Merrill Singer

Merrill Singer (b. October 6, 1950 McKeesport, PA, USA) is a medical anthropologist and professor in Anthropology at The University of Connecticut and in Community Medicine at The University of Connecticut Health Center. He is a prolific writer and best known for his research on substance abuse, HIV/AIDS, syndemics, health disparities, and minority health.

Singer studied anthropology at California State University, Northridge (Master of Arts, Anthropology,1975) and completed a PhD in Anthropology at the University of Utah in 1979.

He held a National Institute of Alcohol and Alcohol Abuse Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Psychiatry, George Washington University (1979–80) and another at the University of Connecticut Medical School from 1982-3.

He was researcher, rising to Associate Director, at the Hispanic Health Council in Hartford, Connecticut from 1982-2007, and moved to the University of Connecticut in 2007, becoming Professor in 2008.

As Director of the Center for Community Health Research at the Hispanic Health Council, he helped to develop the theoretical perspective within medical anthropology known as critical medical anthropology. Dr. Singer also developed the public health concepts of syndemics and oppression illness. Most recently, he has published a number of articles on pluralea.

The first of these terms refers to the clustering of diseases in populations and the biological interaction of diseases in individual bodies. Moreover, the term syndemics also points to the determinant importance of social conditions in disease concentrations, interactions, and health consequences. In syndemics, the interaction of diseases or other adverse health conditions commonly arises because of adverse social conditions (e.g., poverty, exploitation, stigmatization, oppressive social relationships) that put socially devalued groups at heightened risk. The term oppression illness refers to the internalization of social discrimination and the health consequences of coming to accept one does not deserve to be healthy. The term pluralea refers to the adverse intersection of environmental crises and their health effects.

In his work on alcohol and drug use, Singer explains that all drugs are commodities and draws attention to social constructions of legitimate or legal and illegitimate or illegal drugs. In his book Drugging the Poor: Legal and Illegal Drugs and Social Inequality, Singer notes that all drugs are forms of self-medicating, and that distinctions of legal or illegal serve to reinforce social hierarchies and inequalities. Furthermore, Singer argues that drug use among the poor is a type of self-medicating in response to the pressures of being poor. Responding to ways illegal drug users are vilified, Singer argues that by using language of blame to describe drug users as responsible for deteriorating urban centers, “attention is diverted from the role of class inequality as a source of social misery.”

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