ASA Obituary for Nancy

Nancy E. Waxler Morrison

1931-2007

Nancy E. Waxler Morrison died suddenly in February 2007 while on vacation with her husband in Costa Rica. She grew up in Urbana, IL, where she attended the University of Illinois, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and graduated first in her class. She received her PhD in sociology from the Harvard Department of Social Relations in 1959 and then embarked on a career of research and teaching in the sociology of medicine—a field that was then still in its infancy. Her most important legacy was to demonstrate the many ways that health and health care are shaped by psychological states and different ethnic and cultural expectations as well as the particular disadvantage experienced by those who are poor and powerless.

Nancy’s first major research was done in the 1960s with Elliot Mishler at the Harvard Medical School where she later became an Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Psychiatry. Their studies of interaction patterns in families with a schizophrenic child contributed to the early reframing of psychiatric illness as not only amenable to biomedical solutions but also responsive to social interaction and labeling. With a coveted Research Scientist Award from NIMH (1968-1973), Nancy studied families and schizophrenia from a deviance perspective. With another NIMH award (1973-78), she traveled to Sri Lanka to examine how schizophrenia was treated by traditional means. In a frequently cited article (1979) she suggested that the outcome for schizophrenia was better in preindustrial societies, a radical theme at the time was upheld in later studies by the World Health Organization.

In Sri Lanka, Nancy met her future husband, Barrie Morrison, and her focus shifted to questions of broader access to health care and social justice in the treatment of minorities. Nancy joined Morrison in Vancouver at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in 1979, and, following an initial appointment in Health Care and Epidemiology, became a faculty member in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology and the School of Social Work. Building on her extensive collaborative research in Sri Lanka and Kerala, India, she continued her pioneer work on higher infant mortality rates among the minority Tamils and Muslims of Sri Lanka with a prestigious fellowship at the Rockefeller Center in Bellagio, Italy, in 1988.

At UBC, Nancy Waxler Morrison became one of the university’s leading figures in social science and health care, giving guest lectures and serving on dissertation committees in many departments and faculties and as a consultant in Ottawa. The range of her courses was impressive: sociology of medicine, social research methods, health and illness, the family in cross-cultural perspective, health policy and planning. Her advice and her lectures in psychiatry and nursing, anthropology, history, and Asian studies touched on applications to international and Canadian health services.

Trusted and respected by students and colleagues alike, her teaching career had begun in the Boston area with adjunct appointments at Emmanuel College and Wellesley College. In 1975 and 1980-81 she was affiliated with the University of Ceylon in Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, and from 1981 to 1992, with the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Washington. She retired from UBC in 1992.

Her wide-ranging research interests extended to leprosy, illness among Canadian minority groups, psychosocial factors in women with breast cancer, Ayurvedic and homeopathic medical systems in Kerala, access to dental care for institutionalized elders, and asthma among lumber workers. In collaboration with graduate students and health professionals, she produced two editions of Cross-Cultural Caring (1992, 2005, co-edited with Joan Anderson). This work has been widely used by nurses, social
workers, physicians, and other health care professionals.

Nancy also enjoyed a rich personal life. She found pleasure in all kinds of travel. She had a talent for gardening and good cooking, and an interest and skill in such crafts as weaving and needlework. Though she was always modest and unassuming about her own importance, her work as a sociologist adds up to quite a remarkable record of discovery of the many ways in which health and the treatment of illness are powerfully shaped by social relationships and cultural milieu.

Janet Zollinger Giele, Brandeis University; Elliot G. Mishler, Harvard University; Elvi Whittaker, University of British Columbia