My first session on the 2nd day was What’s the Matter with the United States? One of the early speakers was Jeff Maskovsky, whose work I find excellent. Unfortunately, I didn’t make it there early enough to see him speak, but I did see him make some responses during our short discussion period. Unlike many sessions at AAA, this one had a shortened discussion session since the hotel fire alarm went off during one of the presentations. We all had to hurry out a side exit and stand on an elevated concrete area waiting for the all clear.

During this session, Jane Schneider made a great connection between government morality policies and an actual upsurge in vice. One example she presented was the puritanical imposition of Prohibition in the early 20th Century. It was meant to cut down on vice but it ended up created an entire new market niche for liquor producers and runners. This illicit business actually caused more harm (bodily and mentally) than the supposed vice that Prohibition was attempting to proscribe.

Ida Susser described the impact of US neoconservatism on US AIDS policy (both domestic and international). She noted the current administration’s attempt to re-regulate the poor and ethnic minorities. She threw particular scorn (as do I) on the abstinence only requirements built into TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) and PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief). In PEPFAR, it’s mandatory that 33% of the funding provided be spent solely on abstinence programs. Condoms, birth control, help for sex workers, and sex education are forbidden. This ideological policy is a death sentence for so many people in the US and throughout the world. The ideologues say that abstinence and “be faithful” are the best options. However, some married men stray and have multiple sex partners and the woman living in an assumed monogamous relationship suffer the consequences. The ideologues are creating repressive understandings of familial and women’s roles in society.

Dorothy Roberts, the discussant, summed it up well by noting the punitive aspect of American neoliberalism. The state is not simply withdrawing from its responsibilities but it is leaving in its wake a new, repressive social contract. Claims of multiculturalism and social harmony from the right simply mask strong racist policies.

My next session was Public Interest Ethnography: Theory, Practice, and Action. There were some interesting talks about Indy Media, and how it might help unite the cyber-left and provide an avenue for praxis-oriented ethnography. Amy Rosenberg Weinreb described an interesting concept of shadow publics. Chris Thornton and Peggy Sanday raised an interesting tidbit in their talk on male violence. The described a model of male-male social relationship that posited woman as the medium through which men define these relationships.

I attended the AIDS and Anthropology Research Group (AARG), which is a special interest group in the Society for Medical Anthropology section of the AAA. It was an interesting meeting and something I might get involved with in the future.

After that, I went to the Compliance, Resistance and Social Realities: How Does Medical Anthropology Inform Ethically Responsible Research. Chris Simon talked about the difficulties of funding social health research vs. what a community needs and desires. He and others on the panel discussed the 90/10 problem where 90% of the global research dollars for health are applied to 10% of the total global disease burden. In the developed world, anti-aging and sexual performance are the primary focus while health dollars rarely go towards developing world problems such as clean water, treatable infectious diseases, etc. In summing up this panel, Barbara Koenig noted, as I and many people have said before, that the root causes of today’s global health situation is rooted in poverty and wealth inequality. While biotechnology is a unique tool we can use to work on health issues, we must avoid a biomedical reductionist solution that renders invisible poverty as the core factor.