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AbstractIn this essay, I contemplate the ethics of community engagement based on my work as an applied medical anthropologist in Guatemala. During my dissertation fieldwork in a highland community, I lived with a local Mayan family, and our lives together centered on discussing their goals, community organizing, and strategies for improving indigenous rights. I describe how the relationships I built with this family and the social justice work happening in the community gave me a sense of purpose as an applied anthropologist. At the time, it seemed like participatory and collaborative research at its best. A year later, an adult son of the local family was murdered for his community work, calling into question the notions of progress and advocacy. Here, I discuss my struggle with the moral imperative of applied anthropologists to support the human rights of local communities in counterbalance to our ethical obligation to protect research collaborators.

Privatization and the New Medical Pluralism provides ethnographic accounts of the effects of healthcare privatization for indigenous Maya people in Guatemala. This volume will greatly interest scholars in anthropology, global health, and public policy by offering insight into the challenges, opportunities, and inequalities the Maya people face.

Chronic Conditions, Fluid States explores the uneven impact of chronic illness and disability on individuals, families, and communities in diverse local and global settings. To date, much of the social as well as biomedical research has treated the experience of illness and the challenges of disease control and management as segmented and episodic. Breaking new ground in medical anthropology by challenging the chronic/acute divide in illness and disease, the editors, along with a group of rising scholars and some of the most influential minds in the field, address the concept of chronicity, an idea used to explain individual and local life-worlds, question public health discourse, and consider the relationship between health and the globalizing forces that shape it