Dr. Adams runs the UCSF division of the joint (with UC Berkeley) graduate program in Medical Anthropology. She teaches core theory courses on the history and development of medical anthropology, social studies of science, technology and medicine, and ethnographic field methods. Her research interests include the social conditions and epistemological framings of integrative medicine, international health development, women's health and health care in Tibet , theories of modernity in relation to morality. She has worked for 22 years on medical anthropology topics such as medical pluralism, medicine and social change, and more recently on the politics of clinical trials research in the Himalayan region ( Nepal and Tibet). She is also interested in global studies of science, technology and medicine, and particularly the postcolonial exchange of scientific activities (from labs to field sites, informed consent procedures to the residual problem of spirit-caused disorders).
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Currently Funded Research and Publication/Research Interests
Research across Cultures: Translating Science and Morality in Tibetan Medicine ( Tibet)
This multi-site research project ( Lhasa, TAR and Xining, Qinghai, China) explores the moral foundations and erasures in efforts to translate between two distinct empirical traditions of medical knowledge: Tibetan medicine and modern biomedical science. Insights on some fundamental problems of secular morality emerge in sites where notions of empirical truth are still linked to religiously-based conceptions of the world and its medical phenomena.
Blood Donation and HIV Prevention in China ( Shanghai) (collaboration with Kathleen Erwin)
Low rates of blood donation across China have been associated with concerns about non-governmental, for profit blood donation practices and the spread of HIV to blood donors and transfusion recipients. This research explores the cultural foundations of resistance to, and reasons for, voluntary blood donation in China today, investigating traditional notions of blood as vital essence, practices of gift exchange, need for compensation, and the effectiveness of public health campaigns.
Ethical Worlds of Stem Cell Medicine (UCSF)
The emergence of regenerative medicine and the new biomedical fields involving use of stem cells pose interesting new insights about how we theorize the domain of the “ethical” in relation to scientific research. At UCSF, and at the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine located in San Francisco, scholars are exploring the ethical engagements with science, beginning with traditional ELSI (ethical, legal, social issues) associated with the turn to genetics, and including emergent concerns arising from a broader representation of social science research.
Health Diplomacy (Global Health Sciences, UCSF)
Global Health Sciences at UCSF is an emerging platform for the combined interests of traditional health development research and new efforts to export and conduct science in the international milieu, particularly the clinical trial. Along with researchers at GHS (Haile Debas, Tom Novotny), the creation of Health Diplomacy as a focus encourages study and education on the ethical, social, historical, and cultural dimensions of emergent global sciences across cultures.
Adams, Vincanne and Stacy L. Pigg, eds.,
Sex and Development: Science, Sexuality and Morality in Global Perspective (Duke University Press 2006).
Adams, Vincanne Doctors for Democracy: Health Professionals in the Nepal Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
Adams, Vincanne Tigers of the Snow and Other Virtual Sherpas: An Ethnography of Himalayan Encounters (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).
Adams, Vincanne Saving Tibet?: Moral Trouble in the Middle Kingdom (under review Duke University Press)
Adams, V., M.Varner, S.Miller, S.Craig, Sonam, Lhakpen, “Having a Safe Delivery: Conflicting Views from Tibet” Health Care for Women International 2005 26(9):821-851.
Adams, V., M.Varner, S.Miller, S.Craig, Sonam, Lhakpen , “The Challenge of Cross Cultural Clinical Trials Research: Case Study from Tibet” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 2005 19 (3):267-289, 2005.
Adams,V. and Stacy L. Pigg “Introduction: The Moral Object of Sex” in Adams and Pigg, eds. Sex and Development: Science, Sexuality and Morality in Global Perspective, 2006 Duke University Press.
Adams,V. Moral Orgasm and Productive Sex: Tantrism Faces Fertility Control in Lhasa, Tibet, China in Adams and Pigg, eds. Sex and Development: Science, Sexuality and Morality in Global Perspective, 2006 Duke University Press.
Adams, Vincanne “Saving Tibet ? An Inquiry into Modernity, Lies, Truths and Beliefs” Medical Anthropology (2004)
Adams,Vincanne Randomized Controlled Crime: Postcolonial Sciences in Alternative Medicine Research Social Studies of Science 32(5-6):659-690,2003.
Adams, Vincanne The Sacred in the Scientific: Ambiguous Practices of Science in Tibetan Medicine. Cultural Anthropology 16(4):542-575, 2002.
Adams, Vincanne Suffering the Winds of Lhasa : Human Rights, Cultural Difference, and Humanism in Tibet Medical Anthropology Quarterly 1998; 11(2):1-28.
Adams, Vincanne “Equity of the Ineffable: Cultural and Political Constraints on Ethnomedicine as a Health Problem in Contemporary Tibet” Public Health, Ethics, and Equity, Sudhir Anand, Amartya
Sen, and F abienne Peter, eds., Oxford University Press 2004.
Adams, Vincanne Suffering the Winds of Lhasa : Politicized Bodies, Human Rights, Cultural Difference, and Humanism in Tibet ” Reprinted in Jonathan Xavier Inda and Renato Rosaldo, eds., The Anthropology of Globalization. Oxford : Blackwell Publishers 2002, pp381-409.
Adams Vincanne Establishing Proof: Translating “Science” and the State in Tibetan Medicine. In Margaret Lock and Mark Nichter, eds., New Horizons in Medical Anthropology: Essays in Honour of Charles Leslie . London : Bergin and Garvey, 2002. pp.200-220.
Adams Vincanne Particularizing Modernity: Tibetan Medical Theorizing of Women's Health in Lhasa Tibet . Linda Connor and Geoffrey Samuel, eds., Healing Powers and Modernity: Traditional Medicine, Shamanism and Science in Asian Societies. London : Bergin and Garvey 2000, pp. 222-246.
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