Fall 2011

gistThe social science magazine of Duke universiTyfall 2011, volume 5, issue 2

f ro m th e m i ll

Globesityis AmericA exportinG obesity?

elcome to another issue of Gist from the Mill. this publication

demonstrates the diversity of social and behavioral science research conducted at Duke University.

inside, you will read about lynn Smith-lovin’s (Sociology) research. She discusses how different ethnic groups respond differently to various social situations. her current work focuses on Arabic speakers and can be directly translated to circumstances faced by soldiers fighting overseas in iraq and Afghanistan. Smith-lovin’s research, supported by a grant from the Department of Defense, can enhance the military’s cultural training methods and improve interactions with local populations.

ed Balleisen (history and the Kenan institute), oversees rethinking regulation, a three-year project that reflects on Congress’ 40 years of deregulation of several industries. Participants meet once a month to discuss research related to the project and hold lectures and discussions open to the public. Balleisen’s work is partly supported by a PfirSt award from the Provost’s office. PfirSt awards, Problem-focused interdisciplinary research-Scholarship teams, support faculty-led collaborations that address problem-focused research areas from multiple perspectives.

herb Covington (Psychology and Neuroscience) and Dr. Kafui Dizirasa (Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences) are determined to find a treatment for stress-related difficulties. most people cope with stress without developing major psychopathologies. But for others, stress-induced disorders—including depression—can lead to profound changes in mood, sleep, daily interests, and a poor outlook on life. the duo plans to apply for grants

that will allow them to focus on research that will help solve this and other disorders resulting from stress.

harris Solomon (Cultural Anthropology and the Duke Global health institute), is out to prove that weight is a moral force. in his research on obesity, he aims to complicate the questions, rather than risk missing important issues by oversimplifying. he studies the relationship between food, health and consumerism; his current research project focuses on the skyrocketing obesity prevalence in india.

SSri welcomes the Center for Advanced hindsight (C4Ah) to the newly renovated space in Bay C of the erwin mill Building. Center Director Dan Ariely’s research team continues looking into what might have been—or what definitely, most likely will be—in their colorful new digs. C4Ah looks back in time to develop insights about published and unpublished research. With 20/20 hindsight, the center is able to critique the work of others and comment on the obvious intuitiveness and predictability of the results.

SSri’s funders forum program continued through the fall semester. the funders forum is a monthly, lunchtime information session on a variety of topics related to sponsored research, from preparing proposals to funding trends and opportunities. former and current program officers from federal agencies populated the speaker lineup: erin fitzgerald, from the basic science office at the Department of Defense; melissa Vetterkind, Director of the office of federal relations; and elizabeth Albro, Ph.D., acting commissioner for the National Center for education research at the U.S. Department of education and Kristen lauer, Ph.D., education research analyst at the National Center for Special

education all spoke. Wright plans to continue the sessions next semester.

SSri has a new ‘look and feel’. in order to maintain and strengthen Duke University’s brand (i.e., a consistent way to represent itself and its units to the public), SSri has revamped its logo. the new logo promotes Duke’s identity as a global interdisciplinary university whose schools collaborate for a common goal. SSri’s logo is uniquely ours. our affiliates have also received a brand makeover. each logo distinctively represents each affiliate, while strengthening Duke University’s recognizable brand.

We are thrilled at the positive response we have received about GIST and plan to continue to report on the exciting social science research at Duke. SSri is dedicated to interdisciplinary work, and we encourage you to let us know about a project, team, student or faculty member you think would be a good fit for our magazine. SSri is also now publishing a monthly e-newsletter to keep you up-to-date between issues of GIST.

to follow SSri and its affiliates, be sure to get connected via social media: facebook, twitter, Youtube, linkedin and more!

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16Profile: faculty

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18Ask the Social Scientist

19Questions

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back coverfinal Note

iN eVerY iSSUe

6 Globesity

10 Stressed out

12Affective meaning in Arabic

14 rethinking regulation: Kenan institute Project examines our Approach to Government involvement in markets

feAtUreS

editor: Courtney P. orning

Assistant editor: Claire Cusick

Designer: regina Barnhill-Bordowww.bdesign-studio.com

Gist Advisory board:Karl leif BatesPaul Dudenhefer hallie Knuffmanrichard lucic Ara Wilson

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neWsin brief

stUDy reveAls DentAl problems AmonG olDer, minority ADUltsBY AlYSSA ZAmorA

A neW stUDy by Duke University faculty member Bei Wu finds that older blacks and mexican-Americans are more likely to have decayed and missing teeth than are non-hispanic white individuals. they are also less likely to visit the dentist for checkups. this is the latest study to conclude that oral health disparities persist among racial and ethnic groups in the U.S., and that multiple clinical approaches are required to reduce these disparities.

Wu holds faculty membership in the Duke University Center for the Study of Aging and human Development, the Duke Global health institute, and Duke University School of Nursing, where she also serves as Director of international research. her new study was published in the Journal of Public Health Dentistry in June.

While an increasing number of studies have examined oral health disparities across race/ethnicity in the U.S., this is one of a limited number of studies that focuses on older adult minorities.

the study evaluated the frequency and number of decayed, missing and filled teeth among more than 4,300 adults aged 60 and older based on dental and health examinations and interviews collected by the National health and Nutrition examination Survey between 1999 and 2004. Approximately 61 percent of the individuals included in the study were non-hispanic white, 17 percent non-hispanic black and 21 percent mexican-American.

Wu’s research documents significantly higher numbers of decayed teeth among blacks and mexican-Americans, but fewer numbers of filled teeth among these populations than among whites.

Wu and her research team found that blacks had an average of three to four more missing teeth than whites and about four more missing teeth than mexican-Americans. mexican-Americans had the highest number of decayed teeth. Both racial/ethnic groups had many fewer filled teeth than whites, particularly blacks who had two to three filled teeth compared to about seven filled teeth among whites. however, both blacks and mexican-Americans were less likely to have lost all of their teeth when compared with white populations.

“oral health disparities are persistent across racial/ethnic groups for older Americans despite the fact that differences between groups typically diminish when socioeconomic, health-related and behavioral factors are considered in the models,” said Wu. “these disparities could reflect a historical lack of access to, or knowledge of, dental care among racial/ethnic minorities, lifetime

dietary habits, lifetime prevalence of negative health behaviors and differences in oral health beliefs.”

factors such as increased age, lower levels of education and income, smoking and diabetes were likely to be associated with having a higher number of missing teeth. individuals who retained more natural teeth were more likely to be married, engage in moderate or vigorous physical activity, and have more frequent dental checkups.

the study concludes that regular dental visits and healthier behaviors, such as not smoking, less alcohol use and more physical activity, may contribute to improved oral health for elders.

