Carole Browner
Biography
I am a Professor in the UCLA Department of Anthropology, the Department of Women’s Studies, and the Center for Culture and Health, within the David Geffen School of Medicine’s NPI-Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. I served as Chair of the Anthropology Department from 2010 to 2013. My training as a medical anthropologist combines a doctorate in socio-cultural anthropology with a master’s degree in public health.
My research interests have lay principally at the intersection of gender, reproduction, and health. I have conducted field research in urban Colombia, rural Mexico, and with diverse ethnic groups in the U. S. In Cali, Colombia I investigated the circumstances that led pregnant women with unintended conceptions to seek illegal abortion. In rural Mexico, I sought to understand how local political relations shaped gender-based reproductive strategies. Since 1989, I have worked mainly in the U. S. on issues surrounding the medicalization of pregnancy and prenatal care, particularly the ways that prenatal genetic information may alter reproductive experience. My prize-winning collection, Reproduction, Globalization, and the State: New Theoretical and Ethnographic Perspectives (co-edited with Carolyn Sargent) was published in 2011 by Duke University Press.
My longstanding research into the social impact of decoding the human genome and the meanings and uses of genetic information led me to investigate the growing role of genetic testing in the field of neurology. Our monograph, Neurogenetic Diagnoses, the Power of Hope, and the Limits of Today’s Medicine, co-authored with Mabel Preloran (2010, Routledge), explores the diverse meanings, and impacts of genetic diagnoses for patients enduring currently incurable and ultimately fatal neurodegenerative diseases — and for their family caregivers and clinicians. The analysis is framed by increasingly sharp social debates over the consequences of decoding the human genome — and the impact of genetic technology on our lives. Currently, with a team of neurogenetics experts and health services researchers,
Other work has concerned how couples from Mexican backgrounds who are offered amniocentesis decide whether to undergo the procedure, how conflicts between a woman and man over whether to be tested are resolved, and the role genetic counselors play in couples’ amniocentesis decisions. A follow-up study enabled me to deconstruct the strategies prenatal genetic service providers use to communicate information about prenatal genetic testing options to Latinas with limited education and/or English living in south Texas and southern California. Projects also have examined how Latino couples make decisions about condom use; the meanings associated with cervical cancer held by women and men living on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border; and the use of reproductive health services by homeless women in Los Angeles, a collaboration with professors from the UCLA Dental School to study motivations for volunteering on a medical mission to treat Mexican children born with cleft lip and palate; a project sponsored by the UCLA Departments of Medicine and Rheumatology on the real life contexts of lupus-associated “flares” among women of diverse ethnic and social class backgrounds living in Los Angeles; and the longitudinal processes that have contributed to rural Bali’s dramatic fertility decline.
Currently, I am engaged in fieldwork with indigenous and nonindigenous Mexican rural women on identity and social transformation and in a collaboration with an economist and an epidemiologist on Mexican health and pension policy reform.
My work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Agency for Health Care Policy Research, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, private donors, and private foundations.
I teach graduate seminars in Medical Anthropology; The Anthropology of the Human Body; The Politics of Reproduction; and Anthropological Perspectives on Genetics, Genetic Testing, and Genetic Knowledge, as well as courses in research design and methods to graduate and undergraduate students.
My professional service has included membership on the Scientific Advisory Committee for the State of California’s Birth Defects Monitoring Program and on the Executive and Advisory Boards of several University of California institutes including UC-MEXUS, the Institute for American Cultures, the Institute for Development Studies, the International Institute, the Latin American Center, and the Center for the Study of Women.
Nationally, I have been elected to the Executive Boards of the American Anthropological Association, the Society for Applied Anthropology, the Society for Latin American Anthropology, and the Society for Medical Anthropology; I was President of the latter from 1995-97. I’ve also served on the several journal editorial boards.
I consult on projects on women’s and Latino health in southern California, on the U.S.-Mexican border, in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America.
Research Interests
Gender, reproduction, healthocial impact of decoding the human genome, reproductive politics; Latin America, urban U.S.
