Harvard Anthropology Professor Arthur Kleinman's First Book Celebrates 50th Anniversary
The Department of Anthropology at Harvard University is thrilled to share that time is nearing the 50th anniversary of Professor Arthur Kleinman’s very first book, Medicine in Chinese Cultures: Comparative studies of health care in Chinese and other societies. In 2025, the publication (of which Professor Kleinman was the senior editor) will be 50 years old.
This book consists of papers and discussions contributed to a conference, Comparative Study of Traditional and Modern Medicine in Chinese Societies, sponsored by the University of Washington and the Fogarty International Center, National Institutes of Health, and held in Seattle, Washington, February 4-6, 1974. The papers have been revised by the participants and the discussions condensed by the editors. The editors have written introductions for each section, changed the format of presentations to make them more readable and have provided an Introduction and Epilogue. It is hoped the book reflects the excitement that the organizers and participants felt about the conference, and it is believed it will contribute to both the major themes of the conference: Understanding medicine in Chinese culture, and comparative cross-cultural studies of medicine. The conference was characterized by interchanges by social scientists and physicians, China scholars, and students of other cultures and systems of medicine, whose scholarly concerns constantly were intermixed with practical questions about health care.
Arthur Kleinman (born March 11, 1941) is a physician and anthropologist. A graduate of Stanford University and Stanford Medical School, with a master’s degree in social anthropology from Harvard and trained in psychiatry at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Kleinman is a leading figure in several fields, including medical anthropology, cultural psychiatry, global health, social medicine, and medical humanities. A China scholar, since 1978, he has conducted research in China, and in Taiwan from 1969 until 1978.
Kleinman is professor of medical anthropology in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine and professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He is the Esther and Sidney Rabb professor of anthropology in the Department of Anthropology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), and was the Victor and William Fung director of Harvard University’s Asia Center 2008 - 2016. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was formerly Presley Professor and Chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine (1990-2000).
Arthur Kleinman has published seven single authored books including Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture; Social Origins of Distress and Disease: Depression, Neurasthenia and Pain in Modern China; Rethinking Psychiatry; The Illness Narratives; Writing at the Margin; What Really Matters; and The Soul of Care. His four co-authored books include Reimagining Global Health; A Passion for Society: How We Think about Human Suffering; and Deep China: The Moral Life of the Person. He has also co-edited books on culture and depression; SARS in China; world mental health; suicide; placebos; AIDS in China; and the relationship of anthropology to philosophy (The Ground Between: Anthropologists Engage Philosophy).
His recent collaborative projects include a comparative study of eldercare for dementia in six Asian settings; an ethnographic study of trust in the doctor-patient relationship in China; and at present social technologies for aging and eldercare in China. Kleinman is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
