Paper short abstract:

In this paper I draw on recent research collaborations to reveal implicit assumptions about anthropology’s remit, explore interdisciplinary working as anthropological practice and argue for the need to re-articulate the nature of anthropological evidence-making.

Paper long abstract:

This paper reflects upon multi- and inter-disciplinary engagements and encounters with a variety of disciplines, based on three decades of experience as an academic anthropologist researching global and public health-related issues. Working at the interface of anthropology and other disciplinary fields enables identification and examination of embedded assumptions about anthropology's remit and scope held by anthropologists and other disciplinary specialists alike. I draw on recent experiences of collaborations for research on drug-resistant infections to explore disciplinary hierarchies that shape variable legitimation of knowledge production practices. I examine some characteristic dilemmas that emerge when seeking to align and retain a space for the ethnographic imperatives of flexible, context-specific and inductive data-gathering alongside outcome-focused, tightly specified enumerative approaches. Cross- and inter-disciplinary working can readily be analysed by reference to such matters of methodological or conceptual conflict and compromise, but I wish instead to consider it as a fundamentally anthropological practice, entailing development of contributory expertise, identification of implicit classificatory categories through participant observation, and diligent attention to translational processes. Yet working at the margins of anthropology also brings into focus limitations in how evidence-making in anthropology is envisaged, rendering anthropologists inarticulate beyond our own discipline.