curious climate, brains are popping up everywhere! Here's one I procured from the UW bookstore. For material context, it was in the ever-expanding novelty section that housed such curios as a Jesus toast press, hip-hop themed ice cube trays (I bought these too) and all manner of things that are made to look like strips of bacon.

     While clearly not intended to be an accurate model, this item speaks to national concern about 'brain-power' and its importance. It comically sums up the sentiment that 'in tough times, you better get smart' mentally that many of those that frequent university bookstores share. Indeed, in many real-life emergencies, being smart about your actions pays off. So, these ubiquitous brain images, where did they originate from? The simple understanding that brains are furrowed, squishy and (kind of) bean shaped had to have come from somewhere. Neuroimaging has undoubtedly played a role here. Gore-centered websites like 4Chan and Bestgore have also contributed some, if incomplete, specimens. Neuroimaging, like fMRI and CT scanning, has also provided cursorial information on the processes of the brain as well. These processes are interpreted by (and for) the public and translated into images that represent our understanding of the brain as we know it. These conceptions suggest ways we give meaning to neuroscience and how we incorporate it into our everyday lives. Hint; we commission factories in China to manufacture inflatable, canned brains to sell to American university students.

     Particularly telling are the images of the brain at work, or in action. Even neuroscience can boast only a tenuous grasp on the many complex mechanisms that transmit signals throughout the brain and the electro-chemical processes we do understand render the 'workings' of brain inconspicuous and uneventful. While I trust one day these mechanisms will be mapped in full, for now the images of the public imagination of the brain working serve to elucidate the way we understand neural process.
One of the most salient conceptual models I have come across is that of the brain as muscle or something to be "worked out" in some physiological way. The media depicts this as a very natural and intuitive analogy, brain as muscle, and supports the idea that you can increase brain power by doing cognitive work. This model provides some explanation for (and validation of), the "use it or lose it" mentality. It rewards what we relate to as hard physical work; this is fairly puritan in retrospect.

Another is the 'brain as machine' conceptual model of the brain at work. Many will recognize the characteristic 'cogs' on the wheels of cognition. Here we see a reverence for industrialism and ingenuity. This suggests a little less standard deviation than the 'muscle-man' model and therefore it's a little more egalitarian. Our understanding of machinery would suggest here that the working brain can be turned off or shut down, can work at varying outputs and requires maintenance. This also supports the "fuel" for the brain concept so many energy drink and supplement companies espouse.

 Providing valuable fodder for technology marketing is the 'brain as computer' model. This model is of increasing importance to the general public's interpretation of neuroscience. Generative talk about certain behaviors being "hard-wired" or how we can "re-wire" our brains (like firmware?) gives way to narratives on storage capacity, databases, being 'programmed' to do something.  While all conceptual models of the brain at work will also implicitly suggest how we understand the brain not at work, or at some lessened capacity, the computer model forces us to associate the infinite powers of technology with our brain capacities. Intimidating though it seems, I find potential utility in using this illimitable model of understanding and would suggest it is more of a sustainable model then muscle or machinery, as these both have been supplanted by computer technology in more cases than one. Real fruition can, in theory, come from using such conceptual models to understand the brain in all its mystique. The computer model standardizes brain power in some sense, as computers themselves are becoming a near human right. Neuroscience is already deep into integrating dialogue with computer science, building AI systems modeled off the human brain. So-called "cognitive computing" projects like The Blue Brain Project at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the DARPA funded SyNAPSE, in association with IBM, are working on full AI 'brains' hosted on supercomputers. These projects, when realized (speculated within the next two decades), will undoubtedly have transformative semantic power and will be a fertile site for anthropological analysis. For now, the human brain remains humblingly complex, but irresistibly interesting and up for myriad interpretations. For now, the brain is only limited through our imagination.

cancer and chronicity

A recent connection with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has drawn my mind recurrently to the processes of 'beating' cancer lately. While 'Fred Hutch' does much more than cancer research, it still stands as a beacon of experimental treatment for the patients that have exceeded the capabilities of first-line treatments at their primary medical institutions. Cancer intrigues me simply because it intrigues us, as a society of bodies continually at some point in a matrix of risk, never being allowed to truly 'forget' about cancer. This perpetual and innate susceptibility is one of the driving forces, I argue, behind our society's 'beef' with cancer. Publicly engaged in a enduring conflict with a diagnosis that creeps, attacks, kills and then haunts has generated metaphors alluding to fights, battles, wars and armed conflict. What I am interested in is the ways in which this 'fight' with cancer is articulated in treatment discourse, survivor narratives and cultural processes. We wage large, visible wars against cancer, commercially, through rubber bracelets and 'walks for the cure' but even more crucial are the small wars of the every-day against treatment side-effects, the 'work' of cancer treatment and what it means to have such a reticent cell living in your body. Having a chronic condition myself which requires a fairly involving treatment regime, I have come to a closer understanding of those with incurable cancers, HIV/AIDS and other chronic and profoundly self-altering diagnosis. There exists a 'work' of a chronic condition that itself is a continual financial, energy and soul draining activity. Unlike my condition, however, cancer can be fatal and a separately generated anxiety is produced just from that abiding threat alone. The permanent structural impairment from surgical and chemical treatment alike also forever alter a cancer patient's sense of self, bodily integrity and even gender identities. I just read a great piece from the New York Times addressing cancer survival and perused their ongoing collage of cancer 'survivors' as they depict and give voice to what it means to be 'post-cancer'. These are a few particularly telling narratives:


On what it means to 'fight'

If've learned one important truth, it is the meaning of the phrase "fighting cancer." It was showing up when I wanted to crawl away. It was crying when I needed to, and to shouting, "enough!"
Bob Skye, Hoboken, NJ


On continuing care

I've had all the usual problems men have after prostate cancer surgery four years ago. I've learned to live with them although it's been a life-altering experience. My surgeon said that it (the operation) would be a speed bump on the road to the rest of my life. All I can say is thanks for saving my life but that was one hell of a speed bump!
Jim Porter, Danville, KY

On anger

(But) I am more angry. Angry at the damage chemo has done to my heart and lungs, angry that it has stolen my loved ones from me, angry at the constant anxiety about recurrence that it leaves and at my guilt for not living a perfect toxin-free life.
Please, don't ever tell a cancer patient that they are lucky to have it.
Laurie Comings, Alexandria, VA

On revenge

I have a vendetta against cancer and I will not stop fighting until I am dancing on its grave.
Virginia Fasulo, New Jersey


On continuing anxieties

Now, three years since surgery and chemotherapy for a lymph node presentation of ovarian cancer, I am struggling to know myself. Being "watched for recurrence" unnerves me and drains me. I hope I can absorb it better as time goes on.
Barbara Moore, Washington, D.C.