As the U.S. continues to see a shift toward an aging population, researchers call on policy makers, public health officials and health care providers to better understand how social factors and medical conditions together may contribute to racial and ethnic disparities in oral health. to reduce racial and ethnic oral health disparities, researchers emphasize it is important to improve access for dental care for minority elders. they also argue it is critical to increase older adults’ knowledge of the importance of oral health, oral hygiene and preventive dental care services. they also encourage more culturally competent programs and services for minority communities that recruit more underrepresented minorities to the dental professions and enrich dental education curriculum.

newsin brief


toWArD AlmA-AltAreseArcher stUDies heAlth, popUlAtion AnD the environment

BY mArl A BroADfoot

ever since he was a child, William Pan has had a penchant for understanding environmental changes. During annual family trips to the Boundary Waters, a scenic stretch of wilderness straddling the United States’ border with Canada, he witnessed increasing encroachment of people living and working in his beloved vacation spot, cutting down the forest and building up recreation areas. Pan always wondered not only how and why these changes occur, but also whether these changes might affect the people and animals inhabiting the area.

today, Pan has focused his career on understanding the dynamics of environmental change, population growth and human health. that work has taken him far from his native minnesota to the Amazon, where he uses tools from biostatistics, mathematical demography and geography to study land use change, malaria, dengue and chronic disease, and human migration and fertility. As he sees it, the number of people on earth can have a huge impact on practically every aspect of life, from the economy to the environment to health.

“Drivers of environmental change—climate change, land use and deforestation—can be broadly separated into two schools of thought,” said Pan, who joined Duke this summer as an assistant professor of global environmental health. “one focuses on economic growth and policies (or governance). the other focuses on the people—considering population to be the main moderator of environmental change. that’s where i fall. Because even just a small percent change in fertility can affect the composition and size of a population 10 years from now, and in turn that population can affect everything from how people get jobs to how we distribute resources.”

in the cities of the Peruvian Amazon, fertility rates are quite low, with each woman having only two or three children. But that number doubles or triples for women living in rural areas. Pan, who has been investigating variations in fertility rates in the Amazon, suspects that government policies may in fact be encouraging women to have more children. one policy in the region of loreto gives women who are poor regular rations of food (rice, beans and bread) and money (approximately $30 per month) for each child under the age of three. As a result, Pan says many women choose to have another baby every two or four years to put food on the table.

Although the program is intended to improve education and health, “it ends up being a vicious cycle that women and families can potentially fall into,” said Pan. “Parents age and have more mouths to feed; they receive poor or little education, but have contributed significantly to overall population size.”

Pan is helping policy makers recognize the link between such population growth and environmental degradation. in 2009, he served on an expert panel organized by the United Nations

Population fund (UNfPA) and the international institute for environment and Development (iieD) to analyze the policy implications for the United Nations’ response to climate change. recently he has been helping to review and co-author two chapters in the upcoming fifth report in the Global Environmental Outlook, GEO-5, which is a comprehensive global assessment to inform the strategic directions of the United Nations environment Program (UNeP). the chapters inform policy makers of the major drivers of environmental change and recommend a number of strategies for stemming that impact. his top recommendation is education for women and increased economic opportunities, especially in developing countries.

“even just providing women with a secondary education or a technical skill would have a huge impact on future population size,” said Pan. “Bangladesh did that and they reduced their fertility rate in half in about 10 years, which is amazing.”

A number of Pan’s other projects are sure to have more policy implications. right now, he is busy crunching numbers from research on how people’s work choices affect their risk of contracting malaria. the study followed 3,000 laborers every day for five years as they traveled to their jobs, tracking when and where they got sick. With more than 200 observations and 300 variables for each participant, analyzing the data will take time. But hopefully the numbers will point to some factors for reducing the risk of malaria transmission. to Pan, it is all a means to an end, the end being a better life for citizens of the developing world.

“i believe in Alma-Alta (“health for All”), but also that people should be respected and enjoy certain freedoms, such as the right to an education,” said Pan. “the research questions we ask and pursue as scientists are perhaps less important than the ideals we should work toward.”

top: logging campsite along the mazan river (rio mazan) where Pan and team were collecting anophelines; bottom: William Pan leading an exploratory hike along a newly cleared path during the initial stages of road construction.

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neWsin brief

cross-cUltUrAl collAborAtion yielDs UnexpecteD ADventUres AnD benefitsBY SUZANNe VAlDiViA

Ann skinner, Ken Dodge and Jennifer lansford from the Center for Child and family Policy were all in Beijing this past spring, meeting with their collaborators from nine countries in Asia, Africa, europe, North and South America to share data and strategize about additional projects and papers that have emerged out of a five-year project, Parenting Across Cultures, that looks at how parent behavior, including discipline strategies, affects child adjustment. “the sites involved represent diversity in geography as well as in

socio-demographic dimensions,” said Skinner. “We also interviewed mothers, fathers and children, so we got different family members’ perspectives on the same questions. there are many components that we can look at either separately or together.”

the Parenting Across Cultures research team meets annually, with one researcher volunteering to host the entire group and provide a snapshot of what life is like for families in his or her home country. Collaborators are from China, Colombia, Kenya, italy, Jordan, thailand, the Philippines, the United States and Sweden.

recognizing the advantages of visiting different project sites, Skinner points out, “You get the perspective of seeing something in another culture, not just by being a visitor, but also by seeing it through the lens of people with other backgrounds and experiences. these shape what you’re seeing.” in Beijing, their host also invited graduate students from nearby Beijing Normal University to observe the research team’s meetings, and lansford and Dodge gave lectures at the University.

the global reach of the Parenting Across Cultures project is unusual. typical cross-cultural studies might provide data from just two or three countries. this project looks at 13 different cultural groups in nine countries. What’s driving the geographic breadth is the understanding that cultural context impacts attitudes and behaviors in families. in addition, researchers in the field have recognized that historically, studies have focused narrowly on Western industrialized nations.

“research in most psychology journals consists almost entirely of studies with research subjects from Western industrialized nations,” Skinner said. “We know that these subjects are not representative of the diversity of the world’s population, including in important constructs that affect parenting, like moral reasoning and self-concept. i’d like to think that we are doing our part to change this.”

Collaborating across borders has its challenges, but through e-mail and Skype, the researchers are able to cover most of the day-to-day issues involving data collection and survey translation. Skinner acknowledged that the annual meetings are critical for ironing out more complex issues and for organizing in smaller teams to explore related projects and plan publications. the collaborators are extremely productive when they do meet face-to-face because they know their time together is so limited. they agreed at the project’s outset to communicate and publish primarily in english, but participants are free to publish articles in their native-language journals as well.

Skinner is grateful for the ways in which this collaboration has brought her into contact with a diverse and talented group of researchers. She is working with her Kenyan and italian colleagues to write a paper that examines parenting behavior following instances of the intense community violence associated with the disputed 2007 presidential elections in Kenya.

“Dario [Bacchini] from Naples is involved with this paper because he has a wealth of expertise in the area of community violence,” she said. “So, while Dario and i do not live in Kenya, Paul [oburu] does. in fact, he lives in Kisumu where much of the violence occurred and where our data collection takes place. We have come together as a writing team that would likely not have formed had we not all been together in the same room.”

After a day of intense discussions and planning for all the different research avenues this wide-ranging study has generated, Skinner is pleased that everyone wants to go out together and see the sites as a group. in the same way that each collaborator brings his or her own cultural understanding and area of expertise in the field of childhood development, they also bring skills and interests along on the various excursions the group takes.

“i know that if i am sitting next to emma [Sweden] or Chang [China], i’m going to leave the meal having eaten something new and unusual, whether i want to or not,” Skinner said, smiling. “fried scorpion was definitely the most unusual thing on my plate, and Chang tried to convince me that it was not only non-lethal, but good for me. my preference was for the Peking duck, which was delicious. i’m normally a vegetarian, so that was about all the intrepidness i could muster for one meal.”

