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Lakshmi Fjord

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My work in the environmental humanities uses anthropological field methods at the invitation of and in complete collaboration with front-line communities facing threats of and existing community impacts to their health, cultural resources, continuity, and heritage from toxic air, water, and soil pollution. Our pioneering work using community participatory action research forces corporate polluters to address environmental racism in their site decisions and required permit processes. Our evidence-based and peer reviewed data and historic cultural resource mapping projects have brought non-profit legal partners to the pro bono support of grassroots front-line peoples facing deep-pocketed corporations that had bought the support of local and state elected representatives.

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Papers by Lakshmi Fjord

Anthropological Perspectives on Disasters and Disability: An Introduction

Human Organization, Mar 1, 2009

Susan Daniels called me to enlist my help because her sister-in-law, a quadriplegic woman in New ... more Susan Daniels called me to enlist my help because her sister-in-law, a quadriplegic woman in New Orleans, had been unsuccessfully trying to evacuate to the Superdome for two days…but, despite promises, no one came. The very same paratransit system that people can't rely on in good weather is what was being relied on in the evacuation. I was on the phone with Benilda when she told me, with panic in her voice 'the water is rushing in.' And then her phone went dead. We learned five days later that she had been found in her apartment dead, floating next to her wheelchair.

Medicare, Ethics, and Reflexive Longevity: Governing Time and Treatment in an Aging Society

Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Jun 1, 2011

The clinical activities that constitute longevity making in the United States are perhaps the qui... more The clinical activities that constitute longevity making in the United States are perhaps the quintessential example of a dynamic modern temporality, characterized by the quest for risk reduction, the powerful progress narratives of science and medicine, and the personal responsibility of calculating the worth of more time in relation to medical options and age. This article explores how medicine materializes and problematizes time through a discussion of ethicality-in this case, the form of governance in which scientific evidence, Medicare policy and clinical knowledge and practice organize first, what becomes "thinkable" as the best medicine, and second, how that kind of understanding shapes a telos of living. Using liver disease and liver transplantation in the United States as my example, I explore the influence of Medicare coverage decisions on treatments, clinical standards, and ethical necessity. Reflexive longevity-a relentless future-thinking about life itself-is one feature of this ethicality.

Disability circulations: Effects of disability cultural knowledge on technological inventions and social participation for all members of societies

PsycEXTRA Dataset, 2010

Reproductive Health in Eight Navies: A Comparative Report on Education, Prevention Services, and Policies on Pregnancy, Maternity/Paternity Leaves, and Childcare

Military Medicine, Mar 1, 2009

As occupational cultures, navies are remarkable for an ability to achieve far-reaching cultural a... more As occupational cultures, navies are remarkable for an ability to achieve far-reaching cultural and behavioral effects by both sweeping and incremental policy changes. Therefore, navy policies for reproductive health education and services, childcare, and maternity and paternity leaves have potential to be at the vanguard of gender parity efforts to successfully integrate women into once male-only occupations. This article provides summaries of reproductive health education programs, pregnancy prevention services, and policies currently in effect in eight navies where women work alongside male peers as sailors and offi cers. Our objective is to bring together comparative data that is hard to fi nd by other means, which may prove useful to researchers, policy-makers, and naval personnel. Project methodology involved questionnaires sent to naval attachés stationed in embassies in Washington, DC, who referred sections to their appropriate departments. The results are quotations from completed questionnaires and policies sent from the navies of Germany,

Contested Signs

Gallaudet University Press eBooks, Sep 30, 2014

Society for Visual Anthropology

Anthropology News, Oct 1, 2001

Making longevity in an aging society: Linking technology, policy and ethics

An explosion in the varieties of life-extending medical interventions for older persons is changi... more An explosion in the varieties of life-extending medical interventions for older persons is changing medical knowledge and societal expectations about longevity and the time for death. Longevity making today is framed by a new ethical rationality, constituted by and enabled through the routines and institutions that comprise ordinary clinical care. To be distinguished from bioethics, with its emphasis on clinical decision-making in individual situations, this new rationality is 'located' in and shaped by the value given to clinical evidence and the 'technological imperative' which, in turn, organize health care coverage policies and the shaping of standards. The new ethical rationality organizes what patients and families come to need and want. Three developments illustrate this new form of ethics at work: the changing nature of disease, especially the ascent of risk awareness and risk-based strategies for life extension; the role of technology in reshaping the 'ends' of medicine; and the role of U.S. Medicare policy in creating need and ethical necessity. Medicare's expanding criteria for payment coverage of liver transplantation and implantable cardiac devices are the examples illustrating the pervasive logic of this new form of ethics.

