Margaret Clark's Enduring Contribution to Latino Studies in Medical Anthropology

Abstract

argaret Clark's stature in Latino studies in medical anthropology stems in large part from the publication of her 1959 monograph, Health in the Mexican American Culture. The book helped to move the emerging field of medical anthropology beyond the narrow gaze that characterized most earlier ethnomedical research (cf. Humphrey 1945; Saunders 1954; van derEerden 1948). Earlier work in medical anthropology tended to focus on the exotica of health beliefs and practices, with little regard to their contexts or social significance. In contrast, Clark's work helped to demonstrate that ethnomedical phenomena could be profitably analyzed as both reflecting and perpetuating broader sociocultural processes. Alongside works by such noted medical anthropologists as Richard Adams, George Foster, Octavio Romano, Arthur Rubel, Benjamin Paul, Lyle Saunders, and Ozzie Simmons, Clark's richly textured analyses added to the enduring impact ethnomedical research with Latinos has had on medical anthropology as a field. Clark's research on sociocultural aspects of health and illness in the economically disadvantaged Mexican American barrio of Sal si Puedes, San Jose, California, helped to establish the legitimacy of ethnographic research with non-Native American populations in the United States while drawing early attention to key issues that continue to interest medical anthropologists to this day. The work focused on informal sector health care, particularly as it was managed within households and by extrahousehold relatives, neighbors, and friends. This perspective helped to set Clark's research apart. Until then, anthropologists had been more interested in the dramatic, colorful, and often supernaturally inspired healing specialists, such as spirit-mediums, diviners, and priests or specialists such as bone-setters and herbalists who controlled well-defined bodies of expert knowledge (e.g., Edgerton 1971; Hallowell 1942; Handelman 1967) And they, like the ethnographers who studied them, were generally men.