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Accepted Paper:
Of Ethnographic (mis-)Translations in a Ward
Purbasha Mazumdar
(IHEID)
By drawing on the difficulties of translating my intentions, as an anthropologist, to the epistemological universe of my interlocutors I ruminate on what the co-production of knowledge in anthropology might mean when we do not partake of the same epistemological grounds as our interlocutors.
Paper Abstract:
‘…social scientists talk in paragraphs, pure scientists talk in values, and doctors are somewhere in the middle’ Dr Z ventures as he nods and smiles in response to my somewhat nervously offered explanation of what an anthropologist of (bio-)science and medicine does. This humorous and perhaps facile sounding remark, however, evinces not only the different epistemological universes that we occupy but also indexes the perceived hierarchy between our disciplines. In this paper, I think through the disciplinary (mis)translations that animated— challenging, impeding and at other times furthering—my 14-months long stint of ethnographic fieldwork with Infectious Diseases (ID) doctors in a large corporate tertiary care hospital in Southern India, in varied and surprising ways. I take the opportunity here to ruminate over how, during the course of my engagement as an anthropologist, maintaining—and not just gaining—access to the field always stood on somewhat shaky grounds coloured by our distinct, if not always discordant, epistemological universes. Further, and in ways tangential to the intentions of this panel, I will use this opportunity to problematise what the ethnographic co-production of knowledge with our interlocutors might mean when we do not partake of overlapping epistemological grounds and the emotional labour such negotiation involves.