Making and Unmaking “Vulnerable Persons”: How Disasters Expose and Sustain Structural Inequalities

Anthropology News, Oct 1, 2010

Contested Signs

Deaf and Disability Studies

Making longevity in an aging society: linking ethical sensibility and Medicare spending

An aging U.S. society, a growing array of life-extending medical interventions, Medicare policy a... more An aging U.S. society, a growing array of life-extending medical interventions, Medicare policy and an ethic of individual decision-making together contribute to the deepening societal tension between controlling health care costs and enabling health consumer use of life-sustaining technologies. The activities that constitute longevity making, like so many other socio-medical practices, constitute a site for the governing of life and the emergence of new forms of ethical comportment and social participation. Those activities-including the necessity of treating risk, the difficulty of saying 'no' to evidence-based interventions and the responsibility of choosing among clinical options-also lie at the heart of debates about health care rationing and reform. Cardiac procedures, organ transplantation and cancer treatments are three examples of medicine's success in extending life and are emblematic of the existential and societal quandaries that result. A perspective from medical anthropology shows the ways in which the making of life is linked to health care spending and the ongoing debates about age-based rationing. Keywords health care reform; age rationing; privatized ethics; self-care With health care reform and especially Medicare reform on the front pages and at the forefront of the Obama administration agenda, a perspective from medical anthropology can highlight some of the socio-cultural sources of emergent and recalcitrant obstacles to cost containment efforts and can show, too, why the topic of age rationing continues to be a significant point of ongoing tension and lack of resolution. An explosion in the varieties of life-extending interventions for older persons is changing the face of many medical specialties in the U.S. Routine and innovative treatments are prolonging more lives at older ages than ever before, and the average age of persons who receive surgery or other non-primary care interventions that extend life is rising. Indeed, octogenarians comprise the most rapidly growing group of surgical patients and there is a growing medical literature on the justification and benefits for performing many kinds of procedures on persons over the age of 80. These practices are reshaping medical knowledge and societal expectations about 'normal' old age, ordinary medical treatment and the time for death. For example, medicine's successes have promoted the widespread assumption that its techniques can almost always restore health; practitioners and patients alike consider the office phone:

Voices Offstage:" How Vision Has Become a Symbol to Resist in an Audiology Lab in the U.S

Visual Anthropology Review

Disability circulations: Forum on the effects of disability on cultural innovation, technological invention, and social participation for all members of societies

PsycEXTRA Dataset

Disability circulations: Effects of disability cultural knowledge on technological inventions and social participation for all members of societies

PsycEXTRA Dataset

Making and Unmaking “Vulnerable Persons”: How Disasters Expose and Sustain Structural Inequalities

Anthropology News

Gesture, Performance:Gesture, Performance

Dancing in the chair: The implications of wheelchair Tai Chi Chuan

PsycEXTRA Dataset, 2010

Anthropological Perspectives on Disasters and Disability: An Introduction

Human Organization, 2009

Susan Daniels called me to enlist my help because her sister-in-law, a quadriplegic woman in New ... more Susan Daniels called me to enlist my help because her sister-in-law, a quadriplegic woman in New Orleans, had been unsuccessfully trying to evacuate to the Superdome for two days…but, despite promises, no one came. The very same paratransit system that people can't rely on in good weather is what was being relied on in the evacuation. I was on the phone with Benilda when she told me, with panic in her voice 'the water is rushing in.' And then her phone went dead. We learned five days later that she had been found in her apartment dead, floating next to her wheelchair.