On gender identity

Physically of course I'm still suffering of the late side effects of all these poisons I got, but the biggest part to work on is the psychological side. Breast cancer does not only take away a part of a female body, but it takes away a big part of one's femininity.
Daniela Marullo, Brussels, Belgium

And on losing the fight

Can you in all good conscience say there is 'life after cancer' for anyone? There's only 'life with cancer' and only if you are lucky enough.
Karen, Espoo, Finland

On the ambiguities of remission

Mine is asleep now, it feels like a little bird on my shoulder that whispers in my ear, "you may die today." How wonderful. No time to waste. Change your mind, you can change the world.
Scott Williams, United States

On post-cancer care

In the last ten years, life as I knew it came to an end.
I am no longer an active, healthy, sports-minded individual. The side effects from cancer drugs, cut that part of my life short. No doctor listens or takes an interest in my new challenges.
It's a shame there is no after-cancer treatment or care in this country. You do the best you can.
Susan Brockert,Brazoria, TX


These are responses to the question, 'how is life different after cancer?'. From these we can deduce that chronic and/or life threatening illness has fundamentally transforming effects on the human psyche. The transformative process of ill-health speaks to the essential human consideration of sickness as significant experience.

I remember driving by Fred Hutch when I was young and wondering what life is like for those in there, being treated. For those dying and desparate enough to travel across the state, relocating, if only temporarily, their family, their lives, for a chance at winning these wars. It was honestly frightening for me, to think of such a disruption and downright incomprehensible to think of what it might be like to be fighting cancer or even worse, giving up the fight.
These arousings revisit me today and now, as an anthropologist, I reframe those strong emotions into queries around the human condition in chronic illness and what it means to fight and win/lose such battles. Chronicity, however, takes residence somewhere between the hope of cure or remission and acute, life-threatening crisis. Chronic conditions tend to be habituated, taken into ones life and rooted in processes and practices of self-care. These practices can be therapeutic, taxing, despised. For the above cancer patients, cancer has filled their post-crisis days with anxieties, fears and the draining emotional labor of redefining the self.
With so much public import placed on 'beating' cancer, I question if little is left to place on the post-cancer life. How can cancer affect so many lives but still we obscure (avoid?) the residue of acute cancer treatment? Isn't it time we asked: what happens after treatment? Thoughts on these questionings are welcome!



Parker-Pope, Tara. 2010. "Picture Your Life After Cancer", The New York Times, April 8. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/04/08/health/cancer-survivor-photos.html?ref=health#index">ongoing collage (accessed 11/20/12).

Social Lives and White Masks

I love to read works that are truly energizing. I am reading Social lives of medicines by Whyte and van der geest as well as Black Skin, White Masks by Franz Fanon at the moment. Social lives is a piece I’ve had on my Amazon list for ages. It is drawn from with such a frequency and trust in my field that it simply naturalizes itself into many works. I would akin these pieces to …
1. Interim words until one can originate superior verbiage, and since the literary can harbor deep respect for those they reference, this ‘superiority’ is never actualized

A great ethnography or edited work is a dynamic entity rather than archived knowledge. It reifies itself through networks of sourcing and reinterpretations of theory. Black Skin is highly interpretive and metaphorical, in other words, it deals with symbols and meaning. His argument addresses the ‘Other’ and exoticization. Social lives follows the ‘materia medica’ or the physical beings of medicines today as they travel global traffic ways and come into being in a patients' possession. Pills, capsules, tablets and other techniques of medicinal actions, like syringes and needles, have such a visual presence in our culture as well as others, as Social lives suggests. I’ve compiled an extensive archive of images of medicines, mostly pills and the like, and they really speak to exactly what Whyte and van der geest are saying. Pills are economic, social, political and lastly, medical subjects. They divide lines between the worthy and the worthless, the recognized and the marginalized and the rich and the poor.

Global efforts towards open anti-retroviral access and HIV vaccine testing, in part with health care reform and part humanitarian efforts, have failed to eradicate this reticent virus, despite past projections. In asking ‘why’ this can happen, despite massive economic efforts and decades now of research, we must look to the social. ‘The Matrix’ called attention to this explicitly with the red pill/blue pill binary put forth as a choice of fee will, despite having to make the choice, throughout. These pills represented social states of being in the Matrix and are salient features in Matrix merchandise today. This ‘social life’ of medicine, the one too often undermined or ignored, echoes the conflict between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ sciences and further the very argument of what knowledge is most valuable. Here the human soul and spirit are questioned and subjective and ‘flowery’ accounts are not taken seriously. Except in anthropology. Anthropology is the unique discipline, outside of language and literature itself, which appreciates such ‘flowery’ work and allows it the chance to be meaningful. Fanon got me really excited about language again and hence, this blog simply occurred.
Bravo Fanon. ‘Feeling’ and writing are so inextricably linked it is no wonder why anthropologists have long written about subjectivities. This is a growing movement, lately, and I’d like to think it reflects a more global turn towards humanism but that could be premature. Writers are still depicted as hair-brained, eccentric and a bit helpless by our media outlets. I can’t refute personally, but I know it is not the only equation for 'writerness'. The ‘touchy-feely’ types still threaten some American notion of strength given this persistent demeaning stereotype.
This ‘tough-guy’ primacy is an obvious evolutionary vestige, as one can be subjective and interpretive and still proliferate in the neoliberal global economy which highly values cognitive power, but nevertheless remains.

In Peter Elbow’s words, “Don’t give me any more of that subjective bullshit” (Elbow 1973; 141). Subjective bullshit, for lack of a more fully developed euphemism, is ill conceived by a public that misconstrues lack of structure for ‘ease’ in writing practices, according to Elbow, and they are lacking a true understanding of “the nature of rigor and language” (141).
This is a difficult subject for good writers to be authoritative on, as they themselves inevitably find such ‘ease’ in the work that they do. Language is rigorous, as a tool and a method, in fact it is the most challenging subject I’ve studied, the one that caused the most furrowed-brows, desperation and tears. Yes, I’ve literally shed tears over writing, even writing without a due date. So much of it is extracting; it begs so much of the human psyche. Writers do put pencil to paper, as a practice, but their work is that of expression not of oppression. The oppressive powers bestowed upon the economic subject will never penetrate fully the purest of writers. Different powers are at work here. These powers are more ravaging than those of capitalism, they are those of the writer’s soul. These powers are like the Greek pharmakon, they can be both medicine and poison. But it is not a choice; for some writing simply comes, disrupting at times, cathartic at others.

Elbow, Peter
1973 Writing without teachers. Oxford University Press.

Images of Difference, Part 3 "What Can a Body Do?"

What Can a Body Do?, inspired by Gilles Deleuze's 1990 critical essay on Spinoza of the same name, is an upcoming exhibit of nine contemporary artists exploring, more accurately, what a body cannot do, spanning from October 26th to December 16th in a schedule of events at Haverford College. Curator Amanda Cachia aimed at counter-claiming Spinoza's posits, “We do not even know what a body is capable of...” and “We do not even know of what affections we are capable, nor the extent of our power"(1), through examining what the disabled body is not capable of doing and its lack of power through contemporary art. Cachia asks; What does it mean to inscribe a contemporary work of art with experiences of disability? What shapes or forms can these inscriptions take? How, precisely, can perceptions of the disabled body be liberated from binary classifications such as “normal” versus “deviant” or “ability” versus “disability” that themselves delimit bodies and constrain action? What alternative frameworks can be employed by scholars, curators, and artists in order to determine a new fate for the often stigmatized disabled identity? (2). I am especially interested in the limits these binary classifications hold over bodies in practice. Cachia's project addresses "classifications" of disability in ways I find satisfying and justifying; attending to the visualities of difference in pungent and tactile ways.

