Dr. Edward Wellin

Edward Wellin, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. (July 30, 1917-April 5, 2018)

Born in Phoenix, N.Y. in 1917, Edward Wellin grew up in Worcester, MA, the son of Eli Wellin and Anna Schnaerson who had emigrated from the Ukraine. One of seven children, Edward maintained close ties with family and many friends—especially in Madison, Wisconsin in his later years—and was active in volunteer/community activities after his retirement from a full-time faculty position at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

After completing high school, Edward was an apprentice machinist in Worcester. After his father’s death in 1937 he became a provider for the family and enlisted in the army to serve in the Second World War (European Theater, Corps of Engineers).

With support from the G.I. Bill he attended Syracuse University, earning a bachelor’s degree in anthropology, and then a Ph.D. in anthropology at Harvard University, in the Department of Social Relations. A specialist in the fields of medical and applied anthropology, Edward was employed by the American Public Health Association, Rutgers University, and for some 25 years was professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. There he taught thousands of undergraduates, mentored graduate students, won multiple external grants and produced scholarship that has had a significant and lasting impact.

Though the sub-field of medical anthropology was only nascent at the outset of his career in the early 1950s, Ed Wellin combined doctoral training with a Master’s in Public Health. Field research in Peru for his dissertation involved ethnographic case-studies of directed culture change, aimed at enhancing community-level health through such interventions as promoting the boiling of drinking water to quell water-borne disease. His account of this study, “Water Boiling in a Peruvian Town” was published in an influential edited volume from the Russell Sage Foundation, Health, Culture, and Community (1955, Ed. by B.D. Paul), and widely taught and cited in later years. The breadth of Wellin’s interests and contributions are reflected in the sample of publications available here: they ranged from synthetic discussions of the development of theoretical perspectives in medical anthropology, to applied, grounded studies of adaptation to new living arrangements (both institutional and community-based) among older adults.

Video of Ed Wellin interviewed in 1998

This is an interview of Edward Wellin (social and medical anthropologist), conducted by Jim Kelly as part of his History of Community Psychology course. In this video, Dr Wellin discusses his work with rural communities in Peru, focusing on health issues, community development, and the strengths of their cultural heritage. Dr Wellin lives in Madison Wisconsin (USA), and is Professor Emeritus with the Department of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

In this video, Dr Wellin exemplifies several key competencies in working with communities. One is humility. He became part of the community while trying to understand the community. Another is to begin where they are at. He studied communities in Peru from their point of view, doing his best to get a sense of their context in their terms while trying to understand and document their strengths in our terms. He also worked with them to develop programs that built on their strengths, rather than replacing their common activities with foreign activities. With a background in anthropology and public health from Harvard University School of Public Health, and additional training in social sciences (social psychology, clinical psychology, social science, social anthropology) from the graduate school at Harvard University, Dr Wellin exemplifies the multi-disciplinary nature of the field.

Recommended citation:
Kelly, J. G., Dalton, J., & Francisco, V. T. (Year, Month Day). Interview of Dr Edward Wellin [Video file]. Retrieved from vimeo.com/73222001.

From “Five Persons Who Have Helped Me to Maintain My Spirit in Doing Community Psychology” by James G. Kelly

In American Journal of Community Psychology. Vol. 45, Issue 3-4. June 2010. Pages 272-284

In the spring of 1960, during the second post‐doctoral year at the Harvard School of Public Health, I enrolled in a course taught by the anthropologist Ben Paul (1911–2005). We read “Water Boiling in a Peruvian Town,” a report of a two‐year research project by the anthropologist, Ed Wellin, published in 1955 (Wellin 1955, 1998; Kelly 2000). Wellin presented a beautiful example of how it was necessary for Wellin and a rural hygiene worker to immerse themselves into the village to understand the complexities of the social fabric of this small community of 200 households. He wanted to understand why certain persons took the health‐engendering step to boil water to lower the incidence of typhoid fever while others did not. Wellin was an active listener and intrepid participant in the cultures of the smaller sub communities within this already small community.

One of his findings was that in this Peruvian town children were the most frequent water carriers from the nearest stream. Males and females of courtship age and married men did not carry water according to local norms and traditions. Wellin also learned that the acceptable times to boil water was after breakfast and after the noon meal; this is another ecological constraint.

I learned that there was a complexity within small communities that could not be understood if one was pre‐occupied with being an objective, detached, uninvolved scientist. Understanding class and heritage was learned AFTER obtaining respect from the various sub communities. The improvised methods employed by Wellin were inspiring. He revealed the nascent quality of the town. My spirit was uplifted when I read about the insights of Wellin’s immersion and the processes of his building trust.

One of his major findings was that, when stimulating an innovation in a community, it is essential to create cordial and trusting personal relationships between the researcher and the community. This was essential! Today, this is a truism, but then, it was a very provocative and even radical insight.

The significance of Wellin’s work for me was that, although the efforts to have citizens boil water had limited success, it was the elegant analysis of the villagers and their various contexts that helped explain the determinants of their behavior. Wellin grappled directly to understand the everyday issues of people and their cultures.

The study of water boiling has continued to generate discourse in current research.

E. Tricket. ‘From "Water Boiling in a Peruvian Town" to "Letting them Die": Culture, Community Intervention, and the Metabolic Balance Between Patience and Zeal. ‘ American Journal of Community Psychology. (2011) 47:58-68.

Link to Curriculum Vitae of Dr. Edward Wellin

Selected works by Dr. Wellin

L. Grau and E. Wellin. “The Organizational Cultures of Nursing Homes: Influences on Responses to External Regulatory Controls.” Qualitative Health Research. Vol 2. No.1, Feb.1992. 42-60.

Review of The Healers: A History of American Medicine. in Medical Anthropology Newsletter. Vol. 13, Issue 2. February 1982.

“Dependency and Reciprocity: Home Health Aid in an Elderly Population".” Karen Jonas and Edward Wellin. in Aging in Culture and Society: Comparative Viewpoints and Strategies. Ed. Christine L. Fry. New York: J. F. Bergin. 1980. 217-38.

“Adjustments of Black and White Elderly to the Same Adaptive Niche.” Edward Wellin and Eunice Boyer. Anthropological Quarterly. Vol. 52, No. 1, Special Issue: The Ethnography of Old Age (Jan., 1979), pp. 39-48.

E. Wellin. “Theoretical orientations in medical anthropology: change and continuity over the past half-century.” in Health and the Human Condition: Perspectives on Medical Anthropology. Eds. M. Logan and E. Hunt Jr. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. 1978.

Medical Anthropolgy: A Comment on Recent Publications.” Review of George M. Foster and Barbara G. Anderson. Medical Anthropology. New York: John Wiley, 1978. and Eleanor E. Bauwens, ed. The Anthropology of Health. St. Louis: C. V. Mosby. 1978.

E. Wellin. “Directed Culture Change and Health Programs in Latin America.” The Milbane Memorial Fund Quarterly. April, 1966, Vol. XLIV No. 2. Part 2. pp 111-128.

E. Wellin. “Water Boiling in a Peruvian Town.” in Health, Community, and Culture: Case Studies of Public Reactions to Health Programs. Ed. B. Paul. New York: Sage Foundation, 1955.