Parenting Across Cultures research team (and guide) visit the Great Wall in China.

newsin brief

When presiDent clinton announced the completion of the human Genome Project just over 10 years ago, he called it a “landmark achievement,” one that promised a new era of medicine. But the promise of genomics was then and still is even bigger than its potential to change the face of medicine.

the gap between our expectations and the current reality does raise important questions: how might scientists, regulators, policymakers, industry and others hurry things along? And, on the other hand, what are the barriers to realizing the kind of research progress, commercial innovation, and access to our genomes that we all seem to anticipate, even demand?

it is just those overarching questions that preoccupy Bob Cook-Deegan, who spearheaded the formation in 2004 of an Nih- and Doe-funded Center of excellence within the iGSP’s Center for Genome ethics, law & Policy. Now in its second phase, the ongoing interdisciplinary initiative capitalizes on expertise and synergies among colleagues in the iGSP, the Duke law School, and the fuqua School of Business.

in 2006, the health and human Services Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Genetics, health, and Society (SACGhS) contacted Cook-Deegan and his public genomics team to ask for help in analyzing how patenting and licensing affect clinical access to genetic testing in the U.S.

the Duke team was in a perfect position to contribute their expertise by embarking on a series of case studies that would ultimately cover 10 clinical conditions and the genetic tests associated with them.

Although Cook-Deegan isn’t for or against gene patents, the studies did lead him to conclude that exclusive licenses to gene patents have done more to block competition in the gene testing market than to spur the development of new technologies for gauging disease risk.

“in 2004, we asked what we thought was the most important question: What is covered by patents and what isn’t?” Cook-Deegan said. “one of the discoveries that emerged was maybe that’s not the most important question. the issue is more about how people decide what to patent and not patent and what they do once they have those legal rights.”

intellectual property might not be a significant stumbling block to research progress in practice, but Wesley Cohen, frederick C. Joreg Professor of Business Administration at the fuqua School of Business, and his colleague, John Walsh, at the Georgia institute of technology, found that tangible property is another story. A non-trivial share of the researchers they interviewed had been blocked from doing their work because they could not get access to the materials they needed from other researchers.

Based on their findings, that reluctance to share wasn’t driven by intellectual property but instead by what Cohen refers to as “good old-fashioned scientific competition.” Sometimes it was simply too costly or time-consuming for researchers to send materials out to those in need of them.

As genome technologies and services and the rules that surround them continue to evolve over the next five years, Cook-Deegan and his colleagues will be there ready to delve into the questions as they arise.

“that’s the point of this being a center,” said lauren Dame, Associate Director of the iGSP’s Center for Genome ethics, law & Policy. “lots of things pop up and get done related to intellectual property. the idea is that we have a critical mass of people who are connected and doing their own stuff, and it can spark new ideas and projects you didn‘t know you were going to do ahead of time. it’s able to unfold organically; we’re able to respond.”

this article was originally featured in the April/may 2011 issue of Genome Life.

hoW the proDUcts of Genomics finD their WAy in the WorlD


BY KeNDAll morGAN

GloBeSitYBY NANC Y e. oAteS


Weight is a moral force, said medical anthropologist harris Solomon. in his research on obesity, he aims to complicate the questions, rather than risk missing important issues by oversimplifying.

“Who has the authority to tell you what to eat, how you enjoy it, how to be healthy? Why is there a certain ideal thin body that we should all aspire to, and how is that getting circulated globally?”

Newly appointed to a joint assistant professorship with Duke’s cultural anthropology department and Duke Global health institute (DGhi), Solomon said the language we use to talk about a problem and the context in which we frame it can sometimes obscure the real problems and lead frontline medical workers to erroneous conclusions. Nobody makes moral judgments about an arthritis patient. But when it comes to people with diabetes, high blood pressure and other chronic ailments

associated with obesity, insinuations of personal responsibility color the discussion.

GloBeSitY


Solomon studies the relationship among food, health and consumerism. he was drawn to Duke by the university’s reputation for interdisciplinarity. in understanding global health, ethnography—the science of contextualization—can be a powerful element to drawing accurate conclusions and forming effective solutions, he said.

While in india, which in recent years has shown a rise of epidemic proportions in diabetes and cardiovascular illnesses related to obesity, he noticed a number of weight-loss clinics opening up and advice columnists writing about how to lose weight. this implied that the cause of obesity and its related illnesses could be pinned on individual behavior. Solomon questioned such a simple dispatch of the problem. the story of the rise in obesity rates needed context before researchers could come up with solutions to this health issue.

“Cultural anthropology offers a compelling vocabulary for how we talk about disease,” he said. “it can show us

where other possibilities might lie that we haven’t talked about. ethnography has a natural and critical place in our thinking about the connection between culture and health. it’s an essential and integral part of how we deal with the global health problems of our generation.”

orin Starn, chair of Duke’s cultural anthropology department, underscored the importance of a multidisciplinary approach to solving societal problems.

“Weight is a modern obsession, and it’s also a social, cultural and political issue that has to do with how much money you have and what you can afford to put on the table, with changes in commercial agriculture and fast food and other changes in global culture,” Starn said. “harris’s

work is showing us how this is a really complicated set of questions that we need to think about.”

Cultural anthropology and global health interest overlap, Solomon said. Both disciplines take on similar issues but approach them from different methodologies and theoretical perspectives, he said. “having an open door between cultural anthropology and global health, and having a conversation about why is culture important and what is this culture we’re talking about, opens opportunities for discussions about complex questions.”

the language of the discussion was the portal for Solomon’s career in medical anthropology.

“ Weight is a modern obsession, and it’s also a social,

cultural and political issue.”

—oriN StArN


“ the story of globesity gets told as America exporting fat ...

it’s a very problematic generalization about the

relationship of the U.S. to the rest of the world.”

—hArriS SolomoN

originally from florida, Solomon went to Northwestern University for his undergraduate degree in linguistics, which he completed in 2000. As a student, he worked on a project that studied the ways people talked about hiV. he developed an ear for the connections between language and medicine, and an interest in health policy. he immediately went on to acquire a master’s degree in global health from emory University in 2002. for the next few years, he worked on hiV policy in Atlanta and Washington, D.C. his work took him to india frequently. in addition to tackling global health issues of hiV and AiDS, he examined access to health care and the practice of medical tourism, where patients travel to india from other countries to receive high-quality health care at a lower price.

the research projects he worked on left him with pressing questions about the

context of the stories he delved into, and he went back to school, this time to Brown University for his doctorate in cultural anthropology. to conduct the research for his dissertation, he moved to india for a year and a half.

Solomon studied the idea of “globesity” as one way of framing the epidemic of obesity-related chronic illnesses in india. China, too, in recent years has shown a similar rise in obesity and the health problems that go along with it. Putting the blame solely on individuals doesn’t tell the complete story, he said. the cross-discipline conversations he has in his joint appointment help to complicate questions to reveal the whole story.

“ethnography can be a powerful element in understanding global health,” Solomon said.

While living in mumbai, he saw the incredibly polluted water and heard

residents complain universally about the poor quality of the water. “i couldn’t help but think that the polluted water might have some biological effect on metabolism sensitivity that might at some point manifest itself as a precursor to diabetes or obesity,” he said. he learned that indian bioscientists were having similar conversations in their own research projects. (Another attraction Duke held for him was research in metabolic science conducted at the medical school.)

But simplifying the health issue to put the blame on the individual erases the story of environmental hazards, Solomon said.

