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- Convenors:
-
Ushehwedu Kufakurinani
(University of Sussex)
Zoë Goodman (University of Warwick)
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- Format:
- Roundtable
- Sessions:
- Friday 21 January, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
We propose a roundtable that will examine and interrogate some of the successes and challenges of translating social science approaches to pharmaceuticals across disciplinary, professional and everyday boundaries.
Long Abstract:
The anthropology of pharmaceuticals has long established that medicines are much more than their active pharmaceutical ingredients (van der Geest et al 1996; Hayden 2012; Hardon and Sanabria 2017). While medical anthropologists and other social scientists may be well versed in the more-than-pharmacological lives of pharmaceuticals, communicating our findings to policy makers, activists, ordinary consumers and others we do research with, remains an enduring challenge. We propose a roundtable that will examine and interrogate some of the successes and challenges of translating social science approaches to pharmaceuticals across disciplinary, professional and everyday boundaries. We welcome reflections on best practices, research methodologies, creative outputs and media platforms, as well as success, strategies, struggles and ethical issues involved in communicating research that facilitates a more expansive dialogue about drugs between academics and other stakeholders. The roundtable primarily seeks to engage with the following questions: How have/could academics communicate and engage better with relevant stakeholders, regarding our research findings and perspectives on the more-than-pharmacological lives of pharmaceuticals? What methods of research can be deployed to deliver evidence and conclusions that help challenge prevailing assumptions about pharmaceuticals? What technologies, outputs and platforms might facilitate dialogue between academics and wider audiences? This roundtable is proposed by a group of scholars working on "fake" pharmaceuticals - we particularly hope to engage those working to communicate the more-than-pharmacological elements of both "fake" and "real" pharmaceuticals to diverse audiences.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 21 January, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
Through a feminist approach to contemporary scholarly and policy conversations about fake drugs, my work asks questions about Tanzanian women’s access to contraceptives and how “access” is both informed & made difficult by the circulation of narratives around fake medication.
Paper long abstract:
Broadly my research aims to contribute to the emerging conversations about the apparent prevalence of counterfeit medicine in Africa. My research examines the development of narratives about fake contraceptives in Tanzania. It specifically does this by exploring Tanzanian women’s experiences with the side effects of these medications and its relationship to their social, cultural, political and economic contexts that further influence the construction of fakeness. Through four months of ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with four working-class women from various districts in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, my research explored women’s anxieties about using these medications, the side effects of which were believed to pose a threat to their health.
The study of the emergence of fake pharmaceuticals through a feminist lens offered invaluable insights on two important issues: (i) the social hierarchies related to gender, race, sex, and class, and how these relationships mediate an individual’s power, agency, and choice relating to their health; and (ii) the lack of consensus in defining what constitutes something as falsified, counterfeit, or fake has given room for various forms of meaning and understanding. Overall, this ethnography has expanded on what we know about the emergence of fake pharmaceuticals, the conceptualization of fakeness, and how it is understood and constructed.
Paper short abstract:
What kind of care do we associate with the prescription and use of pharmaceutical drugs? Is it really care? What then does 'care' mean?
Paper long abstract:
My intervention is about challenging the position that pharmaceutical drugs are often given by modern healthcare science as a technology of caregiving, especially in modern day society where almost every human condition is pharmaceucalised. Drawing from Biehl's statement about pharmaceutical drugs being often mistakenly considered forms of caregiving by modern healthcare science when they are not (2012: 251) I aim to present how instead pharmaceutical drugs can contribute to social injustice, perpetuating social and economic inequality in the very actions of their prescription and use, to offer 'care'. I ask us to carefully consider the kind of care we may associate with the prescription and use of pharmaceutical drugs, to pause a little and ask ourselves, "Is it really care?" What then does 'care' mean? Using ethnographic materials from other scholars, particularly in the discipline of anthropology, I position and argue ethnographic fieldwork and its tool as efficient methods that can be deployed to deliver evidence and conclusions that help challenge prevailing assumptions about pharmaceuticals.
Paper long abstract:
There is a wide chasm between the world of medicine and pharmacology and the world of information and communication, even in the digital age. While the ubiquity and popularity of digital everyday technologies such as the Internet, mobile devices, mobile apps, and social media have made access to medical information easier and quicker, the reliance on technology for easy access to medical information results in a number of issues. This has meant that people have access to a wider range of sources, including alternative facts, rumours, hoaxes and conspiracies which are at odds with medical or scientific truth and evidence. Medical infodemic and mis/disinformation have therefore become part of the broader problem of ‘fake news’ in a world increasingly digital by default. Such mis/disinformation pose a problem to public health, often impacting the health behaviours people adopt, the health risks they take, and whether or not they follow public health guidelines. To solve the problem created by a disconnection between science and communication and the emergent issue of health-related mis/disinformation, I propose the rethinking and more focused adaptation of health literacy within the broader media literacy paradigm. In addition is the prioritisation of science communication or science journalism as a crucial way of addressing what I consider a gap in health research, public health discourse, and health communication in the global age. This will see a synergy between scientists and medical practitioners and a new crop of journalists known as science journalists devoted to communicating a balanced, objective, and impactful scientific truth and evidence especially during crisis times such as the pandemic.
Paper short abstract:
This presentation consists of the author's initial ethnographic observations and reflections of the observable values, rules and boundary-keeping as practiced at the Lancet and the British Medical Journal.
Paper long abstract:
This presentation consists of the author's initial ethnographic observations and reflections of the observable values, rules and boundary-keeping practices that obtain at the Lancet and the British Medical Journal. It follows a life-cycle approach, and pays close attention to key moments of transition between developmental moments. The presentation also discucsses what happens when new arrivals in this land inadvertently transgress highly-policed norms. Life cycle points include: negotiating authorship and its ordering, navigating the submission interface, managing the publisher processing charge, decoding the peer review process, and surviving audience reception.