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P26a


Maintaining ignorance in global health and medical humanitarianism I 
Convenors:
Tim Allen (LSE)
Melissa Parker (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine)
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Format:
Panel
Sessions:
Friday 21 January, -
Time zone: Europe/London

Short Abstract:

This panel explores how and why ignorance is maintained and institutionalised in the domains of global health and medical humanitarianism. Effective strategies for challenging this state of affairs, and the possibilities of developing ethnographically-informed policies will also be considered.

Long Abstract:

Engagement with evidence in the domain of global health and medical humanitarianism is contingent on agendas shaped by compelling and morally-imbued rhetoric. Saving strangers, ending poverty, eliminating diseases are all linked to pervasive assumptions and assertions about goals and achievements that are often at odds with ethnographic observations on the ground. Although the dissonance is striking, ethnographic findings are frequently set aside as if they are hidden or not known. Medical humanitarians who claim that they are assisting those most in need are, at one level, well aware that they only help some of those they can reach, and challenges, such as the need to preserve their own well-being, acutely constrain what they actually do. Similarly, global programmes, such as the mass distribution of tablets for controlling parasitic diseases fail, but are still promoted as if they are a magical solution to the suffering of the World's poor. Those involved in aid agencies, international organisations, and schools of public health commonly ignore what they know to be true, perhaps because intentions are considered more important than results. However, the way in which evidence is deployed and contained is also part of the story. Medical journals persistently publish articles that deploy data in ways that hide or obfuscate realities. That is partly because hierarchies of evidence set aside anthropological observations in favour of purportedly more scientifically robust numbers. Yet almost everyone is aware that those numbers are used to produce the needed outcomes to sustain existing strategies.

Accepted papers:

Session 1 Friday 21 January, 2022, -