Despite the "body" being so much a part of what being a human means, contemporary anthropologists who study it are not in the majority. My humanistic preferences pull me back to philosophy and the arts time and time again, and more so when anthropology can't articulate what I'm curious about. The below photo, part of a set of three plus a video piece, from Polish artist Artur Zmijewski provides such fodder for my imagination.

Zmijewski's project, Oko za oko (An Eye for an Eye), expresses the duality of able/disabled while reflecting upon the precarity of helped-states of ableness. Oko za oko explores bodies in 'composition' with each other, compensative measures and the bodily integrity of the 'helper'. He dialogues with Deleuze as well, whom I'm appreciating more and more, and shows an almost sardonic recognition for his ideas of becoming and unity.

Despite the attitude towards visual disabilities I was indoctrinated with, that of the infamous "don't stare" ideology, I did indeed stare, and want to stare, at physical disfigurements. It seems to me the most natural thing in the world for a child, sans the "world experience" a more mature being has, to observe difference with rapture and the same voracious curiosity they apply to nearly everything else. To my child-self, amputees were positively science-fiction, people of the extreme of both ends of the height spectrum were reasons for excitement and those with all manner of disfigurements and disorders had me visually transfixed. These curiosities, as the story goes, were also made quite clear to be "impolite" and "not lady-like", by all manner of opinionated adults whom I was simply to shy to share my interests with. Today, the humanities allow for that 'need to know' drive to be satiated. Projects of difference, like Cachia's curation and Zmijewski's photo, are therefore stimulating and contemplative spaces for exploration and analysis of what I was "not" staring at all these years.

Deleuze was a coincidental (critical)fan of Francis Bacon's so I've included one of his works as well. Make of it what you will; I've always liked Bacon but I won't pretense that I am an expert on his vicissitudes!

Bacon, Francis. Studies of the Human Body, 1979, 1980.


References...

1. Gilles Deleuze, “What Can a Body Do?,” in Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza (New York: Zone Books, 1990), 226.

2. Cachia, Amanda. "Essay & Bibliography". What Can a Body Do?

3. Smith, Daniel and Protevi, John, "Gilles Deleuze", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)

http://exhibits.haverford.edu/whatcanabodydo/
Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery
Haverford College

Prepare for What?

This store, opening near my subway platform entrance, got me thinking more about my 'Brain project', an ongoing attempt of mine to document and better understand our culture's relationship with the Brain as bio-system and the brain as our center of consciousness and cognition. I'm trying to find out how 'neuro' came to be one of the oft most used adjectives on American's tonques and a word fragment so gifted with economic endowment it has its own line of designer beverages.

I want to trace the 'brain' as it came to be an object of common household knowledge. A table topic, if you will, for Americans that reflects upon the nation's eye on science and the individual's self-awareness of a particular gray organ that President Bush dedicated a decade (the 90's) to and we are draining other developed countries of. The brain sells, simply put, and myriad industries are catching on. Above we see a store that specializes in 'toys' for children, adults, and seniors to develop and maintain optimum brain functioning. Nootropic substances, like the Neuro line of 'smart' energy drinks, are being churned out in the form of supplements and foodstuffs that promise 'smart' results. Popular science literature, magazines like Scientific American Mind, 'self-help' or 'personal health' pieces and whole schools of thought like the Baby Einstein movement and Dianetics are already fairly over-exposed outlets at which to throw your cash at. These consumables are what really speak to the neuro-health dialogues at work, which work to make sense of what is essentially an intangible concept we use to understand our consciousness in the world. Even for those who have seen a disembodied brain, there is no inherent, meaningful link between a blob of neurons and those intimate feelings and thoughts we tie, culturally, to the brain like sadness (thanks psychopharmacology!), 'sharpness' and memory.

So, about this preparation. There is something discretely Foucaultian about the marketing of products that improve memory, hand-eye coordination and verbal acuity. I wonder about the free-will of the consumer of these products. What SES do they claim? What literacy level are they at? And what about their kids? Do they think the future success of their children lies in stimulating toys and software? Does the average 'smart' product consumer think they are higher than average intelligence? Lower? Are they motivated by organic health concerns like Alzheimer's or other dementias? To what extent do they 'buy into' all this, so to speak? It's standard rhetoric among micro-economic politics that education is the 'key to success' that all Americans are not denied, but certainly encouraged to supplement with higher education, private schooling and all the consumables as discussed above. It is almost as if this market is saying that the average American is not smart enough but can make better use of their brain because the capacity exists.
Are there subtle 'disciplines' being carried out upon the bodies of the American public? Surely all this 'smart' talk is suggesting that being 'smart' is good, hence worthy of consumer dollars, and that there are ways to increase 'smartness', again worthy of consumer dollars. Are these toys and foodstuffs sites of valuation where the American body politic comes to terms with the economic worth of their brain, be it ever so lacking? At just the periphery of this argument is the negotiation of bio-value the consumer market has come to face. This is no small project, but one I see as becoming more and more pertinent to our 'scientific American' culture.
As I realize my own bio-value in terms of cognitive capacity, I am better understanding how other people do the same and one of which the ways Americans love to do this is through consumerism. I'd love to study what presence these products have in Indian IT firms.

These products claim increased cognitive capacity and performance, 'healthier' aging and smart kids. This reminds me of something...a document I've come to regard as one of my guiding doctrines; the Kass Report from the President's Council on Bioethics, published in 2003. Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness (aka The Kass Report) is a document that aimed to sum up the scientific expansion of Bush's Brain Decade and to comment upon the role of biotechnology, which is used vaguely here, in American health in light of the spontaneous ethical debates that rose from biotech innovations such as stem cell research, cloning and targeted gene therapy. The issues addressed include the pursuit of happiness, achieved through pharmacotherapy, ageless bodies, superior performance, better children and happy souls and aimed to interpret these 'shared goods' through the lenses of biotechnology (I use the imagery of a 'lens' to call attention to the incremented levels with which we analyze our biological lives through. A closing remark, the Report claims biotechnology will prevail, "yielding a society in which more and more people are able to realize the American dream of liberty, prosperity, and justice for all" (p.302). These 'smart products' are a result of biotechnology, remnants of research and development, and have strong consumer pull, much like other forms of freedom we can buy, and link product outcomes to attributes with well defined, acknowledged economic worth.

You may not see all this as summing to a major ethical debate but bio-valuation has obvious deleterious connotations. Who wants to be judged based on biological constraints? If mental acuity more regularly brought success, should more be granted access to these lifestyle products? If we can tolerably say that it is not fair to judge someone based on their inherent cognitive limitations, can we say it is fair to expect everyone to maximize their capabilities and therefore their bio-value? Can we judge those who consumer 'smart' supplements to be healthy and therefore virtuous? How is this different from a person who follows the slow food movement, from a locavore? In Seattle, farmer's markets are trendy. Popular restaurants try to craft menus from entirely locally sourced products. The rhetoric surrounding this consumerist movement addresses both the support of the local economy but also the health benefits of eating fresher, less processed foods. Shopping at farmer's markets and eating at these establishments is expensive. I am interested in the ways economic barriers shapes the value judgements of health movements, from locavorism to nootropic drinks and Baby Einstein. I am also waiting to see 'ingredients on menus as well, although I don't think Seattle will be on this bleeding edge. I think we are a little too 'granola' to show that kind of following for what are mostly synthetically created chemicals. I am also interested to see if, or when really, these chemicals make their way into mainstream children's food products and if those ever show up in the (public) school system and what school-board arguments may arise from that.




Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness. The President's Council on Bioethics. Washington, D.C., October 2003.

All Wrapped-Up

I apologize to my regular readers for the slow in posting this month. Turns out, I am a typical writer who gets writer's block. How boring! How trite! My symptoms have been analogous to images of blocked writers across American media; pacing, feigning, brooding, moments of crisis, moments of dullness and moments of brilliance have all prevailed. Bound in a state of ennui, I was able to reflect in attempts to make sense of and relieve my moratorium. Reflection for me, however, is not a quiet activity and really put my cognitive cogs into high gear. Today, I am exhausted.

Americans like to point the finger at stress for many a shame in their life and I cannot blame them; I am one of them. I won't say much more, the internet needs one less person to elaborate on the woeful existence of a writer, it's really not that bad a life.
I hope in an easement of mind I can again communicate about the world around me. And I hope that easement comes soon. I am getting profoundly off track and even read half of Oliver Twist, and that was just one of the facets in the mirror.

Images of Difference, Part 2

Below we have some beautiful and elegant anatomicals that are demonstrative of the artist's own scoliosis. Laura Ferguson teachers in the New York University School of Medicine Medical Humanism Program.

Ferguson, Laura. The Visible Skeleton Series.

Lumbar vertebrae, posterior view

Lumbar vertebrae, anterior view

Lumbar vertebrae, close-up view

Turning pelvis/sacrum

Images of Difference, Part 1

This post is part of a series that address images of difference focusing on the human body.

Marcel Duchamp's paintings have always held an interest with me. His Nude Descending a Staircase (No.2) is of particular interest to me for the way he portrays the nude human body so unabashedly yet without definition. The mottled coloring, the sharp and ungainly shapes; Duchamp shows the body unfavorably yet we can all appreciate the exquisite nature of his imagery.

Duchamp, Marcel. Nude Descending a Staircase (No.2)/Nu descendant un Escalier (No.2). 1912.

Lux sit

The University of Washington is a place where I learned much and experienced more. Once again, it is the time of year when new and returning students flood the quad, pack the coffee houses and impede quite contemplation at the UBS (University Book Store). Soon, disheveled mothers and fathers will be seen helping move in their freshmen, old desks and couches will declare listing for auction via sidewalk exposure and a "FREE" sign on classic college ruled, haphazardly taped on. Tour groups of early students will weave across campus and down the "Ave" and I will avoid them. I love the excitement of this time and find my own newness about the coming months. As a tax paying citizen, I try to take as much advantage of the University as I can since I have and still do fund it in part. The real treat for me are the lectures. Dropping off in summer, and sometimes slow in Spring because of defenses, lecture events on campus come back into full swing a few weeks in to fall quarter. I usually go to about one a week and they traverse the lot of the humanities and social science disciplines along with many of the health sciences. Eager to fill my calendar and reconnect with the greater academic community, not just my predominately cyber-bubbled medical anthropologists that span from Edinburgh to Seattle, Toronto to LA. Despite the reach of this cadre, I still find a sort of antiqued excitement in attending on campus lectures, even if outside my field. They are a beacon of intellectual stimulation in an otherwise dreary realm of rain and clouds.

Here are the few I've been able to calendar; reviews will follow!

B/ordering Violence: Boundaries, Indigineity, and Gender in the Americas

As part of the 2012-2013 John E. Sawyer Seminar on the Comparative Study of Cultures at the UW on "B/ordering Violence: Boundaries, Indigeneity and Gender in the Americas," María Josefina Saldaña-Portillo (Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University) delivers the first of three quarterly lectures surrounding the theme of the Discourses and Practices of Policing Borders.



A Crisis of Care and a Crisis of Borders: Towards Caring Citizenship
Victoria Lawson
An internationally-respected feminist geographer, Victoria Lawson’s research focuses on how human relations have been altered by new modes of mobility, technology, and inequality; how people struggle to provide care and love in worlds that are fragmented by space and time; and how they support one another in an era of growing poverty.
Wednesday, November 7, 2012 - 7:00pm
Kane Hall, Room 110
Lawson is Professor of Geography at the University of Washington

the eternal bibliography

Regarde!: my new background

This is a collection of works that have held some significance in my intellectual debut. They span back to my freshman year and reflect well my journey from the humanities to the social sciences and back again twice. In college, I declared an English Language & Literature major proudly, as the department is competitive at the UW. I took a few quarters of some literature but mostly theory and some linguistics courses and realized pure literature did not occupy enough bits of my brain and it had a curious sense of death about it so I distanced myself from it somewhat. Through my reading of Foucualt, Said and myriad other of the french sociologists,I found myself upon some cultural studies literature and this led me to enrolling in anthropology courses. I was reminded of my love of critical theory in my Culture Concept class and was subsequently drawn back to English. I had to explain all this as well in my second admissions essay! Needless to say, I again felt morose and stale and headed back over to Denny, the anthro building at the UW. I took a seminar style class and was hooked. Now I freely "borrow" from the humanities and have the best of both worlds.
I was embarrassed at the time to have put my transcript through a such a workout but upon reflection, it was really indicative of my destiny for interdisciplinary work. My interests now straddle the humanities and the social sciences with some strategy, now with nearly a decade of trying to figure out where I belonged academically behind me.


And in no value-laden order:

Bourgois, Philippe, and Jeff Schonberg
2009 Righteous Dopefiend. Berkeley and LA: University of California Press.

Leakey, Richard E., and Roger Lewin
1977 Origins. New York: Dutton.

Ed. Joao Biehl, Byron Good, Arthur Kleinman, Ed.
2007 Subjectivity: Ethnographic Investigations. Berkeley and LA: University of California Press.

Geertz, Clifford
1973 The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.

Polhemus, Ted, Ed.
1978 The Body Reader: Social Aspects of the Human Body. New York: Pantheon.

Hurford, C.
1996 The anthology of popular verse. North Dighton: JG Press.
(the only text spanning back into childhood; I got this for Christmas when I was in 6th grade because I had won a poetry contest at Halloween)

Sacks, Oliver
1997 The Island of the Colorblind. New York: Knopf.

Dickens, Charles
1854 Times-Charles Dickens. New York: Penguin Books.

Broks, Paul
2003 Into the Silent Land: Travels in Neuropsychology. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press.

Shenk, David
2001 Alzheimer's: Portrait of an Epidemic. New York: Doubleday.

Estroff, Sue
1985 Making it Crazy: An Ethnography of Psychiatric Clients in an American Community. Berkeley and LA: University of California Press.


Metzl, Jonathan and Suzanne Poirier, Eds.
2005 Difference & Identity: A Special Issue of Literature and Medicine. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.