Another example comes from popular media circulating the story that attributes weight gain to the middle classes in india eating more packaged, processed food, following a trend in Western diets. the media portrayed the practice as middle classes striving for modernity through food. Solomon dug deeper into the issue and learned that many people in his neighborhood in india were eating packaged foods more frequently because of their concerns over food adulteration. Bulk foods at the traditional markets had a greater risk of being tainted. People bought packaged foods to reduce their chances of getting sick.

“the story of globesity gets told as America exporting fat,” he said. “it’s a very problematic generalization about the relationship of the U.S. to the rest of the world, that of all the things we could share with the world, we share unhealthy bodies.”

in examining the rise in the number of obesity-related diseases, many other factors come into play: food pricing, what people can afford to put on their tables; food distribution, what is available to buy; malnourishment, which can trigger metabolic changes to favor gaining weight;

Solomon spent the past several years watching snack food sellers in mumbai, hanging out with indian mothers as they cook for their families and interviewing indian companies that have begun using healthier ingredients to promote their foods to consumers worried about their waistlines.

“obesity is so interesting to me, since food is morally charged,” said Solomon, who argues that consumerism and modernization alone cannot explain india’s problems with obesity and related illnesses such as diabetes. “Some people have blamed over-indulgent parents or the growing number of people with sedentary jobs, but the issue is more complicated. We need to ask who puts food in circulation. how is it priced? Who has access? You can’t just frame obesity in terms of personal indulgence or a society becoming wealthier.”

in his own research, Solomon focused recently on street vendors who sell a mumbai specialty called vada pav, a spicy snack that looks like an indian hamburger. the “desi burger,” as some describe it, is important not only economically and nutritionally, but also for the insights it offers about how people think about food and politics.

much like india’s growing number of neighborhood diet clinics or its advertisements featuring women who have become trimmer in recent years, a humble snack food can illustrate why “biomedicine is not the only way to talk about health and illness,” according to Solomon, who said “public health debates offer a lens into indian society.”

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and changes in the health-care landscape that determines who has access to preventive care.

“my interest is to do descriptive and analytical work,” Solomon said. “my research tries to capture the nuances of the story. i’m interested in adding a cultural and political conversation to clinicians’ conversations at the cellular and clinical level.”

if researchers limit themselves to an American perspective, the problem can be distorted all the more, said Starn.

“in American culture, there’s a premium on the individual and self-help and taking charge of your life,” Starn said. “Weight gain has been stigmatized as a moral failing of the individual. overweight people are one of the last remaining groups in the U.S. that it’s oK to discriminate against.”

this fall, Solomon is teaching a course in medical anthropology through the cultural anthropology department. in the spring, he’ll teach a course he’s developing for Duke Global health institute. he’ll alternate

teaching in both areas, serving as a link that will keep the cultural anthropology department and DGhi faculty aware of mutual interests in each group, said randy Kramer, deputy director of DGhi and who holds a joint appointment as a professor of environmental economics at the Nicholas School and of global health at DGhi.

“Anthropology helps us understand health behavior and how culture shapes that behavior,” Kramer said. “india is very important to the Global health institute. it has a number of significant demographic and economic changes going on that translate into important health disparity issues that need careful examination.”

Students, some of whom are completing their Global health Certificate or are interested in global health-related careers, benefit as well from joint appointments.

“Because harris has lived in india while doing his dissertation research, he brings those experiences into the classroom,” Kramer said. “that cross-cultural

knowledge is really important in the study of global health.”

With the dual perspective, students see culture in a different light: not as a problem to solve, but as something that infuses the problems and possibilities of global health.

Duke’s President Brodhead promotes the idea of knowledge in the service of society, and joint appointments support that mission by broadening students’ perspectives. it’s very easy to lapse into thinking that global health is a challenge only in countries outside the U.S.

“health disparities are absolutely in plain sight in Durham,” Solomon said. “Problems are endemic here around insurance coverage, access to health facilities, the high prices of pharmaceuticals, health social services for minority and immigrant communities.”

Solomon wants to ensure that Duke students, whatever their field and wherever they go, will make the problems they are trying to solve more complicated.

for cultural anthropologist harris Solomon, food is a means by which to better understand changes in indian culture.

these stressors can add up to an avalanche of worries and even develop into chronic stress.

most people cope with stress without developing major psychopathologies. But for others, stress-induced disorders—including depression—can lead to profound changes in mood, sleep, daily interests, and a poor outlook on life.

herb Covington, an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience, and Dr. Kafui

Dzirasa, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, want to find treatment for such stress-related maladies.

they are framing their research by asking how multiple neurological circuits come together to make up complex mental disorders.

“We’re hoping to gain information on the neural mechanisms that lead to vulnerability and stress-related diseases, and how can we target these neural

mechanisms to reverse, or how to better treat, these disorders,” said Covington, who arrived at Duke in fall 2010 after finishing his postdoctoral fellowship.

Covington notes that methods of treating depression have remained largely unchanged since the 1950s, with about 30 percent of sufferers receiving insufficient treatment.

it’s a condition that affects about 121 million people worldwide and is expected

ocial stressors come in many forms: A flat tire on your way to your

long-awaited medical appointment. the rising cost of necessities

like food and gas. family tension, work pressures, and on it goes.

1 0 g i sT f ro m T h e m i l l • fa l l 2 0 1 1

StreSSeD oUt S

BY ShANNoN hArtSoe

to be the second-largest contributor to the global burden of disease by the year 2012. Depression is also linked to about 850,000 deaths around the world each year, according to the World health organization.

the duo plan to apply for several grants that will allow them to expand on the work they were initially trained in. Covington started as a graduate student in the laboratory of Klaus miczek (tufts University), and subsequently extended his training as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of texas Southwestern medical Center, followed by the Department of Neuroscience at mount Sinai School of medicine in New York.

Dr. Dzirasa, who graduated from the Duke School of medicine in 2009, has transitioned from his training in the laboratory of miguel Nicolelis, a Duke professor of neuroscience, to establish his own lab. he now focuses on the neurophysiology of psychiatric disorders such as attention deficit disorder, schizophrenia, bipolar depression and addiction. he has hopes of one day being able to diagnose psychiatric diseases using physical evidence in the same way cardiovascular diseases are diagnosed today.

“We’re hoping to garner the attention of the National institute of health, National institute of mental health and the National institute on Drug Abuse,” Covington said.

Using light and Animal modelsUnlike most animals, which deal with problems in fight-or-flight mode, humans have the capacity to worry about trouble—for prolonged periods of time. Covington incorporates an animal model to try to

capture this aspect of our daily human experience, confining a mouse with a larger, more aggressive and dominant mouse for many days on end.

even though the mice are separated by a partition that only allows for sensory contact, the subordinate mouse cannot really get out of the presence of the aggressor. this creates a level of “chronic” stress for the subordinate mouse.

Covington said mice that are subjected to chronic subordination stress usually respond with depression-like behavior: social avoidance, an inability to experience pleasure, impaired coping responses to other environmental stressors and anxiety-like behavior.

Also, Covington’s research uses optogenetics, which introduces light-sensitive proteins into “excitable” cells. this makes it possible to control specific activities within cells and remotely turn a single cell on or off, something electrical and other forms of stimulation could not do.

Using “in vivo neurophysiological recording techniques,” Dzirasa captures in great detail patterns of brain activity from one area of the brain to another. the technique is similar to a fmri, but captures cellular events in more detail, even at the level of one cell’s activity taking place in one brain area.

