I recently reviewed Margaret Lock's latest book, The Alzheimer Conundrum, and her anti-reductionist arguments are well-worn theoretical critiques in anthropology. I would like to see more people from biomedical science engage with her research. How much should medical anthropologists publish in anthropology journals, and how much should they reach out to audiences reading medical and science journals?
Three answers:
1-Reach across traditional but arbitrary discipline category lines: Thomas AC Rennie, MD, received funding in 1951 to study mental health in midtown Manhattan. He recruited TWO anthropologists, Leo Srole (most believe his PhD was in sociology while it was actually in anthropology) and Marvin K Opler, PhD in anthropology from Columbia University (granted in 1938). Opler went on to be a founder of cross-cultural anthropology, Editor for the Americas of THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHIATRY, and Professor of Anthroplogy, Sociology, and Social Psychiatry at SUNY-Buffalo
2-In the electronic world, what matters is getting published rapidly and choosing your key words in a way that reaches across disciplinary lines where it will get picked up by pubmed if a "medical" word is used and the anthropological world if an "anthropological" world is used
3-Collaborate with persons at medical schools and persons in departments of anthropology: this too will bring your article(s) to the attention of both the discipline of anthropology AND the medical literature
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