A Short History of the H-MedAnthro Listserve
Per Dr. Betsy Brada:
Mark Nichter and I began looking into a listserv of some kind for the SMA in 2002-03. At the
time, many universities were unwilling to host electronic lists to which individuals outside the
given university subscribed. In addition, many universities were unwilling to host electronic lists
that were not stably affiliated with a particular individual. In other words, it was difficult enough
to convince an institution that it should host a list to which all SMA members could subscribe.
Even if we could convince the university with which the SMA president was affiliated to host the
list, once the presidency rotated, we'd have to go through the process all over again, which
presented the problem of maintaining any continuity in the list's archives. (Searchable archives
were considered a substantial element of the value of such a list.)
The affiliation with H-Net solved a variety of problems. H-Net is a consortium based at
Michigan State Univ. that hosts interactive electronic lists concerned with the arts, humanities
and social sciences at no cost to list members or organizations. H-Net would host the list, provide
some infrastructure, maintain the list archives, offer training for the editors, and offer the ease of
cross-posting things like job announcements and book reviews. The catch was that we couldn't
restrict the list to SMA members only; it had to be open to any interested parties. We also needed
to adhere to H-Net's basic organizational structure (more below).
To give you some perspective, recall that we launched H-Medanthro the same month as
Facebook. Web 2.0 had not yet taken off. As Mark notes below, we tried an interactive online
forum but couldn't make it work. In 2003 the technology for things like online bulletin boards
really stank. Sites like Somatosphere were just not happening yet. (For what it's worth,
Somatosphere was launched in 2008. Interactive web technologies changed a lot between 2003
and 2008.) H-Net was light and portable, i.e., text-based and easily received over low bandwidth,
which was important for reaching out to a global audience in 2003. Also, we're not the only
AAA-affiliated group to use H-Net: the Society for the Anthropology of Europe has been
running H-SAE since 1995.
Per Dr. Mark Nichter:
When Betsy Brada and I (re) designed the static SMA web page as a means of creating a nexus
for our growing medical anthropology community of practice. We looked at different ways of
engaging a broader audience within and beyond anthropology. We tried creating a dynamic list
serve as one means of encouraging exchange between anthropologists looking to share ideas for
conference panels, syllabus, announce new books and so on. At first, we tried an interactive
forum as part of the SMA web page, but few people participated and it did not appear to be a
worthwhile endeavor for the busy webmaster . Hnet afforded an opportunity to engage a larger
audience, required minimal oversight and was housed on a server that appeared stable --so we
applied and was able to secure an H net address as part of the larger Hnet intellectual
community. In terms of oversight for the SMA website, at the end of my term the board voted
to appoint a board member to work with the SMA webmaster and respond to the changing
needs of the SMA as determined by the board as well as from feedback received on the SMA
website. Assisting the board member and assigned to website oversight were the president
and past president who served in an advisory capacity. Hnet was established toward the end of
my term and initially Besty and I monitored it and then looked for a volunteer to take over this
task. We thought this could be handled by graduate student members and hoped if grad students
ran Hnet this might result in more lively exchange.
( remember this was before the popularity of social media venues). Our thought was
that student monitors would refer any issues or problems to the Board member responsible
for overseeing the web site.
H-net and the web site were seen as complementary and Hnet had a place on the SMA website
page.