“When we combine the experimental control we have over neural circuits, we not only get the relative contribution of activity within a specific area during the expression of a behavior, but we can also probe the specific effect that any given circuit has directly on behavior,” Covington said.

he is building on some of his initial findings as a post-doctoral scholar, which showed the prefrontal cortex is crucial for producing depression-like behaviors following social stress.

“We revealed this using optogenetic approaches where stimulation of the prefrontal cortex showed strong anti-depression-like effects, and this approach lends itself to what was recently discovered using deep-brain stimulations,” he said.

“All of this work indicates that there are complex circuits involved in the emergence of depression and the persistence of depression, and all of these circuits need to be treated individually to treat specific depression-like symptoms,” he said. “Dzirasa’s interests are exactly that, 0to investigate circuits that are quite complex using highly sophisticated and novel technology.”

they also hope to identify the longstanding elusive changes in neural circuits that occur during chronic antidepressant treatments such as imipramine or fluoxetine (Prozac).

“the resulting insights will lay the groundwork for a circuit-level understanding of behavioral pathologies observed in depression, and shed light on those circuitry-level changes necessary for successful treatment,” Dzirasa said.

“What we are doing now is trying to manipulate neural circuits to prevent the effects of continuous stress from ever occurring in the first place,” added Covington. “herein, there are opportunities for both effectively creating novel treatments for specific affective disorders, and a unique opportunity to generate cognitive strategies that protect against the occurrence of any devastating effects of stress from occurring in the first place, which may be an inherent and unfortunate predisposition for many people.”

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methoDS of treAtiNG DePreSSioN hAVe remAiNeD lArGelY

UNChANGeD SiNCe the 1950s, With ABoUt 30%

of SUffererS reCeiViNG iNSUffiCieNt treAtmeNt.


top for a moment, and think about a mother comforting a child. What image pops to mind? What emotions does

that evoke? Now consider whether someone from another

country and culture would respond the same way. there’s a chance they won’t—but why?

it’s this question that fuels lynn Smith-lovin’s research. her previous work has decoded the answers for societies in China, Japan, Korea, and Germany. Now, with one to five years of funding from the office of Naval research (oNr), she’s turned her focus to providing the same clarity for Arabic-speaking cultures.

Smith-lovin began applying Charles osgood’s affective control theory—developed in the 1950s to determine how individuals respond cognitively to outside actors and stimuli—to Arabic-speaking populations in october 2010. With faculty and doctoral student collaborators from the sociology department, as well as researchers from indiana University and the University of Georgia, she developed a survey to collect data from this group.

S‘Affective Meaning’

in ArabicBY WhitNe Y l .J. hoWell

“We’re using the affective control theory to look at how ethnic groups perceive various social situations. from prior research, we know cultural knowledge is acquired and imprinted through a lifetime of experiences,” said Smith-lovin, a sociology professor in Duke’s Women’s Studies Program, describing her basic research that will be unclassified and available to all future investigators. “Cultural meaning is a stable feature, and it tells us a lot about social interactions in a society.”

the study population had varying levels of education, ranging from iraqi refugees to egyptian professionals who worked in research triangle Park. overall, 33 native Arabic speakers from the triangle area participated in the eight-part, 200-scenario pre-test, and they offered initial reactions to various situations, such as a mother comforting or striking a child.

for even greater detail, participants rated the interactions based on three additional dimensions: evaluation (how good or bad a scenario or its actors are), potency (strength or weakness), and activity (liveliness or passivity). to date, very little research like this exists around the Arabic language.

“if we were to find in the pre-test that Arabic speakers tended to see good actors as powerful and bad actors as weak, that would identify a cultural feature of real importance,” Smith-lovin said. “We’re aware much military work involves interacting directly with local populations, and having knowledge like that could help soldiers determine who is and isn’t a friend.”

the results and analysis will enhance the military’s cultural training methods, according to Kim rogers, a sociology doctoral student working with Smith-lovin. Soldiers in any middle east combat theater could use the survey’s details to improve interactions with local populations and augment cultural sensitivity to avoid any potential problems from cultural misunderstandings.

in addition to the impact on military activities, studying social interaction and

implications in Arabic-speaking societies is valuable because the language has ranked among the top 10 most widely spoken tongues on the planet for the past 15 years, according to the Summer institute for linguistics ethnologue Survey. there are four distinct dialects within Arabic, and Smith-lovin’s team has tried to address them all.

Jen’nan read, one of Smith-lovin’s sociology faculty partners, agreed studying the Arabic language and how its native speakers respond to social situations will bolster the safety of U.S. military personnel abroad.

“Anything we can do to ease the tasks of the military will be a benefit. We’re giving them a tool they can use so they won’t feel so vulnerable in what is clearly a hard role,” read said. “By helping them understand these affective meanings, we’re making their work with another culture less of a leap.”

As an expert on American muslims, read leveraged her strong ties with this community in the triangle to explain both the importance and the legitimacy of the research. many muslim and Arab-speaking groups often fear outside requests are facades engineered to extract and abuse private information. So, her involvement was imperative because these groups trust her.

“the Arabic speakers who participated in the pre-test were happy to do it because they often feel overlooked since most people don’t know who or where they are,” she said. “it’s important to understand how perceived meanings and culture can help identify if there are differences between groups.”

Despite all Smith-lovin and her colleagues have gleaned so far, the survey still isn’t in its final form—plans exist not only to perfect it for Arabic-speakers in the United States, but to also design a survey for international

use. the process to create a questionnaire that provides accurate, clear feedback hasn’t been simple, said mary hovespian, assistant professor of sociology and native Arabic speaker.

the Arabic language has many dialects, and the survey team wasn’t able to query speakers of each dialect, such as Palestinian territory residents, before designing and writing the survey. this is where hovespian’s expertise came in.

“We had to make sure what was said in the survey was really what was

understood by generic Arabic speakers,” hovespian said. “We had to back-test how the scenarios were written. i met with [Smith-lovin], who wrote the scenarios in english, to determine if what they were trying to test was actually what was coming through to the

participants. And, in some cases, we did have miscommunication.”

hovespian spent nearly a week translating and checking the survey. During this time, she identified many unclear or incorrect terms that have since been modified to convey the proper meaning.

As the team looks to expand its research to other Arab-speaking countries, such as lebanon, morocco, and tunisia, they are revamping the survey scenarios to ensure they have a good measurement instrument.

“We are hoping our collaborators in the Arab-speaking countries will help us navigate the dialect issues,” Smith-lovin said. “We are looking for a better sense of the degree to which shared reactions are the same across the Arabic language and whether they change over time.”

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“ Anything we can do to ease the tasks of the military will be a benefit. We’re giving them a tool they can use so they don’t feel so vulnerable in what is clearly a hard role.”