Jenkins, Janice, Ed.
2010 Pharmaceutical Self: The Global Shaping of Experience in an Age of Psychpharmacology. Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research.


Fabian, Johannes
2000 Out of our Minds: Reason and Madness in the Exploration of Central Africa. Berkeley and LA: University of California Press

(above center)
Lemelson, Robert
2010 Afflictions culture & mental illness in Indonesia. Watertown: Documentary Educational Resources.
I saw a partial screening of these at the 2011 Society for Psychological Anthropology conference. This was my first academic conference :)

a drink that does the mind good

I want to develop further my concept of "bodily responsibility" I blogged about roughly a year ago by exploring some of the nootropic drinks that are giving us yet another way to improve our health in correlation with our pocket books.

Regular readers may realize that the body is a subject, and object, I recurrently come back to. Indeed, I designate this as the focus of my work however I do tend to perseverate on the brain. Other structures or assemblages have been known to generate great interest on my part but I'm all over that brain, all the time, that's me.
Now, in the past, I have focused numerous times on the relationship we hold with our own bodies, constructed around regimes, treatments, perceptions and respects for the body, our body. My concept of "bodily responsibility" suggests a separation from the self and the body and an absolute objectification. Here, with the nootropic drinks, we see the body as something to feed with what we can see as performance enhancing food in order to maintain optimum functioning. Fuel to an engine. Now, when everyone begins sentience with the same engine, equality would mandate all are given the same quality fuel. Marketed nootropic drinks bend this moral membrane we have naturally between what is and what is not a basic human right. Energy drinks, nootropic drinks, supplements and all other manner of proto-health sustenance that exist in the consumer realm are not basic human rights, as evidenced by their price point and accessibility. This puts the producers of such super foods in a hard spot between profiting from selling a lovely thought about who deserves to be healthy and selling a life-sustaining fluid, so essential to health it is deserved by all the lot of us, the 7 billion that is.

As Western bio-medical discourse preaches about maintenance and preventative care actions, consuming nootropic drinks and other supplemental foodstuffs can be seen as one such action, a fundamental severance occurs between the subjective,victim based model of suffering and the objective and morally weighted based model of suffering.
When engaging with the U.S. health care system, we can be made to feel, and indeed it may be the agenda, that we are responsible for our own health in the way we are responsible for a pet or a dependent. Health supplements, drinks included, may be expensive, but they make you a better person, physically and morally, all the same.

I do not disagree fully here, and to treat and maintain a healthy body is indeed a set of actions to be reflected upon with pride however, linkages between morality and health can be problematic. The problem being, not all health conditions can be controlled or avoided through responsible body ownership, indeed many can not. The brain is just as prevalent in this argument, with an added element of brain power that can be "harnessed".

SO, if we pair our sense of bodily responsibility with the neuro-movement that so saturates the consumer market at the moment then we get this:

or this

or these guys...

Are we to believe more the fallacy that is the concept of there being a convenient way to good health when seeing these? Do these beverages really exist in the democratic society we pretend to live in? A society where buying expensively carbonated water can increase intelligence and energy, and as the story goes, life as well?
I had the Brain Toniq today at lunch. With regularity, I hit the 2pm slump like every other office girl who lacks thrill in her job and although there is a Starbucks in my office building lobby, I try to find ways around engaging in that patronage. The so-called "energy drinks" are usually too harsh for my delicately inclined palate so I tend towards the cafe side of things and to give perspective, I have no real aversion to herbal qualities and rather like fennel, anise and tarragon, or liquorices. Though I like to think I have better uses for some four-dollar and odd cents every day around this time, I fail to find any one of those ways when I have fifteen minutes to refresh and recenter my energies. This all been said, I still can't get excited about Brain Toniq, even despite it so smugly self-identifying as a "think drink". I could really almost see myself getting behind any product that gets people thinking about their brains more. And I wish there was a drink that could actually make me think with greater anything, other than the stupidity brought on by alcohol or the cock-eyed enthusiasm caffeine totes with it. Damn.

on a method of inquiry: (re)defining the self

The Self is a topic that has long been probed with the anthropologist's tool (his mind) and has, rather than developing a defining set of processes and symbolisms, managed to redefine itself as soon as one thinks it defined. And so we chase this elusive, ever checking ourselves in the mirror for a chance to reconnect with ourselves, the human we study most assiduously.
Indeed, through asking questions, anthropologists inherently learn about themselves, if at least the realization is residuary. Observations are made, perceptions are concretized and patterns are noted and through this sempiternal digestion of material comes a self-knowledge that is at once both holistic and reflective, inexorably linked to the experiences from which it sprung forth.

Is knowledge of the Self useful in any other way than the most intimate? To be sure, many anthropologists have used themselves as comparative canvases of meaning on the blank human form, polysemous means to a culturally comparative end. The Self and the Other are both necessary vantages from which to stand when examining cultures. This iconic dilemma betwixt Self and Other, manifest into Us and Them, also stamps out the divide between marginalized and non-marginalized, dangerously close to the territory of the exploitative. Though, in essence, essentializing, such division helps frame other highly amorphic concepts such as difference, identity and judgement. Divisions like these can neither harm nor compromise the pursuit of knowledge. It would be dangerous to say, then, that if true, at perhaps..first light, as long as we recognize ourselves in a cultural proceeding, a resigned recognition of what differs exists, tainting purely reflective Self knowledge with what is so dirty and subversive about identifying difference. I speak of difference not as a segmentor but a mucilage between yes, this "Us" and those "Thems" that at once reflects sameness and allows contemplation of what escapes what confines "sameness" indicates.

I'd like to commence an ongoing series of image comparisons employed to stave off the ennui of Seattle summers when it is too beautiful to stay inside but simply too hot to do anything of substantive engagement. The theme of these images is difference, with an attention to the self-defining practice of defining the Other. To begin, another haunting Antony Gormley installation:

Death without Dominion

Chronic disease or illness sometimes leads us to what we term, for lack of a better word, the "choice" to continue life-saving treatment or to cease it, knowing of course the outcome is ultimately death. Control over our own lives and bodies is of normal human grounds, if we look at it through a secular perspective, as control can help mediate harsh environments and buffer shortcomings.

Terminal control, deciding whether or not to continue living, is decidedly a step too far for the U.S. judicial system notwithstanding that if you were dying, offing yourself would be the ultimate in environmental adaptation as resources are scarce no matter what (thanks to our hunter-gatherer beginnings) and end of life care is some of the most expensive care you will ever receive in your life.
Taking this control, however, while under our natural purview, has been cause for debate. Whatever controlling practices we hold over our bodies, body modification, discipline, medicinal and clinical treatments, choosing our own death is downright criminal from a lawful perspective, and pathological medically. Oregon and Washington, being the exceptional cases in U.S., lay their gaze of logic and tolerance upon a relatively few number of cases each year. Interestingly, most were well-educated Caucasians (Oregon's DWDA 2011, Washington DWDA 2011). In 2011, Oregon had 63 deaths and Washington had 70. The number of individual prescriptions written with the Death with Dignity Act far exceeds the number who ingest and die from the medication, a testament to the tenacity of the human spirit.

