Shirley Lindenbaum | |
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Born | 1932 (age 91–92) Australia |
Academic background | |
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Discipline | Anthropologist |
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Institutions |
Shirley Inglis Lindenbaum is an Australian anthropologist notable for her medical anthropology work on kuru in Papua New Guinea,HIV/AIDS in the United States of America,and cholera in Bangladesh. [1]
Lindenbaum earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Melbourne in 1955. In 1971,she received a Master of Arts from the University of Sydney. In 1972,she was granted a PhD waiver from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York,enabling her to become an assistant professor of anthropology there without having obtained her PhD. [2]
Beginning in 1972,Lindenbaum taught cultural anthropology at the Graduate Faculty of The New School for Social Research in New York City,before accepting a professorship at the City University of New York. [1] She was the editor of the international journal American Ethnologist from 1984 to 1989,and later served as Book Review Editor for Anthropology Now from 2010 to 2013.
Lindenbaum currently lives in New York and is emerita professor of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
Lindenbaum began her investigative work on the cause of kuru in 1961. With her colleague and then-husband Robert Glasse,she did two years of fieldwork in the highlands of Papua New Guinea using a research grant from Henry Bennett of the Rockefeller Foundation. Bennett believed that kuru had a genetic origin,so he suggested that Lindenbaum and Glasse study Fore kinship. The two studied kinship in addition to oral histories,beliefs,and practices,while taking epidemiological notes on the disease itself. [3]
Lindenbaum and Glasse discovered that Fore kinship was not based strictly on biology,but rather it was determined by bonding with neighboring individuals. As a result,families were not described as nuclear families:"Instead of depth,the Fore relied on lateral expansions of relatedness." [3] This finding was notable because kuru was not strongly correlated with biological relationships,but rather kin in this more extended sense. [3]
During this time,Lindenbaum and Glasse also discovered that the Fore people partook in a ritual called mortuary cannibalism,where kin honored the dead by feasting on their cooked bodies. People avoided eating kin who died of dysentery and leprosy,but did not shy away from eating people who died of kuru. Through oral histories,it was determined that the kuru epidemic had begun among the northernmost Fore at the turn of the century,some time in the 1890s. It is now presumed that a spontaneous case of Creutzfeldt Jacob Disease (like kuru,a prion-related disorder) occurred at that time. When that person died and was consumed by kin,the kuru epidemic spread further south. Lindenbaum and Glasse noted also that the geographic spread of kuru closely matched the practice of mortuary cannibalism throughout this region,providing substantial evidence that cannibalism was the mode of transmission. Moreover,the research team noted that women and children were primarily impacted by kuru,which correlated with mortuary cannibalism practices. Men were less likely than women to partake in mortuary cannibalism,and when they did,they were less likely to eat women. As a result,men were less likely to get kuru compared to women and children. [3] Lindenbaum's work was originally resisted by genetic and biomedical researchers who insisted that the disease was likely genetic and non-infectious.
This research contributed substantially to the current understanding of the nature and transmission of kuru. Since this research,Lindenbaum has written several reflections,articles,and books about kuru and the Fore people. [3] Most importantly,her work led to the discovery of prion-communicable diseases,of which kuru was found to be one.
Lindenbaum was honoree for the year 2017 of the journal of Culture,Medicine and Psychiatry . An essay on her career appeared in the December 2017 issue of that journal. [2]
Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD), also known as subacute spongiform encephalopathy or neurocognitive disorder due to prion disease, is a fatal degenerative brain disorder. Early symptoms include memory problems, behavioral changes, poor coordination, and visual disturbances. Later symptoms include dementia, involuntary movements, blindness, weakness, and coma. About 70% of people die within a year of diagnosis. The name "Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease" was introduced by Walther Spielmeyer in 1922, after the German neurologists Hans Gerhard Creutzfeldt and Alfons Maria Jakob.
Human cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh or internal organs of other human beings. A person who practices cannibalism is called a cannibal. The meaning of "cannibalism" has been extended into zoology to describe animals consuming parts of individuals of the same species as food.
Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), also known as prion diseases, are a group of progressive, incurable, and fatal conditions that are associated with prions and affect the brain and nervous system of many animals, including humans, cattle, and sheep. According to the most widespread hypothesis, they are transmitted by prions, though some other data suggest an involvement of a Spiroplasma infection. Mental and physical abilities deteriorate and many tiny holes appear in the cortex causing it to appear like a sponge when brain tissue obtained at autopsy is examined under a microscope. The disorders cause impairment of brain function which may result in memory loss, personality changes, and abnormal or impaired movement which worsen over time.
