Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to discuss how medical anthropological research can critically examine the processes of shaping and operating the scientific expertise of biomedical knowledge in an authoritarian context, reflecting on my online ethnographies of China’s handling of COVID-19.

Paper long abstract:

This paper aims to discuss how medical anthropological research can critically examine the processes of shaping and operating the scientific expertise of producing, manipulating, and disseminating biomedical knowledge in an authoritarian context, reflecting on my online ethnographies of China’s handling of COVID-19. From 2020 to 2022, my research engaged with the knowledge production processes of COVID-19 infectious risks, the emergence and decline of outbreaks, and the effectiveness of the government’s intervention measures in various online spaces. The ethnographic data covers three angles of ‘knowing the pandemic’: how did the government strengthen its top-down indoctrination of specific biomedical knowledge as the ‘truths’ that every individual was obliged to accept; how did the community of public health, as the holder of scientific expertise, involve in the government’s domination; and how did individuals perceive, accept, and/or resist the epistemology that the government expected to establish. The analysis of these aspects aims to challenge the government’s domination of the epistemology of knowing the pandemic. I suggest that while the authoritarian government attempted to steer, control, and utilise the scientific discourses of infection-related biomedical knowledge in order to shape and operate a ‘regime of truth’, as anthropologists, we are supposed to enquire such truths’ factuality based on individuals’ gradually transforming perceptions and the scientific community’s changing positionalities. In this process, the scientific expertise of biomedical interpretations of COVID-19 became a medium between the government and individuals, reflecting the struggles of repressing or gaining subjectivity in the power relation of living the pandemic-situated life.

Paper short abstract:

Medical anthropology can represent a significant force in the re-socialization of biomedical practice and in the process of knowledge production. My research highlights how the anthropological approach can problematize some of the epistemological limitations encountered by biomedical science.

Paper long abstract:

The scientific character of biomedicine has long been considered a deterrent element in recognizing its cultural nature. A key role of anthropology, in its relation to the biomedical apparatus, could be calling into question the characterization of medical science as “objective”, instilling «a doubt that in some way would remind us that biomedicine and science are also products of social life and cultural imagination» (Martínez Hernáez). While biomedicine perceives itself (and is perceived) as a "transparent" system, anthropology can surface a social connotation that, otherwise, would remain hidden.

This contribution, based on research I carried out during 2021 in the contexts of rare diseases in children and chronic pain, reflects on the added value of social sciences to the field of healthcare.

Farmer points out that the social sciences are necessary for medical providers, as the understanding of the Other helps to build medical answers. My research highlight that epistemic limitations in the biomedical context are generated by four key factors: the invisible, albeit perfectly experiential, intrinsic power that the doctors possess in the relationship with their patients; the difference between the interpretations of knowledge; the medical attitude, which tends to exclude the subjective experience of suffering; the rigidity of the protocols within which problems and solutions are expected to be framed in this context.

In my view, an anthropological reading of knowledge can be a resource to ensure therapeutic actions taking into account plurality of meanings and it would be inclined to heal fracture between knowledge in its co-construction.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the use of a multi-criteria decision analysis as a technology of mediation for interdisciplinary scientific policy advice. The MCDA can facilitate qualitative, deliberative considerations of insights from various disciplines for more transparent scientific policy advice.

Paper long abstract:

Scientific experts played a central role in advising policymakers during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Netherlands. The main government advisory body in the Netherlands, comprised of epidemiologists, medical doctors, and public health scientists, has been the foundation of the government’s pandemic response. Several institutes have also regularly advised the Dutch government on behavioural and social issues, but it was less clear what happened with their recommendations. In the absence of more integrated interdisciplinary scientific advice, one of the key lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic in the Netherlands and beyond is the need for multi- and interdisciplinary research (KNAW 2022; Escandon et al. 2021). Although significant efforts in funding and research initiatives have followed to stimulate interdisciplinary pandemic preparedness efforts, there is little engagement with the politics of interdisciplinarity. In this paper, I reflect on the implications of a research project which aims to facilitate integrated interdisciplinary pandemic policy advice as part of a large research consortium on behavioural and social science pandemic preparedness. I follow Hardon and Mol’s (2021) conceptual understanding of interdisciplinarity as a mediation process, and I explore how this might be facilitated through a multi-criteria decision analysis (Thokala et al. 2016). Rather than focusing on a performance matrix as a quantitative analysis, I explore the use of an MCDA as a technology of mediation. This technology can then facilitate qualitative, deliberative considerations of insights from various disciplines. As such, the MCDA has the potential to negotiate different disciplinary insights for policy advice in a more transparent way.

Paper short abstract:

For anthropology, public engagement can come with strings attached, such as expectations of having straightforward answers to complicated questions, or applicable solutions to complex social problems. This paper critiques such forms of science popularisation, offering its own.

Paper long abstract:

Many qualitative researchers strive for their work to address pressing social matters. Conducting such studies comes with additional expectations, ones that are often beyond the methodological or analytical abilities of the researchers. By default, qualitative scientists are not equipped to provide simple, straightforward answers to the in-depth questions of “why” and “how” we ask. Neither they can put together applicable solutions, even when having a deep understanding of the studied social phenomena. Yet, this is the reality of working in the public eye, which requires the popularization of research outcomes beyond scientific journals, at the very least.

Popularization of science in the media, but also other forms of public employment of the study’s results, often leads to simplification of knowledge acquired through a critical, anthropological lens. No journalist and no policymaker wants to hear that “it is complicated” why things happen the way they do. However, qualitative researchers can diverge from the solutionist path set by other scientists. Instead, they can insist on investing their efforts into making the decision-makers and the executioners understand themselves the complex nature of the problem at hand, so they can draw their own conclusions with our help, in the spirit of a collective effort and nonhegemonic knowledge-making. In this paper, I build on my own experience and the experiences of others to propose and explore new modes of anthropological public engagement.