When I took Anthropology of Death with the brilliant Professor James Green here at the University of Washington, I learned how to articulate and frame the concept of the "good death". While different cultures value different experiences/practices in death, our U.S. culture strives for a peaceful death which can mean dying at home or in hospice care rather than a hospital unit, having all your loved ones near and ideally being pain free. We fear death, naturally so. Good deaths are thought to be peaceful, unhurried and expected. Assisted suicide allows for "good deaths" to be carried out, allowing for preparation and planning, but also can sound unsettling. As primates, our goals are to stay alive and procreate. It is all the particulars of the human experience that produce what Geertz termed "webs of significance". These webs define our "good death" and speak of our understanding of quality of life. From the biomedical perspective, assisted suicide can seem beneficial to the whole group. Spiritually, and here I specify religiosity, it is vehemently denied.
The Roman Catholic Church sees us as stewards of the bodies we live through, not owners with intimate desires. Islam as well fundamentally opposes assisted suicide by having Allah not only control our death, but most everything else as well. Many Christian factions strongly oppose physician assisted suicide in the traditional sense but accept withdrawing life support in certain cases. Religion provides the structural coping to deal with harsh environments, and these are a many varied thing.

While death clearly means different things to different people in differing of significance, to all it means a point of finality and transition, of abeyance and quiesce. The rarity of this opportunity, this "choice" to live or die, is evidence of the well honed biological process called life.



Title: And Death Shall Have No Dominion, By Dylan Thomas

Image: Antony Gormley "Clutch VIII" 2010

The Blind Men and the Elephant

by: John Godfrey Saxe


It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.

The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
"God bless me! but the Elephant
Is very like a wall."

The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried, "Ho! what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me 'tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!"

The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
Is very like a snake!"

The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
And felt about the knee.
"What most this wonderous beast is like
Is mighty plain," quoth he;
"Tis clear enough, the Elephant
Is very like a tree!"

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear
Said: "even the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most:
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!"

TheSixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
Is very like a rope!"

And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right
and all were in the wrong!

So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what the other mean,
And prate about an elephant
Not one of them has seen.

Science is Hard!

Robert Lemelson is visual and socio-cultural anthropologist and a residential researcher at UCLA's Semel Institute of Neuroscience. His work is heavily based in Indonesia and dramatically and unflinchingly explores issues of psychiatry, religion, conflict and trauma.

One of my favorite blogs, Neuroanthropology, recently did a post on his 2011 film, The Bird Dancer (Elemental Productions), which investigates the experience of Tourette's Syndrome as a collection of illness meanings through the context of a Balinese sufferer.
What I mean by illness meanings is that Tourette's Syndrom (TS) is not portrayed as it would be in a Nova special or on WebMD, biologically s and only at the very end socially contextualized, rather Lemelson anchors onto the social and cultural aspects of TS, giving not only a uniquely Balinese perspective of the experience but also with that penetrating gaze of the anthropologist.
The illness meanings anthropologists explore are what a scientist would call "soft data". The soft v hard science debate is a contentious one, and it rarely ends in favor of anthropology. Some of my previous posts touch on this tendency for anthropology, and other social sciences for that matter, to be inherently compared to sciences like physics, with the resultant attitudes are dubious of the qualitative methods and interpretive nature of (socio-cultural) anthropological inquiry. I am continually re-exposed to the view that only hard science is an acceptable form of data and that anthropologists are apparently trying to act as legitimate scientists (which I still can't find evidence of, and evidence after all is the anchor of hard science). Without even searching it out, through analysis of the "every-day", these attitudes persist. To be noted, anthropology is a broad field and has interdisciplinary tendencies. Forensic anthropology and physical anthropology are examples of a solid integration of hard science and social science and can be very technical indeed. Socio-cultural anthropology, on the other hand, can lean heavily towards the humanistic pole, eschewing numbers for more complex symbols or words and relies on qualitative, or soft, methods of research like descriptive writing. This "flavor" of anthropology tends to be under attack for something it is not, a hard science, and is not clearly distinguished for what it is, a way of studying people humanistically and with special import paid to person-centered accounts and experience and subjectivity. Doesn't sound very scientific? Well, it's not! It's wonderfully un-scientific and allows for a creativity of thought I relish.

What we do is indeed interpretive, something scientists abhor and the public generally doesn't take seriously. In the field of medicine, however, both hard and soft approaches to research need to be called upon. Lemelson's consideration of disorder and sickness, however dire the circumstances he shows us seem, isn't the medium our society takes seriously. The life of a Balinese TS sufferer indeed is removed from the evidenced based medicine we practice, and entrust our lives with, in the US. Thankfully, views are shifting and hard scientists are figuring out why the "humanistic" holds just as much weight as the "scientific" in solving problems. While TS isn't an epidemic or pandemic or really a public health concern at all, it does greatly effect the lives of the patients and their supporters and this in turn effects treatment. Treating and healing the sick and disordered is the agreed upon aim of medical science but the politics of knowledge value oft get in the way. It is human nature to be distrusting with new ideas, and with money, and numbers and graphs can be pretty convincing sometimes, while narratives on the subjectivity of second-generation Mexcan-American immigrants that have Type II Diabetes may be alarming, and surely interesting, but perhaps not worthy of hundreds of thousands in funding. These stories are meaningful, however, and invaluable to posterity.


http://www.elementalproductions.org/

Invisible Handicaps

Disability Studies is a nascent field of interdisciplinary approaches to understanding and making meaning of disability. Though the field itself does not declare any class of disability more or less deserving of academic scholarship, it has been noted that an over attention to physical disabilities has haunted the field. Intellectual and mental disabilities are gaining more interest, however, but this presents some difficulties. Ideally, the scholars in the field of studying disabilities would be disabled themselves. This is the general attitude towards ethnic studies as well, like American Indian studies, where those physically foreign to the subject matter, i.e. Caucasians, aren't given the same validity as would a Native scholar. In Disability Studies, the disabled are encouraged to become involved as their life experiences are unique to the human experience and lend a kind of authenticity to the work.
The movement towards inclusion of the non-physically disabled, or mentally disabled, presents natural barriers as the production of knowledge becomes hindered by the disability. Intellectual disabilities, developmental disabilities, like Autism, and Schizophrenia, hereafter "mental disabilities", present seemingly insurmountable barriers to higher education and the knowledge economy. Seen below, this logo does not make clear whether mental disabilities are included in their initiative.