Ethos and embodiment: the social and emotional development of deaf children

Scandinavian audiology. Supplementum, 2001

There is so much out there about the grief, the denial, and the anger, like in the death of a chi... more There is so much out there about the grief, the denial, and the anger, like in the death of a child. We definitely experienced the 'death' of our child--that was not the child we gave birth to. And, we had this other baby we were going to have to figure out what to do with (mother, US, 1995).

Society for Visual Anthropology

Anthropology News, 2001

Gesture, Performance

Anthropological Perspectives on Disasters and Disability: An Introduction

Human Organization, Mar 1, 2009

Susan Daniels called me to enlist my help because her sister-in-law, a quadriplegic woman in New ... more Susan Daniels called me to enlist my help because her sister-in-law, a quadriplegic woman in New Orleans, had been unsuccessfully trying to evacuate to the Superdome for two days…but, despite promises, no one came. The very same paratransit system that people can't rely on in good weather is what was being relied on in the evacuation. I was on the phone with Benilda when she told me, with panic in her voice 'the water is rushing in.' And then her phone went dead. We learned five days later that she had been found in her apartment dead, floating next to her wheelchair.

Medicare, Ethics, and Reflexive Longevity: Governing Time and Treatment in an Aging Society

Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Jun 1, 2011

The clinical activities that constitute longevity making in the United States are perhaps the qui... more The clinical activities that constitute longevity making in the United States are perhaps the quintessential example of a dynamic modern temporality, characterized by the quest for risk reduction, the powerful progress narratives of science and medicine, and the personal responsibility of calculating the worth of more time in relation to medical options and age. This article explores how medicine materializes and problematizes time through a discussion of ethicality-in this case, the form of governance in which scientific evidence, Medicare policy and clinical knowledge and practice organize first, what becomes "thinkable" as the best medicine, and second, how that kind of understanding shapes a telos of living. Using liver disease and liver transplantation in the United States as my example, I explore the influence of Medicare coverage decisions on treatments, clinical standards, and ethical necessity. Reflexive longevity-a relentless future-thinking about life itself-is one feature of this ethicality.

Disability circulations: Effects of disability cultural knowledge on technological inventions and social participation for all members of societies

PsycEXTRA Dataset, 2010

Reproductive Health in Eight Navies: A Comparative Report on Education, Prevention Services, and Policies on Pregnancy, Maternity/Paternity Leaves, and Childcare

Military Medicine, Mar 1, 2009

As occupational cultures, navies are remarkable for an ability to achieve far-reaching cultural a... more As occupational cultures, navies are remarkable for an ability to achieve far-reaching cultural and behavioral effects by both sweeping and incremental policy changes. Therefore, navy policies for reproductive health education and services, childcare, and maternity and paternity leaves have potential to be at the vanguard of gender parity efforts to successfully integrate women into once male-only occupations. This article provides summaries of reproductive health education programs, pregnancy prevention services, and policies currently in effect in eight navies where women work alongside male peers as sailors and offi cers. Our objective is to bring together comparative data that is hard to fi nd by other means, which may prove useful to researchers, policy-makers, and naval personnel. Project methodology involved questionnaires sent to naval attachés stationed in embassies in Washington, DC, who referred sections to their appropriate departments. The results are quotations from completed questionnaires and policies sent from the navies of Germany,

Contested Signs

Gallaudet University Press eBooks, Sep 30, 2014

Society for Visual Anthropology

Anthropology News, Oct 1, 2001

Making longevity in an aging society: Linking technology, policy and ethics

An explosion in the varieties of life-extending medical interventions for older persons is changi... more An explosion in the varieties of life-extending medical interventions for older persons is changing medical knowledge and societal expectations about longevity and the time for death. Longevity making today is framed by a new ethical rationality, constituted by and enabled through the routines and institutions that comprise ordinary clinical care. To be distinguished from bioethics, with its emphasis on clinical decision-making in individual situations, this new rationality is 'located' in and shaped by the value given to clinical evidence and the 'technological imperative' which, in turn, organize health care coverage policies and the shaping of standards. The new ethical rationality organizes what patients and families come to need and want. Three developments illustrate this new form of ethics at work: the changing nature of disease, especially the ascent of risk awareness and risk-based strategies for life extension; the role of technology in reshaping the 'ends' of medicine; and the role of U.S. Medicare policy in creating need and ethical necessity. Medicare's expanding criteria for payment coverage of liver transplantation and implantable cardiac devices are the examples illustrating the pervasive logic of this new form of ethics.

