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P18b


Ethnographers as arbiters of truth? Truth and psychiatric systems II 
Convenors:
Keira Pratt-Boyden (University of Kent)
Neil Armstrong (Oxford University)
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Discussant:
Liana Chase (Durham University)
Format:
Panel
Sessions:
Friday 21 January, -
Time zone: Europe/London

Short Abstract:

Psychiatry is often seen to enforce an epistemic regime on its subjects, yet is subject to various counter strategies which increasingly recognise patient experience as truth. How might ethnographers negotiate multiple competing truths in psychiatric systems whilst retaining hermeneutic integrity?

Long Abstract:

This panel will discuss the methodological, epistemic and ethical challenges encountered when anthropologists seek to generate knowledge in a setting where knowledge is deeply contested. Psychiatry is often seen as the vanguard of neoliberalism, enforcing its episteme on its subjects through labelling, monitoring and responsibilisation. Some service user researchers seek to push back against this, presenting collaboration and coproduction as the solution to hegemonic biopower. Others try to sidestep the system and create service evader communities where their truths can find a home and are not challenged. Psychiatry itself is subject to audit cultures, such that diagnoses are superseded by bureaucratic categories such as 'care clusters,' and 'good health' by Key Performance Indicators.

The panel will consider how ethnographers might negotiate these competing epistemes. Does methodological agnosticism force ethnographers to become the arbiter of truth? How is the distinction between emic and etic, local knowledge and analytic terms, to be maintained? How should ethnographers respond to patient reports of misconduct, malpractice and clinical negligence, or equally of clinicians disclosing professional dilemmas and moral compromises?

Accepted papers:

Session 1 Friday 21 January, 2022, -