I tread lightly here. Disability is still stigmatized in our society and while physical disabilities get a lot of visual attention and are an obvious target of affirmative action, the collection of disabilities that originate, and remain, in cognitive functioning are more difficult to integrate into the ADA movement due to their seemingly elusive and low-profile characteristics, i.e. it is easier to acknowledge someone's physical handicap than an abnormal frontal lobe. Any efforts towards integration and accommodation risk discrimination and exclusion for any disability but this is never truer when it comes to mental disabilities. Another major factor in this problem is the spectrum aspect of these afflictions. Research has shown that many mental and intellectual disabilities are "spectrum disorders"or spectrum conditions (I don't want to define here what is a disorder and what is a condition as these labels deserve an entirely independent analysis). So, the levels of disability in these fluctuate, which renders problematic the disabled label. This produces a sense of unease among those with mental disabilities in the Disabilities Studies field. Many simply don't reach that level of contribution to the community because their disabilities inherently disrupt or limit cognitive functioning, something that just doesn't fly in academia. While there are exceptions, a favorite of mine being Elyn Saks, who has Schizophrenia and happens to be a tenured professor at USC, they don't represent the critical mass of the mentally disabled who remain not just outside of the academic community but at times outside of their own local community as well.
I saw Dr. Saks speak at a conference last spring in Santa Monica. She had a relatively flat affect,or lack of facial expression, which is a symptom of Schizophrenia, among other mental illnesses. It was a physical sign of her disability but the tip of the iceberg of what Schizophrenia entails. Also of note, Temple Grandin, an Autistic scholar of animal sciences at Colorado State, has been very outspoken regarding her disability and credits her unique view on life to her deep understanding of animals.
In sum, I appreciate the difficulty our society has in dealing with and understanding those with mental disabilities. A malfunctioning or malformed brain is hard to group with physical handicaps such as deafness or loss of a limb. They take intensive treatment and therapy and can never be completely overcome, much like many physical disabilities. Contributions to Disability Studies can still occur from the mentally disabled, as a disabled mind can still have flickers of brilliance and insight and these perspectives are sorely missing from academic literature.

Stimulating Conversation

It is no surprise that the US is a breeding ground for stimulating drugs. The American Dream is one of hard work; long hours and a “pulling oneself up from one’s bootstraps” mentality that suggests even an average person can be successful if they work hard enough. If every average American can have a piece of the success pie then competition flourishes. This competition drives energy drink, caffeine and supplement sales and is a suggested contributor to the widespread psychopharmaceutical use that many lament over. Working long hours or excelling academically, for the average American, takes concentration, alertness, good working and long-term memory and rarely is conducive to an otherwise health lifestyle of sufficient sleep, exercise and fresh air. Stimulant drugs, and here I mean stimulating psychopharmaceuticals like stimulants and anti-depressants, nootropic and neuroprotective compounds as well as consumables like coffee and Red Bull are allies in the fight for the American Dream. They help college students pull “all-nighters” to study for exams, long-haul truckers make deadlines, medical residents get through 24 hour shifts and those working well over 40 hours a week to make ends meet fair reasonably well on very little sleep.
The ubiquity of them in the knowledge economy and higher education is something that has long been of interest to me.
I grew up in a Folgers drinking, blue-collar household and saw my father get up at 5am daily, sometimes 7 days a week, to provide for us. He taught me a good work ethic and was the quintessential American success story, working hard to eventually own his own company. This brought us financial stability but I only saw him work more. This painted the American Dream, blue-collar work and indeed, instant coffee, in a poor light for me. To me, less family time but more money was the short end of the stick. This life lesson is what drove me to be the first in my nuclear household to go to college, drew me to the “knowledge for knowledge’s sake” approach to education and in general took away any inclination and motivation towards being wealthy. What did stick though, interestingly, was my parents’ coffee habit. I grew up smelling coffee at 5am and then again a few hours later when my mom woke up. I found caffeine a necessity to the working adult, especially the working college student, and sometimes favored buying a latte over lunch with what little money I had. Stimulants like caffeine are so prevalent because, I argue, all classes can benefit from the alertness and sharpness of thought it brings. I find significant importance in phenomenon that transcend class boundaries as such.
Here we see a vintage satire of this effect coffee has on the American Dream mentality.




Caffeine itself, without even any consideration of the other chemicals we use to need less sleep and stay alert, deserves ample discourse alone. The workingman’s stimulant, the remedy for Monday mornings, the study aide and the cubical companion.

I don’t want to discount the global usage of coffee in focusing on usage in the US. We are the world’s biggest consumer culture of coffee however we are not the first to make it part of our daily routine. Americans tend to take things to the level of abuse quickly and I feel we are particularly fiendish about our caffeine. Rightfully so, as our culture praises those who can function at optimal levels with little sleep or food. This pride in productivity is something we created and still have ownership over although the nations in the process of full industrialization and development, like Brazil, China and some areas of the middle east, are showing signs of a similar culture unfolding.


Global consumption aside, domestically, we are showing pathological signs of caffeine abuse and overuse. Has anyone seen the extra-caffeinated coffees at gas stations, claiming to be the equivalent of multiple cups of coffee in one? And I’m sure you’ve noticed the original 8.4 oz. can of Red Bull has ballooned to a 20 oz. option as well? Coffee pots are even spotted at banks, mechanics and car dealerships, anywhere an adult may be waiting at for more than 5 minutes. Specialty websites even sell caffeinated foods, gums and mints. Given this rampant consumer culture, there is virtually no excuse for anyone to be running at less than high octane. It puts an implicit pressure on every American to succeed, despite any and all odds.

Many anthropologists find this problematic. Not only can this mentality nurture unhealthy habits, it encourages an artificially high level of functioning that few have naturally. Coffee, and now energy drinks and other consumables, is now synonymous with "fuel" to get you through your day.

See below: to-go cup at local Seattle coffee house. We are candid about our coffee addictions.


While certainly not the most sustainable method of coping with the pressures of the American culture of hard-work and success, it remains a method that has formed new spaces for social congregation, new ways to connect with people and new ways for Americans to make money.

Call for Papers

I will be submitting an abstract for the Second Annual Western Michigan University Medical Humanities Conference, September 27-28, 2012 in Kalamazoo. As I delve into my past in literature and philosophy to provide theoretical grounding for my proposal, I find myself missing the intellectual coziness of the humanities. They say, "ideas of all kinds are safe here, every idea deserves to be expressed". I miss the ancientness and the nobility of them. If they were sweets, the humanities would be English toffee; a refined concoction of various textures and tastes while anthropology would be honey, a viscous glaze with which to see the world through. Anthropology is truly a beautiful discipline and I feel, pairs well with many others. When they mix, stickiness ensues but what is left is so utterly perfect! This conference will be exciting indeed!

The Power of the Pomme

Regard below; a young Steve Jobs. I have to say, after watching a few of his keynotes, including the one for the original iPhone, he was as close to an anthropologist as a developer could be. Jobs' keynote speeches were more about our emerging culture than the emerging product.



Here we see him enticing us to align ourselves with the Apple brand, something we did with enough zeal to commodify our deepest technological desires. Is the iPad really just another tablet? Or is it a greater symbol of ownership over technology, an emergence from something akin to MaryJo DelVecchio Good's "biotechnical embrace" as we very nearly are becoming biologically linked to our technology. With the iPad, Jobs achieved a closer level of attachment, melding life with device with hardly a seam.

That freshly bit apple apparently speaks to us not just as a culture, but as a species. For humans, the most social creature of all, Apple's logo has brought us into the technologic fold, introducing smart phones, laptops and complex software programs to those with silicon anxiety. I argue that the Apple image carried Jobs' ideology farther than the product itself could alone, and that is saying a lot for the company that portabalized our life management systems so elegantly and taken such an innovative look at form. An image like this, a graphic of and for our anthros, can transfix our social processes with such precision, carve an identifying symbol into our minds and lives and embody whole social revolutions in techno-temporal context.

