Call for papers AAA 2016: At the Intersections of Anthropology and Medical Sciences: Possibilities and Risks of Interdisciplinary Collaborations
Type: Call for Papers
Date: March 31, 2016
Location: Minnesota, United States
Subject Fields: Anthropology, Health and Health Care, Public Health, History of Science, Medicine, and Technology
Panel Title: At the Intersections of Anthropology and Medical Sciences: Possibilities and Risks of Interdisciplinary Collaborations
Organizers: Nelson Arruda (Sherbrooke University) and Jorge Flores-Aranda (Sherbrooke University)
Panel description:
Anthropological methods and concepts have become highly used in the
fields of medicine and health science as compelling tools to understand
the social production of health and illness, to examine how power
relations affect and are affected by the practices of individuals and to
expose structural inequalities. Interdisciplinary teams constituted by
anthropologists and scholars from a myriad of health related disciplines
have brought ethnography into the study of social policies, public
health interventions, global health exchanges, vulnerable populations
targeted by diseases, and care practices of experts and lay persons.
Thus, anthropology and medical sciences have intersected in multiple
ways, fraught by the particular epistemological commitments and academic
demands of each disciplinary field as well as the consequent tensions.
Moreover, the increasing use of ethnography outside its disciplinary
home could entail risks such as the lost of its meaning (e.g.
“ethnographic” becomes interchangeable with “qualitative”), the
consequent undermining of participant observation (its main way of
working), the subordination of anthropological methods to quantitative
ones as well as the curtailing of anthropology’s public voice and its
impact in the world (Ingold 2014). This panel will explore how
anthropologists navigate the possibilities and the risks that emerge
from the intersections of anthropology and medical science: In which
ways do we become methodological and theoretical bricoleurs
assembling ideas and methods from different disciplinary fields for our
own research agendas? How do we negotiate the adherence (or not) of our
research proposals to protocols of “positivist’ methodology that for
example demand “representative” numbers of “informants” and precise
“sampling” techniques? And in our own interdisciplinary teams are we
able to ensure the prevalence of the ethnographic approach in the
conception and implementation of our studies and interventions? The
panel aims to put into dialogue scholars that have conducted
interdisciplinary research (anthropology and health related disciplines)
from diverse approaches and in different geographic areas. Our overall
goal is to reflect on the challenges posed by our work and the potential
impact of our collaborations with medical fields of knowledge in the
lives of the persons we study.
Please send submissions to Nelson Arruda (nelson.arruda@usherbrooke.ca), Jorge Flores-Aranda (jorge.flores.aranda@usherbrooke.ca) and Rossio Motta (rossio.motta.ochoa@usherbrooke.ca)
by March 31, 2016 at the latest. Submissions should be no more than 250
words and should include a title and five keywords. Accepted panelists
will be informed of their inclusion in the panel by April 3, 2016 and
should register for the AAA 2016 conference by or before April 15th.