Born on October 26, 1959 in North Adams, Massachusetts.
Paul Farmer is Professor of Medical Anthropology and Co-Director of the Program on Infectious Diseases and Social Change, Department of Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
He is also Medical Director at the Bon Sauveur Clinic, Cange, Haiti, and Co-Director of the Division of Social Medicine and Health Inequalities at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston. He has twice been a visiting professor at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales.
Paul Farmer received his Bachelor of Arts from Duke University and his PhD (Anthropology) from Harvard University in 1990. Even before completing his studies, Paul Farmer conducted fieldwork in medical anthropology in Haiti, and is renowned for his research and writing on the people and culture of that country.
Farmer's first book, AIDS and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame (1992), is an ethnographic study of the arrival of AIDS in a small village in Haiti, which also provides a detailed insight into the process of linking HIV closely with social inequalities. The introduction to the French translation Sida en Haïti : La victime accusée, written by Françoise Héritier of the Collège de France, noted that the book, in the tradition of Marcel Mauss, considered AIDS as a total social fact.
AIDS and Accusation was awarded the Wellcome Medal by the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, and has served as a model for a new generation of texts in the field of medical anthropology.
The Uses of Haiti (1994) takes an in-depth look at the impact of racism on the fate of Latin America's first republic, and raises questions about Haiti's role as a scapegoat over the past two decades.
The multi-award-winning Women, Poverty and AIDS (1996) examines how poverty and gender together trigger the epidemic among the powerless.
Infections and Inequalities (1999) raises the question of the consequences of social inequalities in the field of pathology. A review in Medical Anthropology concludes that this book is a tour de force that goes beyond the traditional audience and makes a strong argument for the importance of anthropology in confronting poverty and epidemics.
Professor P. Farmer's next book, Pathologies of Power, presents human rights and shows how these rights are undermined by current trends in the distribution of power in the modern world.
Among his many honors, Professor P. Farmer has been awarded the MacArthur Fellowship and the Margaret Mead Prize of the American Anthropological Association. His work has made a major contribution to raising awareness of the relationship between disease and healthcare treatment. For the past 18 years, Professor Farmer has continued to devote a significant part of his time to voluntary activities in collaboration with Partners In Health, a public charity of which he was a founding member. He also plays an active role in an associated organization, Zanmi Lasanté-Paris, dedicated to supporting the hospital he runs in Haiti.
