Arthur Kleinman

Kleinman’s numerous publications have included works on social suffering, mental health, stigma, moral experience, and caregiving. Most recently, he co-edited a textbook on global health (Reimagining Global Health: An Introduction. 2013, UC Press), co-authored a book on moral life in China with his former students (Deep China. 2012, UC Press), and a book on humanitarianism in social sciences (A Passion for Society. 2016, UC Press). He is the author of What Really Matters: Living a Moral Life Amidst Uncertainty and Danger (OUP, 2006), Writing at the Margin: Discourse between Anthropology and Medicine (UC Press, 1995), and The Illness Narratives: Suffering. Healing and the Human Condition (Basic Books, 1988), amongst others. He has also co-edited books on culture and depression; SARS in China; world mental health; suicide; placebos; AIDS in China; and mental illness in Africa.

Kleinman is currently writing a popular book on caregiving for Penguin Press. He is also editing a book on the uses of medical anthropology. He is the author of articles in The Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine on caregiving as moral experience; global mental health; values in health; reforming medical education via the medical humanities; the search for wisdom; and on culture, bereavement and psychiatry. He has co-authored articles on stigma and mental illness; on the appropriate uses of culture in clinical practice; and on medical anthropology.

His current projects include a comparative study of eldercare for dementia in six Asian settings; an ethnographic study of trust in the doctor-patient relationship in China; and a collaborative study of social technologies for aging in China

Kleinman is professor of medical anthropology in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine and professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He is the Esther and Sidney Rabb professor of anthropology in the Department of Anthropology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) and was appointed the Victor and William Fung director of Harvard University’s Asia Center from 2008–2016. In 2011, Arthur Kleinman was appointed as a Harvard College Professor and received the 2011 Harvard Foundation Distinguished Faculty Award. He chaired the then Department of Social Medicine at HMS from 1990 until 2000, where from 1993‐2001 he was the Presley Professor of social medicine and chaired the Department of Anthropology at Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences from 2004 to 2007.

Kleinman was the co-convener, along with Jim Yong Kim, his former student and now President of the World Bank, of a conference on global mental health, Out of the Shadows, in 2016. In addition, he formerly co-chaired the Global Health Committee in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, of which he remains a member. He also co-teaches a general education course on global health. In the Department of Anthropology, he directs the Medical Anthropology Program, which he founded in 1982 and through which more than 100 students have so far received a PhD (including 20 MD-PhDs). He has mentored 200 post-doctoral fellows and hundreds of undergraduate and medical students. He has delivered the William James Lecture twice at Harvard; Magisterial Lecture at the University of Milan; Institut Lecture at the Institut Pasteur in Paris; Hume Lecture at Yale; Tanner Lectures at Stanford, and has twice given the Distinguished Scholar Lecture at NIH. Kleinman is a former member of the Advisory Council of the Fogarty International Center, National Institutes of Health, and of NIH’s Council of Councils. He has been a fellow of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies since 1983, and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1992. He is also a Distinguished Life Time Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. He has received an honorary doctor of science degree from York University (Canada); the Doubleday Award University of Manchester (UK); the Franz Boas award, the highest award of the American Anthropological Association; and the Welcome Medal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (UK).

Related Articles

• Rebuilding Patient-Physician Trust in China: A White Paper Towards Educational, Legal, Ethical, and Health Systems Reform
• Arthur Kleinman, Presence, The Lancet, Volume 389, Issue 10088, 2017, Pages 2466-2467, ISSN 0140-6736
• Kleinman, A. Caring for memories. The Lancet, 387(10038), 2596
• Kleinman, A., and J. Tu. A Search for Wisdom: Why William James Still Matters. Journal of Guangxi University for Nationalities: Social Science Edition, 39(01): 2-10.
• Mnookin, Seth, A. Kleinman, et al, “Out of the Shadows: Making Mental Health a Global Development Priority,” World Bank Group and WHO. Conference Proceedings Article