In anthropology, kinship is the web of social relationships that form an important part of the lives of all humans in all societies, although its exact meanings even within this discipline are often debated. Anthropologist Robin Fox says that the study of kinship is the study of what humans do with these basic facts of life – mating, gestation, parenthood, socialization, siblingship etc. Human society is unique, he argues, in that we are "working with the same raw material as exists in the animal world, but [we] can conceptualize and categorize it to serve social ends." These social ends include the socialization of children and the formation of basic economic, political and religious groups.
Daniel Carleton Gajdusek was an American physician and medical researcher who was the co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1976 for work on the transmissibility of kuru, implying the existence of an infectious agent, which he named an 'unconventional virus'.
The Fore people live in the Okapa District of the Eastern Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea. There are approximately 20,000 Fore who are separated by the Wanevinti Mountains into the North Fore and South Fore regions. Their main form of subsistence is slash-and-burn farming. The Fore language has three distinct dialects and is the southernmost member of the East Central Family, East New Guinea Highlands Stock, Trans–New Guinea phylum of Papuan languages.
Fictive kinship is a term used by anthropologists and ethnographers to describe forms of kinship or social ties that are based on neither consanguineal nor affinal ties. It contrasts with true kinship ties.
Cannibalism is the act of consuming another individual of the same species as food. Cannibalism is a common ecological interaction in the animal kingdom and has been recorded in more than 1,500 species. Human cannibalism is also well documented, both in ancient and in recent times.
Dame Ann Marilyn Strathern, DBE, FBA is a British anthropologist, who has worked largely with the Mount Hagen people of Papua New Guinea and dealt with issues in the UK of reproductive technologies. She was William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge from 1993 to 2008, and Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge from 1998 to 2009.
Variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (vCJD), commonly referred to as "mad cow disease" or "human mad cow disease" to distinguish it from its BSE counterpart, is a fatal type of brain disease within the transmissible spongiform encephalopathy family. Initial symptoms include psychiatric problems, behavioral changes, and painful sensations. In the later stages of the illness, patients may exhibit poor coordination, dementia and involuntary movements. The length of time between exposure and the development of symptoms is unclear, but is believed to be years to decades. Average life expectancy following the onset of symptoms is 13 months.
Endocannibalism is a practice of cannibalism in one's own locality or community. In most cases this refers to the consumption of the remains of the deceased in a mortuary context.
Kuru is a rare, incurable, and fatal neurodegenerative disorder that was formerly common among the Fore people of Papua New Guinea. Kuru is a form of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) caused by the transmission of abnormally folded proteins (prions), which leads to symptoms such as tremors and loss of coordination from neurodegeneration.
The brain, like most other internal organs, or offal, can serve as nourishment. Brains used for nourishment include those of pigs, squirrels, rabbits, horses, cattle, monkeys, chickens, camels, fish, lamb, and goats. In many cultures, different types of brain are considered a delicacy.
Richard T. Johnson was a physician and scientist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Johnson was a faculty member in the Department of Neurology since its inception in 1969 and was the former head of the department. His research into the effects of viruses on the central nervous system has been published in over 300 scientific articles, and Johnson was both a journal and book editor and the author of an influential textbook, Viral Infections of the Nervous System.
Robert Klitzman is an American psychiatrist and bioethicist.
Michael Philip Alpers, , is an Australian medical researcher, and John Curtin distinguished Professor of International Health, at Curtin University.
The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophagy is an influential anthropological study of socially sanctioned "cultural" cannibalism across the world, which casts a critical perspective on the existence of such practices. It was authored by the American anthropologist William Arens of Stony Brook University, New York, and first published by Oxford University Press in 1979.
Inclusive fitness in humans is the application of inclusive fitness theory to human social behaviour, relationships and cooperation.
Vincent Zigas (1920–1983) was a medical officer of the Kainantu Sub-District in Papua New Guinea during the 1950s and was one of the first Western medical officials to note the uniqueness of kuru and begin to investigate it. He is listed in many early academic writings about kuru. Little is known his life and work.
Andrew Jamieson Strathern is a British anthropologist.