This paper explores the opportunities and challenges of building community archives to support and mobilize health equity stakeholders.
Long abstract:
In this paper, I share my experiences of using the Platform for Experimental and Collaborative Ethnography (PECE) to conduct engaged research in Louisiana by building ethnographic archives. I discuss the challenges of archiving for health equity in an anti-Black petrostate that not only privileges economic interests over public health through neoliberal management techniques but also often appropriates the tools of transparent governance and advocacy to police subaltern communities and the advocates working from/with them. Drawing from my collaboration with health equity advocates in Baton Rouge, I have approached these challenges by looking at “corollary records” (Caswell 2023) as tools for discerning the politics of health without revealing sensitive information. In Louisiana, the possibilities for “health otherwise” can be excavated in records of health professionals’ advocacy against market-based healthcare reforms.