Making and Unmaking “Vulnerable Persons”: How Disasters Expose and Sustain Structural Inequalities

Anthropology News, Oct 1, 2010

Contested Signs

Deaf and Disability Studies

Making longevity in an aging society: linking ethical sensibility and Medicare spending

An aging U.S. society, a growing array of life-extending medical interventions, Medicare policy a... more An aging U.S. society, a growing array of life-extending medical interventions, Medicare policy and an ethic of individual decision-making together contribute to the deepening societal tension between controlling health care costs and enabling health consumer use of life-sustaining technologies. The activities that constitute longevity making, like so many other socio-medical practices, constitute a site for the governing of life and the emergence of new forms of ethical comportment and social participation. Those activities-including the necessity of treating risk, the difficulty of saying 'no' to evidence-based interventions and the responsibility of choosing among clinical options-also lie at the heart of debates about health care rationing and reform. Cardiac procedures, organ transplantation and cancer treatments are three examples of medicine's success in extending life and are emblematic of the existential and societal quandaries that result. A perspective from medical anthropology shows the ways in which the making of life is linked to health care spending and the ongoing debates about age-based rationing. Keywords health care reform; age rationing; privatized ethics; self-care With health care reform and especially Medicare reform on the front pages and at the forefront of the Obama administration agenda, a perspective from medical anthropology can highlight some of the socio-cultural sources of emergent and recalcitrant obstacles to cost containment efforts and can show, too, why the topic of age rationing continues to be a significant point of ongoing tension and lack of resolution. An explosion in the varieties of life-extending interventions for older persons is changing the face of many medical specialties in the U.S. Routine and innovative treatments are prolonging more lives at older ages than ever before, and the average age of persons who receive surgery or other non-primary care interventions that extend life is rising. Indeed, octogenarians comprise the most rapidly growing group of surgical patients and there is a growing medical literature on the justification and benefits for performing many kinds of procedures on persons over the age of 80. These practices are reshaping medical knowledge and societal expectations about 'normal' old age, ordinary medical treatment and the time for death. For example, medicine's successes have promoted the widespread assumption that its techniques can almost always restore health; practitioners and patients alike consider the office phone:

Voices Offstage:" How Vision Has Become a Symbol to Resist in an Audiology Lab in the U.S

Visual Anthropology Review

Disability circulations: Forum on the effects of disability on cultural innovation, technological invention, and social participation for all members of societies

PsycEXTRA Dataset

Disability circulations: Effects of disability cultural knowledge on technological inventions and social participation for all members of societies

PsycEXTRA Dataset

Making and Unmaking “Vulnerable Persons”: How Disasters Expose and Sustain Structural Inequalities

Anthropology News

Gesture, Performance:Gesture, Performance

Dancing in the chair: The implications of wheelchair Tai Chi Chuan

PsycEXTRA Dataset, 2010

Anthropological Perspectives on Disasters and Disability: An Introduction

Human Organization, 2009

Susan Daniels called me to enlist my help because her sister-in-law, a quadriplegic woman in New ... more Susan Daniels called me to enlist my help because her sister-in-law, a quadriplegic woman in New Orleans, had been unsuccessfully trying to evacuate to the Superdome for two days…but, despite promises, no one came. The very same paratransit system that people can't rely on in good weather is what was being relied on in the evacuation. I was on the phone with Benilda when she told me, with panic in her voice 'the water is rushing in.' And then her phone went dead. We learned five days later that she had been found in her apartment dead, floating next to her wheelchair.

Ethos and embodiment: the social and emotional development of deaf children

Scandinavian audiology. Supplementum, 2001

There is so much out there about the grief, the denial, and the anger, like in the death of a chi... more There is so much out there about the grief, the denial, and the anger, like in the death of a child. We definitely experienced the 'death' of our child--that was not the child we gave birth to. And, we had this other baby we were going to have to figure out what to do with (mother, US, 1995).

Society for Visual Anthropology

Anthropology News, 2001

Gesture, Performance