Ethnography, a method of anthropological research, harkens to the Greek origin of "ethnos", or "the people" and "grapho" or, "to write". While he was not a writer by trade, Jobs knew people and was an unparalleled business mind as well. His days of tinkering with electronics in his garage grew and combined with understanding people and creating an understanding of business, he created an image, intimately linked with a product, that is visibly a part of us. Our glowing apples beam outward from our computers, phones and devices, like a spotlight of consumer desire or a beacon of omniscient circuitry, carrying our tweets, texts, status updates, messages, chats, emails, upvotes, jpegs, docs, images and video to billions of other points of data storage instantly. The Apple breathes with us, gets sick with us and syncs with us. We share out most intimate moments and create the most memorable with it.

Regard below; Steve Jobs in his office circa 1982. If he really was an anthropologist, he would have many more books and much less shelter. Aside from the practical, Jobs thought a lot about people, which is what anthropologists do, when designing Apple's productions and defining its vision. This is the sort of pondering that produces the expression seen below; expressions of intense scrutiny into human behavior followed by the mental equivalent of detective's work. These thoughts have had, and will continue to have, world changing power, as evidenced by the virtuoso above. These thoughts powered the ethos of the PC revolution and are hopefully, going to keep on growing.

Memes of Mental Illness

Here are a few that struck me. I'm not huge on memes because little discourse is visibly peripheral to them (outside of academia). While the comments show appreciation and can reflect popularity, through methods of voting, they rarely delve into the root social commentary. Though simplistic and "off the cuff", they provide a rich account of our culture that can be examined, discussed and dissected and provide unique reflection on higher social processes.
These specialized memes are harder to find and less "liked" on the generalized meme sites however there are a few mental illness specific ones created by and for those who suffer from mental illness. Since they reflect these higher social processes, I've found that they can be applicable to a variety of mental illnesses and are generally well received within the community. For the most part, I find memes overwhelmingly prevalent online and while some are amusing, many are an utter waste of time.
These specific memes share personal experiences of the mentally ill that aren't easily expressed publicly and without the anonymity of this particular form of media (which can broadly be defined as "social-media" however begs for further analysis). Let's view and discuss the following.

This is an accurate expression of the symptomology of bipolar disorder. Now to appreciate these facial expressions, other memes must be viewed. Loosely, the first segment (upper left) reflects the dramatic and sudden shift to a heightened state of excitement. True, everything may seem funnier, "lol", but really I see here a depiction of the adrenaline and norepinephrine that surges when in a manic phase and these really intensify life on all facets. Upper-right, we have the attitude narrowed, that of high feelings of self-worth, feelings of omnipotence and righteousness even. These attitudes can rub people the wrong way and that coupled with feelings of importance leads to interpersonal conflict. Mid-left, we see the subject having the feeling of being able to take on any challenge and the zealous creativity and energy that characterizes mania and bottom, the after-math. Post-mania, a depression follows and true to life, memory of the manic episode is patchy at best. Bipolar disorder is grossly understood and while depictions in media are becoming more accurate, we often are majoritively presented with the extremes of the upper segments while the bottom segment, possibly the most devastating, is left out. Based on my research with bipolar support group outlets, the manic phases are sometimes sought out, induced even, by bipolars so the emphasis on this phase wrongfully ameliorates the imminent depression.

This meme really hits home the feelings I've seen expressed numerous times during my research. If we are to legitimize mental illness as a biological pathology, like cancer or HIV, we have to move past the elusive quality of it. By definition, mental illness is organically based in the brain, a mostly invisible (outside of the eye) organ. Many medical pathologies are invisible however, so in doing this we risk ignoring its status as an illness, something that should carry no blame, therefore perpetuating stigma. As an anthropologist, I recognize that the bio-psychiatric model of mental illness only accounts for a certain account and certain biological processes and that cultural specificities can adjust these, despite all clinical intuition and diagnostic paradigms. Stigma, however, persists in part because of the invisibility of the illnesses, making them difficult to define discretely. As Andrew Lakoff, professor of Anthropology, Sociology and Communications at University of Southern California argues, "The biomedical model seeks to rescue the person from the stigma of mental illness by treating it as something external to the self"(Lakoff 2005:106). Here Lakoff illustrates how the attempt by the "ignorant" person to find the mental illness in appearance can tie the illness and the self together too completely, taking import away from the biomedical perspective which can help equate mental illness to other "invisible" disorders such as cancer. Mental illness has yet to reach the level of medical respect cancer has and can, in part, vilify its sufferers.

Here we have an observation of what is a popular sentiment regarding current prescribing practices of service providers of mental health care. Over-prescribing and over-medicating are strongly supported claims in the public eye and can be drawn out of proportion. Accounts from actual patients include instances of patients wanting medications but their provider refusing (yes, they can do this). Providers fall into categories where their prescribing practices reflect their personal attitudes towards pharmacological treatment. Many take holistic approaches and give credence to whatever therapy is best suited but there are those who fall to the extremes. Patients often complain about this because the process of switching psychiatric service providers if the suggested therapy is not desired is arduous, expensive and can exacerbate symptoms of certain illnesses. Sometimes providers aren't up front about their pharmaceutical philosophy and this is only to be discovered at the worst time, when you need a medication adjustment. That being said, from my research, I find that while there is certainly complaints about being over-medicated, or at least being suggested to be as the patient ultimately makes the choice for him or herself, there are just as many accounts of patients feeling they need to increase a dosage or add a medication but their providers won't comply. More medication can be good in certain cases or even necessary to maintain a certain level of recovery. There are other therapies that can substitute certain medications, anxiety can be treated pharmacologicaly or through talk-therapy or meditation, but every option has a certain lifestyle it can fit into. When someone is suffering extreme anxiety that is keeping them from leaving the house and working, treating it pharmacologicaly, which is relatively instant, may be preferable to prescribing talk-therapy which can take away time from work and may take much longer for acceptable results. Mentally ill people want productive lives too and pharmaceutical treatments often are the best option to maintain these lives economically and socially.

Unfortunately, lengthy sessions with service providers are still financially out of reach for many and 15 minute "med-management" sessions cost proportionately less however only have one objective. For example, in Seattle, for the uninsured, a med-management session with a psychiatrist is around $75-$100. A full session, which usually combines medication management and talk-therapy is closer to $300 and lasts 50 minutes. These are pretty standard numbers. Insurance is still out of reach for plenty of the mentally ill, especially considering the likelihood of having full-time, insured positions and even with insurance, co-pays and mental health coverage can vary. I see these economic barriers as part of the perceived problem of over-medicating and patient accounts certainly reflect that. Regardless, Peter Kramer, psychiatrist and clinical professor at Brown University, in his groundbreaking memoir of antidepressants, Listening to Prozac, explained that"psychopharmacology (is) an impressionistic art" and this meme reflects the conflicts that can manifest from this.




References:

Kramer, Peter
1993 Listening to Prozac: A Psychiatrist Explores. New York:Penguin Books.

Lakoff, Andrew
2005 Pharmaceutical Reason: Knowledge and Value in Global Psychiatry. New York: Cambridge University Press.