Dr Hans Baer
Contact
E: hbaer@unimelb.edu.au
T: 03 8344 9174
Academic Profile
PhD (University of Utah)
Hans A. Baer is Senior Lecturer in the School of Philosophy, Anthropology, and Social Inquiry and the Centre for Health and Society at the University of Melbourne.
He earned a PhD in Anthropology at the University of Utah in 1976 and was a post-doctoral fellow in the Medical Anthropology Program at Michigan State University in 1979-1980. He held regular positions at Kearney State College (1972-73); George Peabody College for Teachers (1976-1979); St. John’s University (1980-1981); the University of Southern Mississippi (1981-83); and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (1983-2005). He has been a visiting professor at Humboldt University in Berlin, University of California – Berkeley, Arizona State University, George Washington University, and Australian National University.
Hans has conducted research on the Hutterites in South Dakota, the Levites (a Mormon sect in Utah), African American Spiritual churches, alternative medicine in the US, UK, and Australia; sociopolitical and religious life in East Germany, conventional and alternative HIV clinics in a Western U.S. city, the climate justice movement in Australia, and a critical anthropology of global warming.
Hans is an avid walker, biker, and traveler and has been an active member of the Melbourne Bushwalking Club. Hans considers himself a scholar-activist and has been involved in various movements over the years, including peace, social justice, anti-apartheid, labor, and environmental movements.
Publications
Hans has published 16 books, co-edited several special journal issues, and published some 155 book chapters and journal articles. His books include
- The Black Spiritual Movement: A Religious Response to Racism (1984 and 2001);
- Encounters with Biomedicine: Case Studies in Medical Anthropology (1987)
- African American Religion: Varieties of Protest and Accommodation (with Merrill Singer)(1992 and 2002);
- African Americans in the South (with Yvonne Jones)(1992);
- Crumbling Walls and Tarnished Ideals: An Ethnography of East Germany Before and After Unification (1998);
- Introducing Medical Anthropology; A Discipline in Action (with Merrill Singer)(2007)
- Killer Commodities: Corporate Products and Public Health (with Merrill Singer)(2009);
- Recreating Utopia in the Desert: A Sectarian Response to Racism (1987);
- Encounters with Biomedicine: Case Studies in Medical Anthropology (1987);
- Critical Medical Anthropology (with Merrill Singer)(1995);
- Medical Anthropology and the World System: A Critical Perspective (with Merrill Singer and Ida Susser)(1997 and 2003);
- Biomedicine and Alternative Healing Systems in America: Issues of Class, Race, Ethnicity, and Gender (2001);
- Toward an Integrative Medicine: Alternative Therapies Meet Biomedicine (2004);
- Global Warming and the Political Ecology of Health (with Merrill Singer)(2009)
- Naturopathy Around the World: Variations and Political Dilemmas of an Eclectic Heterodox Medical System (with Stephen Sporn)(2009);
- Complementary Medicine in Australia and New Zealand: Popularisation, and Dilemmas (2009).