—JeN’NAN reAD

1 2 g i sT f ro m T h e m i l l • fa l l 2 0 0 8 1 4 g i sT f ro m T h e m i l l • fa l l 2 0 1 1

eginning in the 1970s, Congress began deregulating several industries, removing government-imposed rules that stipulated how

airlines, banks, and other businesses could operate. the rationale behind deregulation was that the free play of market forces, rather than direction and control by the government, would make the economy more productive and efficient, with happier outcomes for consumers and capitalists alike.

recent events and trends, however, have prompted some observers to question the purposes and strategies of existing regulatory governance. the collapse of the housing market, the upheaval in the financial industry, and our ongoing inability to deal with climate change, among others, all suggest that our attitude and approach to regulation need to be examined anew.

rethinking regulation, a three-year project of the Kenan institute for ethics, does just that. Under the direction of ed Balleisen, Associate Professor of history and Senior fellow in the Kenan institute,

rethinking regulation, which began in the fall of 2010, brings together scholars from Duke and the University of North Carolina who represent a number of disciplines—history, business, and law; medicine, political science, and sociology; philosophy and environmental studies. Participants meet once a month to discuss research related to the project. there are lectures and moderated discussions open to the public, and connected with the project are two courses on regulatory governance that are being offered this academic year at Duke. the project also awards small grants to graduate students who study issues regarding regulation.

At issue is not deregulation itself. As Balleisen explained, there are areas of the economy in which minimal or no government involvement may make sense, and the option to regulate or not should always be available. What is at issue, he said, is the dominant framework that has guided regulatory governance over the past 40 years. that framework has its roots in economics and law, especially in the

1960s- and 1970s-era economists at the University of Chicago and public-choice theorists (many of whom were economists) at the University of Virginia. economists at Chicago—the most famous was the late milton friedman—wrote a large number of books and articles suggesting that free markets maximize economic well-being by producing more goods and services at lower prices. their economic models (as are most economic models) were predicated on the notion that people are self-interested and respond to incentives. for their part, the public-choice theorists argued that the conventional view of elected officials—that they work without bias on behalf of the public good—was incorrect; instead, politicians, as did buyers and sellers in economic markets, simply sought to further their own interests. Put all that together, and the conclusion was clear: deregulation—getting the government out—was the optimal policy.

But deregulation has never been without controversy, and in Balleisen’s view, the dominant framework is no longer adequate

rethinking regulation: Kenan Institute Project Examines Our Approach

to Government Involvement in Markets

BY PAUl DUDeNhefer

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for the regulatory challenges at hand. it is thus the purpose of rethinking regulation to create new conceptual frameworks for regulatory decision-making that more thoroughly reflect the realities and complexities of today’s world—realities and complexities, said Balleisen, that go beyond the assumptions that underlie our current approach to regulation.

“Sure, human beings pursue their self-interest, and they respond to incentives,” Balleisen said. But when it comes to regulatory governance, such a view of human agency is limited. “to me, it is undeniably clear that self-interest and incentives are not enough. We also need to look at the culture of our institutions—of Wall Street, the pharmaceutical industry, the oil industry. Yes, incentives matter, but so does the moral framework of our institutions, including regulatory institutions.”

Balleisen, who is a coeditor of Government and Markets: Toward a New Theory of Regulation (Cambridge University Press, 2010), thinks it is fitting that rethinking regulation is situated in an

institute for ethics. Any decision to regulate or deregulate involves a host of normative judgments—and that brings up another challenge for the dominant framework. the norms of most economic analyses are efficiency, growth, and consumer satisfaction; but as Balleisen explained, the most salient questions concerning regulatory governance today engage a far wider range of norms and priorities. “What do we do, for example, when a regulation designed to protect our water supply conflicts with a regulation intended to keep our air clean? how do we think about the tradeoff between the decision-making authority of regulatory institutions and the concerns of a democratic society? how do we prevent special interests from derailing the process? those are questions that require engagement with historical context, institutional culture, and normative values, as well as traditional economic models.”

the project also aims to establish ongoing points of contact between scholars and those whom Balleisen called “regulatory protagonists”: lawmakers

and people who participate in regulatory decisions such as corporate executives and directors of nongovernmental organizations. A step in that direction occurred this past June, when rethinking regulation held a two-day symposium titled “Crisis and the Challenges of regulatory Design”; in attendance were ted Kaufman, former Senator from Delaware; Damon Silvers, Associate General Counsel for the Afl-Cio; Barbara roper, Director of investor relations for the Consumer federation of America; and Zixta martinez, Assistant Director for Community Affairs at the Consumer financial Protection Bureau.

Kimberly Krawiec, Professor of law, and a member of the rethinking regulation project, says the high-profile bank closures that began in 2008 and the passage in 2010 of the Dodd-frank Act have given us a golden opportunity to review and put to the test our existing approach to regulatory governance. “this is the moment, right now,” Krawiec, a specialist in corporate finance, stressed; “if we don’t take a hard look at our regulatory practices at this point, when will we?”

Krawiec believes that an exploration of regulatory governance benefits tremendously from the interdisciplinary approach taken by rethinking regulation. “Whether it’s an environmental economist looking at oil spills or a law scholar like myself looking at compliance with financial regulations,” she said, “we are discovering that we ask many of the same questions and are concerned about many of the same issues.”

the study of regulation, Balleisen said, “often occurs within separate disciplinary or policy silos.” By bringing people together who represent many areas of expertise, Balleisen said he hopes “to connect the silos, to draw on a wide array of conceptual approaches and see how far we can push generalizations about regulatory governance if we work together.”

faculty

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GAry bennett, associate professor in psychology and neuroscience, wants to save the world. Since his days at Duke University as a student to his years as a faculty member, Bennett has captured the idealism he feels is necessary to work in his profession.

his passion to help socially disadvantaged communities began at Duke when Bennett was a clinical psychology grad student

working in the transplant rotation. he kept seeing the same profile—from rural North Carolina, socially disadvantaged and obese.

“What struck me was that so many of the problems that these patients were suffering with were problems that we could prevent and moreover, we could probably prevent at the population level, by restructuring policy and reorganizing the health care system,” he said.

this realization changed the way Bennett thought about his education and what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.

“i think about that often because i think a lot of times we have folks in the U.S. who are struggling with things we could

ultimately prevent if we paid more attention,” Bennett said. Bennett has continued to pay attention since his realization

during grad school, researching weight loss interventions in socially disadvantaged areas. Bennett looks at predicators of obesity in high risk populations to develop effective intervention strategies. he explains that groups in which the risk of obesity as

a function of environmental, social and individual circumstance are considered high risk.

“right now if you want to lose weight, one of the worst places to go is to your doctor’s office. We have very few evidence of weight loss strategies in the primary care system in the United States,” said Bennett. “Doctors are very busy and the health based system is not organized to help.”

Bennett’s goal is to develop intervention strategies that can be easily integrated into the primary health care setting and can help large populations of people who struggle with obesity.

Bennett has used Duke’s interdisciplinary nature to do the research he wants to do to get top results.

“for obesity research, Duke has easily one of the best collections of researchers anywhere in the world. i was really attracted to Duke as a student, because of the idea that a clinical psychologist could sit at the table with clinicians and scientists and figure out answers to complicated questions. that’s exactly the reason i came back,” Bennett said. “obesity touches on political, business and psychological issues in many cases, so the low walls at Duke make it easier to get our work done.”

Along with his research, Bennett finds time to hold positions in both the Duke Global health institute and SSri’s Center for Biobehavioral health Disparities research (BhDr).

recently named co-director of the Center for Biobehavioral health Disparities research, Bennett hopes to make the center a coordinating function for researchers interested in biobehaviorial and social aspects of health disparities.

he explained that he is really looking forward to bringing both established and new health disparities researchers to the table and raise some excitement and interest in those areas.

“the U.S., in general, has been struggling with health disparities for a long time, so unfortunately i don’t think health disparities are going away,” said Bennett. “We are a collection of researchers, but i think it’s important in the world of health disparities to constantly be making recommendations that may affect interventions and policy.”

teaching two classes this semester, Bennett hopes that his passion resonates with his students and shows in the work that he does.