Publications
Browner, C.H. 1979. Abortion Decision Making: Some Findings from Colombia. Studies in Family Planning 10 (3): 96-106. Translated and reprinted in Estudios de Población IV (1-6): 16-29, 1979. PDF
Browner, C. H. 1980. The Management of Early Pregnancy: Colombian Folk Concepts of Fertility Control. Social Science and Medicine 14B: 25-32. PDF
Browner, C. H. and Lewin, E. 1982. Female Altruism Reconsidered: The Virgin Mary as Economic Woman. American Ethnologist 9(1):61-75. PDF
Browner, C. H. 1983. Male Pregnancy Symptoms in Urban Colombia. American Ethnologist 10(3): 494-510. PDF
Browner, C.H. 1986. Gender Roles and Social Change: A Mexican Case Study. Ethnology 25(2): 89-106. PDF
Browner, C.H. 1986. The Politics of Reproduction in a Mexican Village. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 11(4): 710 -24. PDF
Browner, C. H. and Perdue, S. T. 1988. Women’s Secrets: Bases for Reproductive and Social Autonomy in a Mexican Community. American Ethnologist 15(1): 84-97. PDF
Browner, C.H. 1989. Women, Household and Health in Latin America. Social Science and Medicine 28 (5): 461-73. PDF
Browner, C. H. and Press, N. A. 1995. “The Normalization of Prenatal Diagnostic Screening.” In, F. Ginsburg and R. Rapp, eds. Conceiving the New World Order, pp. 307-322. Berkeley: University of California Press. PDF
Browner, C. H. and Press, N. A. 1996. The Production of Authoritative Knowledge in American Prenatal Care. Medical Anthropology Quarterly10(2): 141-156. PDF
Browner, C. H., Preloran, H. M. 1999. The Effect of Male Partners on Latinas’ Amniocentesis Decisions. Journal of Genetic Counseling 8(2): 85-109. PDF
Browner, C. H. 1999. On the Medicalization of Medical Anthropology. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 13(2): 135-40. PDF
Browner, C. H., Preloran, H. M., and Cox, S. J. 1999. Ethnicity, Bioethics, and Prenatal Diagnosis: the Amniocentesis Decisions of Mexican-origin Women and their Partners. American Journal of Public Health 89(11): 1658-66. PDF
Browner, C. H. and Preloran, H. M. 2000. Latinas, Amniocentesis and the Discourse of Choice. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, 24(3): 353-75. PDF
Browner, C. H. and Preloran, H. M. 2000. Interpreting Low-Income Latinas’ Amniocentesis Refusals. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 22(3): 346-68. PDF
Browner, C. H. 2000. Situating Women’s Reproductive Activities. American Anthropologist, 102(4): 773-88. PDF
Root, R. and Browner, C. H. 2001. Practices of the Pregnant Self: Compliance with and Resistance to Biomedical Prenatal Norms. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, 25(2): 195-223. PDF
Preloran, H. M, Browner, C. H., & Lieber, E. 2001. Strategies for Motivating Latino Couples’ Participation in Qualitative Health Research. American Journal of Public Health, 91(11): 1832-41. PDF
Browner, C. H. Preloran, H. M., Casado, M. C., Bass, H. and Walker, A. 2003. Genetic Counseling Gone Awry: Some Consequences of Miscommunication between Prenatal Genetic Service Providers and Latina Clients. Social Science and Medicine, 56(9): 1933-1946. PDF
Markens, S., Browner, C.H., and Preloran, H.M. 2003. “I’m Not the One They’re Sticking the Needle Into”: Latino Couples, Fetal Diagnosis, and the Discourse of Reproductive Rights. Gender & Society, 17(3): 462-481. PDF
Browner, C. H. and Preloran, H.M. 2004. Expectations, Emotions, and Medical Decision Making: A Case Study on the Use of Amniocentesis. Transcultural Psychiatry 41(4): 427-444. PDF
Browner, C. H. and Levin, B. W., eds. 2005. The Social Production of Health: Critical Contributions from Evolutionary, Biological, and Cultural Anthropology. Papers in Memory of Arthur J. Rubel. Invited theme issue for Social Science and Medicine 61(4): 745-878. PDF
Levin, B. W. and Browner, C. H. 2005. The Social Production of Health: Critical Contributions from Evolutionary, Biological, and Cultural Anthropology. Social Science and Medicine 61(4):745-50. PDF
Preloran, H. M., Browner, C. H., and Lieber, E. 2005. Impact of Interpreters’ Approach on Latinas’ Use of Amniocentesis. Health Education & Behavior 32(5):599-612. PDF
Browner, C. H. and Preloran, H. M. 2006. “Culture and Communication in the Realm of Fetal Diagnosis. Unique Considerations for Latino Patients.” In, Neil F. Sharpe and Ronald F. Carter, eds. Genetic Testing: Current Practices, Ethical Concerns, Legal Considerations, pp. 31-44. NY: John Wiley & Sons. PDF
