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PERSISTENT DEBATES?
Medical anthropology is now a well-established professional arena. While debates persist, the somewhat spurious oppositions we began with (generalist–specialist, theoretical–applied, and biological–cultural) have not proven insurmountable, particularly given the big umbrella medical anthropology has turned out to provide for scholarship approaching health. It is true that the divide between university-affiliated and practicing medical anthropologists has not been so easily shaken. However, better may come as universities adjust to new political-economic realities and to related public pressures to prepare students for nonacademic employment, and as the present quality and accountability crisis faced by biomedicine and related fields is addressed.
How medical anthropology’s broad center will shift to meet these demands and challenges and what, in the bigger scheme of things, any shift may mean for the future of medical anthropology I dare not say. Neither will I predict which new tensions will emerge in coming years. I can, however, offer this summary observation: a globally cognizant subdiscipline attuned to past arguments and achievements, the aims of social justice, and the intensely interconnected systems in which humans participate will be best-equipped for a positive and productive future, because the problems we now face cannot be solved without such awareness.