Opioid Crisis
Recently, I started following the opioid epidemic after I saw an episode on 60 Minutes where one of the journalists was interviewing lawyers and big pharma company executives. For example, McKesson, a large corporate healthcare company, has been responsible for oversupplying painkillers to small pharmacies. I would enjoy doing field work and understanding the lives of the many that are effected by opioids. This path would be eye opening and allow me to better comprehend the crisis. Assistant professor in the UMD Department of Anthropology, Andrea López, has some insight on the epidemic here.
After completion of this class, I will be well equipped with the fundamental research to qualify me for this job. I will still need other skills to become a successful ethnographer such as the ability to collect accurate fieldwork with certain data collection protocols. I will also need to be able to learn and train others using qualitative/ethnographic research methods. I assume this industry will require me to understand data software as well, so knowledge of qualitative data analysis software will be crucial. There are many other skills I will need, but the three mentioned will be a good foundation going forward. Nicole Delabrer has a good post on Medium that summarizes some key skills for an ethnographer.
Professor Bryce Peake’s article, “Media Anthropology: Meaning, Embodiment, Infrastructure, and Activism” explains the relationship between meaning and feeling in media anthropologists study which relates to my topic. First, I must choose what time of medium I choose to study, and, in this case, it will be a cross between the Internet and TV. Second, according to Professor Peake, I have to establish a specific community which would be a town plagued with opioids. From here, I can start to to create meaning of my chosen topic and hopefully learn more about this community.