Browner, C. H. and Preloran, H. M. 2006. “Entering the Field: Recruiting Latinos for Ethnographic Work.” In, Dick Hobbs and Richard Wright, ed. Handbook of Fieldwork, pp. 93-106.London: Sage. PDF
Browner, C. H. and Sargent, C. F. 2007. “Engendering Medical Anthropology.” In, Serge Genest and Francine Saillant, eds. Medical Anthropology: Regional Perspectives and Shared Concerns, pp. 233-51. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Ltd. PDF
Browner, C. H. 2007. Can ‘Gender Equity’ in Reproductive Programs and Policies Unintentionally Reinforce Male Authority?” In, Marcia Inhorn, ed. Reproductive Disruptions, Childlessness, Adoption, and Other Reproductive Complexities, pp. 145-164. Oxford: Berghahn. PDF
Hess, P., Preloran, H. P., and Browner, C. H. 2009. Diagnostic Genetic Testing for a Fatal Illness: The Experience of Patients with Movement Disorders. New Genetics and Society 28(1): 3-18. PDF
Markens, S., Browner, C. H. and Preloran, H. M. Interrogating the Dynamics between Power, Knowledge and Pregnant Bodies in Amniocentesis Decision-Making. Sociology of Health and Illness, in press, 32(1), 2010. PDF
Browner, C. H. and Preloran H. M. 2011, Neurogenetic Diagnoses, the Power of Hope, and the Limits of Today’s Medicine, London: Routledge.
Browner, C. H. and Sargent, C. F. eds., 2012 Reproduction, Globalization, and the State New Theoretical and Ethnographic Perspectives, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. UCLA Library PDF
Browner, C.H. 2016. Reproduction: From Rights to Justice. In, L.J. Disch and M. Hawkesworth, eds. Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theory, pp. 803- 831. Oxford: Oxford University Press. PDF / Google Books
Browner, C. H. and Leal Fernández. G. 2022. The Mexican Health Care System Under the Administration of AMLO. NACLA Report (The North American Congress on Latin America): June 8, 2022. NACLA Report Link
Browner, C.H. and Sargent, C. F. 2022. Reproduction and the State. In, S. Han and C. Tomori, eds. The Routledge Handbook of Anthropology and Reproduction, pp; 87-105. New York: Routledge. PDF
Browner, C.H. and Root, R. 2023. Cultural Context of Reproductive Health. International Encyclopedia of Public Health, Third Edition, William C. Cockerham, ed. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Awards & Grants
1980-83 Committee on the Status of Women in Anthropology, American Anthropological Association
1987-89 Review Panel for Behavioral and Neural Sciences (Social/Cultural Anthropology) National Science Foundation
1987-89 Nominations and Elections Committee, Society for Applied Anthropology (named Chair, 1989)
1987-90 Executive Board, Society for Medical Anthropology
1988-91 Councilor, Society for Latin American Anthropology
1990-91 Executive Board, Society for Medical Anthropology
1992-94 Editorial Board, Medical Anthropology Quarterly
1994-97 Executive Committee, Society for Applied Anthropology
1995-97 President, Society for Medical Anthropology
1995-96 Executive Board, American Anthropological Association
1998-99 Visiting Fellow, Russell Sage Foundation
1999-02 Editorial Board, Medical Anthropology Quarterly
2000 Editorial Board, Encyclopedia of Medical Anthropology (3 volumes)
2001 Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Award, Dept. of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, UCLA
2001- Steering Committee, Special Grants Program on Migration and Health, California Policy Research Center, Office of the President of the University of California
2002- Advisor, Sexuality Research Fellowship Program, Social Science Research Council
2002 Ad hoc Review Panel, Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues, Center for Human Genome Research, NIH
2002- Editorial Board, Anthropology of Work Review
2003 Outstanding Research Mentor Award, Dept. of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, UCLA
2009 Medical Anthropology Student Association MASA Mentoring Award, Society for Medical Anthropology, 2009
Degrees
B.A. Social Sciences, New School for Social Research (1969)
M.A. Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley (1974)
Ph.D. Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley (1976)
M.P.H. Health Administration and Planning, University of California, Berkeley (1977)