“i don’t think you can do this job without being passionate about what you do and i’m very passionate about this area and trying to help in socially disadvantaged communities,” Bennett said. “it’s been really nice being back on an undergraduate campus. there are a lot of students excited about the same things and i love interacting with folks who get excited about saving the world.”

A complicAteD qUestionGary Bennett hopes to tackle obesity by restructuring policy and reorganizing the health care systemBY reBeCC A mohr

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“for obesity research, Duke has easily one of the best collections of researchers anywhere in the world. i was really attracted to Duke as a student, because of the idea that a clinical psychologist could sit at the table with clinicians and scientists and figure out answers to complicated questions.”

—GArY BeNNett

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since movinG from South Korea to the United States six years ago to pursue a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology at Duke University, June hee Kwon has used her experience in both cultures to enrich her education in a way that reflects what is important to her.

encouraged by her professors to study in the United States, she said that being an international student was a learning experience in itself.

“living as a foreigner in a different country helps me have a better understanding of myself as well as another culture,” Kwon said. “i am placed in a situation in which i constantly have to step up my effort to understand what i do not understand at first sight.”

Drawing from her experiences, Kwon has chosen to focus her research on the anxieties and hopes of Korean Chinese while in a massive transnational labor migration and rapid economic development in both China and Korea.

“i see migration through a lens of affect, money, time, body, and labor—how the human tie has been intimidated and maintained through multiple moving back and forth,” Kwon said. “the repetitive process becomes part of everyday life.”

Kwon sees love and money as a “medium that binds human tie, and yet is not always successful, in particular, in a setting of long-term separation.”

Kwon recalled an interesting encounter with mr. ho, who is working in the public sector in China. mr. ho chose to stay in China with his son while his wife worked in Korea for the last 20 years. During that time, he focused his energy into caring for his son, saving the remittances his wife sent, and transforming the money into tangible properties. his perspective has grown; “caring for money” is more important than “making money.”

“the force of anthropology is to be able to detail, reconceptualize and envision the interplay between micro (individual cases) and macro (social structure),” Kwon said. “When interviewing, one time strangers sometimes they become friends. they invoke my imagination.”

Studying cultural anthropology at Duke has allowed Kwon to think of her ethnographic data both theoretically and in real terms of human lives.

“there are a lot of theoretical conversations going on at the Duke campus about east Asia and beyond right now,” Kwon said. “A lot of people on campus are very engaged in a dialogue about what is going on here and there, now and then, and it is important for me to see the bigger picture with them. it is a great place to exchange interdisciplinary theoretical conversations.”

Working with both Anne Allison and ralph litzinger, Kwon has developed her research from an idea to the dissertation, “Between two Dreams: migration and Development on the Border of China and Korea.”

“Anne and ralph, as co-chairs of my committee, have provided a critical insight and proper instruction for me to keep writing my dissertation, with a particular focus on the ethnographic engagement and critical conceptualization in a dialogue with other anthropological works,” Kwon said. “i truly believe that i take advantage of the benefit and luxury of the co-chairing system. they keep me in mind (while discussing), the emergence and development of east Asian capitalism, which is closely tied to the global economy ethnographically and theoretically.”

After Duke, Kwon would like to get an academic job to teach and research as long as she can continue to train to be a good anthropologist. She is interested in the border zone and cultural frontier, which requires constant cultural translation due to frequent economic trade and population movement.

for a future project, she is interested in the economic special zone in North Korea in order to understand how the extremely isolated economic bloc of North Korea is connected to and disjointed from the global economy, and how economic encounters create new cultural contention and translation.

“Building on my training experience at Duke, i want to continue my engaged ethnographic research and expand the theoretical horizon,” Kwon said.

livinG in one cUltUre AnD WorkinG in Another June hee Kwon studies migrant laborers among Korean ChineseBY reBeCC A mohr

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“ i see migration through a lens of affect, money, time, body, and labor—how the human tie has been intimidated and maintained through multiple moving back and forth. the repetitive process becomes part of everyday life.”

—JUNe hee KWoN


ASK the SoCiAl SCieNtiSt

the reportinG of the latest scandals—whether the transgressions of politicians, movie stars, or athletes—has become a staple of American culture. What are the social and political consequences of this fixation on scandal?”

You can’t avoid scandal in America today—Bill Clinton, tiger Woods, eliot Spitzer, mel Gibson, and somebody else just about every month.

it’s been said that scandal-watching is our new national pastime. As i found with tiger Woods, scandal tends to follow the same set formulas of kabuki theater—the transgression; its discovery and reporting in the press; the teary apology of the offender; and if he or she (and it usually seems to be a he) is lucky, eventual reacceptance back into American affections. that we seem so transfixed by scandal surely says something about the dumbing down of America and our misplaced priorities. Why did the sex life of a superstar golfer seem to draw more attention than the latest on global warming or war in Afghanistan?

But scandals, as formulaic as their conventions may be, can also be revealing to the inquiring anthropologist of particular cultural anxieties and social changes. i found that the case of “tigergate” said a great deal about the strange place of golf in American society, the expectations of the modern sports hero, and the complexities of race and sexual politics in on ostensibly post-racial America.

orin starnChairCultural Anthropology

cUriosity AboUt the private life of politicians, movie stars and (more recently) athletes has always been a feature of all societies, whether in ancient rome or contemporary America. During the italian renaissance, the citizens of florence, Venice or rome may have publicly exalted the virtues of their rulers, but anonymously made a sport of exposing their vices. in rome, for instance, there was a statue called “Pasquino” on which romans used to post notes lampooning the current Pope’s misbehaviors. however, it is the public’s exposure to the reporting of scandals which has dramatically changed over time, in particular after the introduction of websites, blogs, and new media platforms. it seems to me that the social and political consequences of this increased exposure—both in terms of volume and speed—in the U.S. depend more on the reaction of the politician, movie star, and athlete at the center of the scandal. those who admit their shortcoming before the public tend to fare better than those who, often goofily, try to conceal the evidence of it.

Giovanni ZanaldaAssistant Research ProfessorSocial Science Research Institute

WhAt Are the sociAl AnD politicAl conseqUences of this fixAtion on scAnDAl?

you’ve been described as a leading scholar of contemporary dance and an innovative creative artist. how would you describe yourself? Defrantz: i like “happy dissident.” i’m concerned with alternative histories made evident by performance; i look for narratives that confirm unexpected presence. Contemporary dance intrigues when it demonstrates ways to organize energy and intellect that surprise; i try to make creative work that suggests these unusual affiliations.

Duke is the new home of your company slippAGe, an interdisciplinary group that explores connections between performance and emerging technology in the service of storytelling. What do you hope people “get” from your projects?Defrantz: our projects always raise questions. how do we remember family, or reflect on the choices that we make? how does the process of jazz composition align with improvised dance performance? how can technology enhance our collective memory of outstanding artistry? Ultimately, i hope people who attend our projects get the bug to keep wondering, and stay engaged in the act of asking questions.

how will you balance promoting interdisciplinary initiatives, research, and course offerings in dance technology, dances of Africa and the African diaspora, and performance studies?Defrantz: GreAt question! And a huge unknown for now. in spring 2012, i’ll offer a new course ‘Afro-futurism’ that encourages students to create performances and design interfaces that project Africanist aesthetics toward a technologically driven future. expect creative sound productions inflected by hip-hop and r-and-B distributed by wearable devices; plus virtual dances with avatars and gospel music.

in your latest book, Dancing Many Drums: Excavations in African-American Dance, you bring together issues of race, gender, politics, history, and dance. Defrantz: Yes, for me, these issues are overlapping and intertwined. Sexuality and disability, location and class are also prisms through which we experience the world, our families, our creative imagination, and, of course, our dances. Studying dance allows us an opportunity to consider how we make choices, and how we value our own actions. Dance is, after all, action!

