Social and Cultural Context of Racial Inequalities in Health

克拉伦斯·C·格拉夫利博士和克里斯托弗·麦卡蒂博士将对社会和文化对健康方面的种族不平等的影响进行研究。一些社会科学家认为种族是一种文化建构，而不是生物现实。但随着医学研究人员试图从基因差异的角度解释健康中的种族不平等，这种观点正受到越来越多的审视。这一发展要求社会科学家澄清种族是如何作为一种社会和文化现象存在的，这种现象在人们的生活中具有力量，实际上，具有生物后果。令人头疼的研究问题是，为什么非裔美国人不成比例地患有高血压或慢性高血压。这个问题是一个关键的测试案例，因为它通常被归因于种族定义的群体之间未知的遗传差异。这个项目测试了另一种观点，即社会和文化因素导致了非洲人后裔的高血压模式。特别是，它试图确定社会结构和文化定义的压力源的经历对非裔美国人血压变化的贡献。这项研究结合了(A)民族志来探索阶级和肤色如何塑造日常社交的意义，以及(B)社会网络分析的方法来考察个人所处的社会结构如何塑造暴露在种族主义和其他社会压力源中的形象。这项研究将在佛罗里达州塔拉哈西的非裔美国人中进行，这座城市拥有一个庞大的、社会经济多元化的非裔美国人社区，以及种族斗争和民权活动的历史。探索阶段包括参与者观察和两轮人种学访谈(每轮48人)。解释阶段将包括一项对塔拉哈西成年非裔美国人的代表性调查(N=350)，以测试社会网络特征、文化定义的压力源的经历和血压变化之间的联系，以及除了已知的高血压危险因素之外。这项研究为全国关于种族和种族主义的讨论提供了一个人类学的视角。它开发了一种新的社会网络分析应用程序，并建立在整合社会科学和生物科学的努力基础上。特别是，它将确定种族主义的生物后果，并有助于我们了解社会和文化进程如何体现在健康中。

Dr. Clarence C. Gravlee and Dr. Christopher McCarty will undertake research on the social and cultural influences on racial inequalities in health. Some social scientists view race as a cultural construct, not a biological reality. But this view is coming under increasing scrutiny, as medical researchers seek to explain racial inequalities in health in terms of genetic differences. This development challenges social scientists to clarify how race exists as a social and cultural phenomenon that has force in people's lives and, indeed, one that has biological consequences. The driving research question is why African Americans suffer disproportionately from hypertension, or chronic high blood pressure. This problem is a key test case, because it is often attributed to unknown genetic differences between racially defined groups. This project tests the alternative view that social and cultural factors account for the pattern of hypertension among people of African descent. In particular, it seeks to identify the contributions of social structure and the experience of culturally defined stressors to blood pressure variation among African Americans. The study combines (a) ethnography to explore how class and color shape the meaning of everyday social interaction and (b) methods of social network analysis to examine how the social structure in which individuals are embedded shapes exposure to racism and other social stressors. The research will be conducted among African Americans in Tallahassee, FL, a city with a large and socioeconomically diverse African-American community, as well as a history of racial struggle and civil rights activism. The exploratory phase involves participant observation and two rounds of ethnographic interviewing (N = 48 in each round). The explanatory phase will involve a representative survey (N = 350) of adult African Americans in Tallahassee to test the associations between social network characteristics, the experience of culturally defined stressors, and blood pressure variation, above and beyond known risk factors for high blood pressure.This study contributes an anthropological perspective to national discussions about race and racism. It develops a novel application of social network analysis and builds on efforts to integrate the social and biological sciences. In particular, it will identify the biological consequences of racism and contribute to our understanding of how social and cultural processes become embodied in health.