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Date: Mon, 20 Jun 1994 13:13:21 -0600 (MDT)
From: Behan Pamela <behan@osiris.Colorado.EDU>
Subject: introduction
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 Hello!

	I am one of the six graduate students working with Martha Gimenez
on progressive approaches to population studies, here at CU-Boulder.  In
response to Martha's suggestion, I'll introduce myself and my research
interests. 

	I obtained my B.S. from the University of Kansas in the early 70's, 
first studying political science (with a semester at San Francisco State 
College during the riots there), then switching to nursing.  A dozen 
years of nursing convinced me that I was more interested in changing the 
health care system than in being a part of it, so, after a break to 
recover from a car accident and start a family, I came back to school to 
see what could be done about the health care system.  Demography seemed a 
good tool to have in studying public policy and public health, so I took 
several courses from the interdisciplinary Population Program at CU, 
within my Sociology graduate studies.

	My interest in population studies, then, is not as my main field
of study, but as a useful tool in studying other topics.  My interest in
the health care system has broadened into an interest in the determinants
of health and illness (the social production of each), mortality and
morbidity differentials between social classes and between First and Third
World nations, the role of power in determining health and illness, and
broad social determinants of public policy.  I have also gotten interested
in how metatheoretical approaches to areas of study shape the results
obtained, and in how categorization, definitions, and assumptions often
violate the claims of scientific neutrality attached to academic work. 

	One of the most interesting of such assumptions, to me, is the
presumption that current power relations are not a variable, but a
constant that will continue in any conceivable future.  The role of modern
power relations in creating social conditions conducive to high fertility,
for instance, are easy to ignore if one simply treats them as immutable. 
The need for social change is then bypassed, in favor of a discussion
limited to how to get "those people" (usually the poor, the lower class,
the Third World, or some racial group) to change their fertility behavior. 
Stubborn, irrational behavior is, by implication, attached to some group
or nation, and the dynamics of their situation mystified as natural to
them, or to human nature.  The lack of acknowledgement of such biased
assumptions, in my view, limits the usefulness of mainstream demographic
work. 

	I have been fortunate, considering my growing dissatisfaction with
current demographic approaches, in having a knowledgable faculty member
and a group of graduate student colleagues interested in pursuing other
approaches together.  Our course with Martha this spring helped crystalize
and clarify our thinking, and generated this discussion list, as well as a 
group of papers that begin to explore new approaches to population studies.

	I will mention one recent research discovery of mine, which may be
useful to other PPN members - a growing body of literature called critical
medical anthropology, which includes a number of specific studies of the
history of public health and health care systems in Third World nations
under colonialism and neo-colonialism.  I have a beginning reference list
on that subject I'd be happy to share with anyone interested.  Perhaps
some of you out there have done such studies, or know of other interesting
bodies of literature relevant to these topics; please introduce yourself
and share your information and point of view with us....

	Looking forward to some lively responses,

	Pamela Behan
	Ph.D. Program
	Sociology Dept.
	Univ. of Colorado - Boulder
	(email address: behan@osiris.colorado.edu)