What do you think is the biggest assumption or misconception about dance as a major course of study?Defrantz: that dance is about only performing on a stage, or dancing at a party. it is this, of course, but so much more. Dance is where intellect, desire, gesture, ability, imagination, and memory all meet. in most instances, it is non-competitive, which means we get to explore communication and the terms of our sensitivity towards one another. Dance can even be part of spiritual practice, and its study benefits from an understanding of systems processing and anatomy. So, then, the biggest assumptions to debunk are that dance is only about physical control, or that it might be a ‘decorative’ major course of study. Wrong! Dance brings together many ways of being in the world, and its study encourages social growth.

What attracted you to Duke? Defrantz: Great colleagues and a commitment from the administration to grow the arts. Duke is positioned to do something original in supporting dance, performance studies, and technological innovations. let’s move, and make something unusual happen!

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QUeStioNS

thomAs f. DefrAntZchoreographer. dancer. scholar.Dance program and African and African American studies.

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if yoU live in a community with a proliferation of liquor stores, check-cashing joints, mom-and-pop fish fries and few, if any, grocery stores, pharmacies or doctors in private practice, your health may be in trouble.

“Anyone in that environment is going to be sick,” said thomas laVeist, the director of the Johns hopkins Center for health Disparity Solutions. “think about it—who lives in those types of environments? race determines place, and place determines health disparities.”

laVeist spoke recently to nearly 300 researchers and public policy experts from across the triangle and beyond for the “Social Determinants of health Disparities” conference, sponsored by Duke’s research Network on racial and ethnic inequality.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, infant mortality among African-Americans is more than twice the national

average, African-Americans are twice as likely to suffer from diabetes, and also more likely to die from cancer and cardiovascular disease.

the conference sought to answer some of the questions facing those who study the social factors that influence these disparities. Panelists discussed, among other things, the relationship between racialized stress

and the incidence of cardiovascular diseases like hypertension, the magnitude and impact of discriminatory behavior by doctors, and the status of research on genes and the environment as a contributor to unequal outcomes.

“We felt Duke is especially well positioned to hold a conference like this because of the interdisciplinarity between the social and medical sciences,” said William Darity, a public policy professor and director of SSri’s research Network on racial and ethnic inequality. researchers from around the country attended the two-day conference.

laVeist , the keynote speaker, began with a talk in the Sanford School of Public Policy’s fleishman Commons.

he compared the United States health system to the doomed titanic, saying it is “destined to hit an iceberg and crash.”

he also used an image of the more recent U.S. Airways hudson river landing with passengers huddled on a half-submerged wing to prove the point that those with first-class seating are more likely to survive a disaster. Class, he explained, determines life and death.

Although researchers, policymakers, and politicians are aware that social disparities exist in health care, laVeist said there “has been an incorrect diagnosis of the problem” with poorly allocated resources.

he said that many blame the disparities on biological differences between ethnic groups, on poverty, and/or uneven access to health care, none of which is fully to blame, laVeist said.

“Segregated communities were most likely to determine health outcomes,” he said. “Studies have consistently shown social class has more to do with it than race.”

laVeist found that when people of different races and social classes are exposed to the same “risk scapes”—liquor stores, tobacco, toxic waste, environmental pollution, for example—the results are the same: People are more likely to get sick. these “risk scapes” are commonly found in segregated neighborhoods.

if blacks and whites were completely integrated and lived in the same types of communities with the same educational backgrounds and income, their health outcomes would be more similar, he said.

“much of what we are doing” to close health care gaps “will absolutely fail,” laVeist said of attempts to reduce disparities. “this is my prediction and i’m going on the record.”

heAlth DispArities: Where yoU live cAn mAke yoU sick BY C Amille JACKSoN

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Counter-clockwise from top: Keynote Speaker, James Jackson, University of michigan at Ann Arbor; Keynote Speaker, thomas laVeist, Johns hopkins University; Session panel explores social factors that influence health disparity gaps between racial and ethnic groups on a national and global scale.

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SoCiAl SCieNCe DePArtmeNtS

African & African American studies aaas.duke.edu/

cultural Anthropology culturalanthropology.duke.edu/

economics econ.duke.edu/

program in educationeducationprogram.duke.edu/

historyhistory.duke.edu/

political sciencepolisci.duke.edu/

psychology & neuroscience psychandneuro.duke.edu/

public policysanford.duke.edu/

sociologywww.soc.duke.edu

program in Women’s studieswomenstudies.duke.edu/

UNiVerSitY iNStitUteS AND CeNterS (UiCs)

Duke Global health instituteglobalhealth.duke.edu/

Duke institute for brain sciencesdibs.duke.edu/

institute for Genome sciences & policygenome.duke.edu/

John hope franklin humanities institutefhi.duke.edu/

the kenan institute for ethicskenan.ethics.duke.edu/

nicholas institute for environmental policy solutionsnicholasinstitute.duke.edu/

social science research institutessri.duke.edu

sociAl science @ DUke

Get connecteDwith ssricheck oUt oUr site: ssri.DUke.eDU

like Us on fAcebook: fAcebook.com/DUkessri

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p. o . B o x 9 0 4 2 0 | D u r h a m , n c 2 7 7 0 8

Non-Profit orgU.S. PostagePAiDDurham, NCPermit No. 60

gistf ro m th e m i ll

While conDUctinG ethnographic research of young skateboarders in tokyo, Dwayne Dixon, a doctoral student in Duke’s Department of Cultural Anthropology introduced a unique tool into the field, a video camera. While documenting what he heard and saw, Dixon encountered a number of issues, including deciding what to refrain from filming in situations where what his subjects were doing was potentially embarrassing or illegal, and assessing the risks involved to both his subjects and himself.

Dixon presents an overview of these experiences in a video on a new website, developed through a collaboration between SSri and Duke’s office of research (orS), along with support from Duke’s Center for instructional technology (Cit). he narrates clips chosen from his fieldwork to illustrate incidents, including clips from when his subjects were skating on part of a corporate building. Dixon describes how he struggled with whether to stay and keep filming or leave the scene when security guards showed up causing many of the skaters to disperse.

the website, developed by Alexandra Cooper, Associate Director for education and training at SSri, and lorna hicks, Director of

human Subjects Protection at Duke’s orS, seeks to help students develop ethical protocols for research projects involving human subjects. it contains 18 video clips grouped into six categories: informed consent, protecting information, public and private space, international research, ethical image making, and skill building. the website also provides links to written resources and templates. Available to all, the site was created for use by students new to research with human subjects and the faculty who advise them. As growing numbers of Duke students undertake mentored research, this site will serve as a valuable resource to Duke faculty and students alike, helping to ensure that student researchers can acquire the skills they need to do their work and will develop into adults committed to high ethical standards.

ethics & prActice

finAl note

for more information: http://sites.duke.edu/ethicsmodules/

Documents

Fall 2011