Seth Holmes, co-chair of Berkeley's Center for Social Medicine has been awarded the Robert B. Textor award in Anticipatory Anthropology for his book, Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States.
From the American Anthropological Association's website:
"The Robert B Textor and Family Prize for Excellence in Anticipatory Anthropology was established in 1998. This is an annual prize given by the AAA to encourage and reward excellent contributions in the use of anthropological perspectives, theories, models and methods in an anticipatory mode. Such contributions will allow citizens, leaders and governments to make informed policy choices, and thereby improve their society's or community's chances for realizing preferred futures and avoiding unwanted ones. The time frame for such anticipation will normally be the middle-range future (5-15 years)."
The description of Dr. Holmes' book from UC Press' website:
"Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies provides an intimate examination of the everyday lives and suffering of Mexican migrants in our contemporary food system. An anthropologist and MD in the mold of Paul Farmer and Didier Fassin, Holmes shows how market forces, anti-immigrant sentiment, and racism undermine health and health care. Holmes’s material is visceral and powerful. He trekked with his companions illegally through the desert into Arizona and was jailed with them before they were deported. He lived with indigenous families in the mountains of Oaxaca and in farm labor camps in the U.S., planted and harvested corn, picked strawberries, and accompanied sick workers to clinics and hospitals. This “embodied anthropology” deepens our theoretical understanding of the ways in which social inequalities and suffering come to be perceived as normal and natural in society and in health care.
All of the book award money and royalties from the sales of this book have been donated to farm worker unions, farm worker organizations and farm worker projects in consultation with farm workers who appear in the book."
You can read more in a Berkeley News article posted in the links below.