Richard A. Brown
Interests:
Mind-Body; Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation; Knowledge systems; Philosophy of mind; Culture theory; Neuroscience; Brain evolution; Diabetes/Chronic disease; Food and Nutrition; Symbolic healing; Medical systems; Research methods; Applied/practicing/developmental anthropology; Business anthropology; Organizational research/intelligence; Latin America / U.S; Caribbean; Central/Eastern Europe
Current Work:
I am working on a project in a major medical public care/research facility in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. The project is my doctoral dissertation. It examines the social and cultural factors that affect Type II Diabetes treatment (the impact of socially constructed meaning). The project uses cognitive elicitation techniques (Free listing, Pile Sorting, Ranking) to explore the cultural domain of diabetes treatment. Cultural consensus analysis is then used to verify the qualitative data by testing for significant distribution, or social sharing, of the cognitive model. Measures of cultural consonance are then made in order to connect individual health outcomes (average fasting blood glucose measures) with the cognitive/cultural model of treatment.
The project will contribute empirically and theoretically to the fields of anthropology and public health. It will reconceptualize Antonovsky’s (1979) theory of salutogenesis. Salutogenesis is an approach to healthcare that seeks the origins of health and healing processes (as opposed to the pathogenic model of seeking the causes of disease that is common to biomedicine). The project tests the hypothesis that those who are culturally consonant in the treatment model, that is those with the ability to implement the shared cultural model of treatment in their own lives, will have better diabetes control (lower average fasting blood glucose), after controlling for major aspects of clinical diabetes treatment (diet, exercise, adherence to medication).
Teaching and community service:
I have had the opportunity to teach two sections of introduction to cultural anthropology each semester between 2005 and 2009. I have also done private tutoring and recently contributed to an electronic pedagogical archive of culture. I have served as an officer in anthropology club and Lambda Alpha. During my term as Vice-President and then President of the IPFW anthropology club, the club won consecutive annual University-wide awards for best campus organization. I have also won private awards for community service by a for-profit business.
About me:
I have been an entrepreneur for more than a decade, and a business manager for a decade before that. Self employment was my only option to structure my schedule in a way that allowed me to return to the University 12 years after leaving high school. Starting as a business consultant, I became the president of a start-up technology company. I managed the business while my partners ran the tech. I learned a lot about the technology in the process. In school I enrolled as a major in philosophy, but encountered a summer course in anthropology that captivated me. I attended a regional University that was operated jointly by Indiana University (IU) and Purdue University (PU). With precise planning, I was able to complete an IU program in anthropology simultaneously with a PU program in philosophy with a minor in psychology. After a few years of early starts and late nights working, the company saw success and I decided to scale back my work schedule. We divided the corporate assets and sold them. I opened an office in my house and started working independently.
Then I met a girl….
Now I’m married (to Justina) with two children, Jake and Isabella. After completing my MA in medical anthropology I converted my business from business/technology consulting to business/anthropological consulting.
Since then, I have had the opportunity to do work for several organizations, large and small. One notable project was winning a competitive contract with the US Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2007. The contract was for a reconnaissance ethnographer to complete research in the wake of Hurricane Katrina along the Alabama Gulf Coast. I have also recently worked as a consumer feedback analyst for a national US retail chain, and I have been an analytic consultant for a business dissertation examining the role of humor as motivation in the workplace.
I plan to finish my dissertation in May, 2011 and will be seeking an academic appointment. My complete CV is available on request.
Contact Mr. Brown at: rabrownii@crimson.ua.edu
Office: ten Hoor 23A
Phone: (205) 349-0636