Paper short abstract:

Drawing my work on mental healthcare in China, I argue complicity can reveal how biopower sustains itself despite what it announces and how people make lives on the margins livable. Because complicity will never end, we should develop a methodology of strategic complicity in medical anthropology.

Paper long abstract:

To a certain extent, anthropologists thrive on complicity, not only because we need to build rapport with a wide array of stakeholders, but also because we tend to focus on local knowledges rejected by or hidden from the dominant formation. Especially in medical anthropology, complicity is needed to enter and understand lifeworlds that complicate biological norms, health policies, and formal medical ethics. This paper draws on my study of mental healthcare in China to reflect on what medical anthropologists can learn from complicities and how we can engage with them more consciously/conscientiously. Complicity took many shapes in my work: I was quiet when family caregivers falsely claimed welfare and healthcare resources, and when psychiatrists discussed ways to circumscribed the law and get someone hospitalized; I connected human rights defenders to ex-patients and helped some psychiatrists establish alternative service programs even when I did not completely agree with either group’s vision. These experiences show that complicity is useful in revealing how biopower sustains itself despite what it announces and how people make lives on the margins livable. As our knowledge of and foothold in the field grow, we should break with some of the complicities and build better worlds with our interlocutors, but we should also realize that complicity itself will never end, as changes are typically incremental, partial, and mediated by institutions. To borrow Gayatri Spivak’s (1988) term, we should develop a methodology of “strategic complicity” by both carefully and boldly choosing and building our alliances in medical anthropology.