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Teaching Interests: Poverty's Life: Anthropologies of Health and Economy (offered Fall 2007); Anthropology of Mental Illness; Medical Anthropology; Psychological Anthropology and an Anthropological Venture into Psychoanalysis Research Interests: Medical anthropology, psychological anthropology, public health, and medicine; social studies of science and technology; affects as they relate to economic insecurity, inequality, and political violence; relationality; Cold War politics; Latin America, specifically Chile, and the United States. Summary of Research Activities: In 2007, I received dual degrees: a Ph.D. in medical anthropology from Harvard University and an M.D. from Harvard Medical School. With my training in medicine and anthropology, I work on projects dedicated to examining the inter-relationships between the differential distribution of health, well-being, and disease in the setting of market reform and economic inequality. I am particularly interested in the relationships between local networks of economic indebtedness, historical experiences of political change and violence, and modes of survival in poor urban areas. I am currently revising my manuscript for publication, entitled "Life in Debt: Depression and Survival in Chile's Market Democracy". In this work, I ethnographically explore the moral, political, as well as medical experiences of economic indebtedness in the periphery of Santiago, Chile. In Chile, like many other places, debt has become a powerful resource for survival amongst the poor. However, the case of Chile is particularly salient. As the "test case" for an radical market reforms during the Cold War and under the Pinochet regime, Chile has served as a model for structural adjustment policies worldwide. During the Chilean democratic transition, the state has attempted to pay back a "social debt" owed to the poor, given the legacy of political violence and increasing economic inequality. This "social debt" has been paid through a variety of selective interventions, along the lines of human rights, mental health, and policies to eradicate extreme poverty. Based in an historically leftist working-class community, this research charts out how local networks of indebtedness among the urban working-class are configuring grounds for social inclusion and conditioning new forms of well-being, in addition to forms of historical subjection. What does it mean to extend a debt to another as a form of care, when that debt arises from a legacy of political violence? Over nine years, I began to see how such local networks of indebtedness hooked into institutional credit systems. And further, I saw how the state's selective interventions were themselves absorbed and transformed by these debt networks as well as by kin relations. In my upcoming work, I plan to extend this research in two areas. The first area comprises a survey of household indebtedness in three distinct localities within the neighborhood where I have worked for the past 9 years. This work will be carried out by myself as well as community organizers. The goal of this project is to establish a database for alternative development projects within the neighborhood, to interrogate the concept of a bounded household economy, and to further unpack the rhizomatic nature of debt relations. The second area comprises an extended project in the same neighborhood on the relationship between addiction to pasta base (the dregs of cocaine), domestic violences, and household economies. What intergenerational and kinship attachments are sustained and damaged through the movement of pasta base? How can we think through addictions in terms of relationality and debt? I am also working on a documentary film with an extended family in this neighborhood. The film examines how narratives of torture re-emerge during the democratic transition to describe the loss of life chances, economic insecurity, and debt. What counts as human rights? And, can alternative definitions of torture emerge from the everyday? Major Publications: Han, Clara. 2004. "The Work of Indebtedness: The Traumatic Present of Late Capitalist Chile". In Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry. 28(2): 169-187. |
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