Paper short abstract:

This communication explores the practice of anthropology during the 2021 Ebola outbreak in Guinea and how anthropology in public health emergencies can be turned into a mere professional expertise of communication, far from being a social science discipline producing knowledge on human societies.

Paper long abstract:

As Ebola re-emerged in Guinea in February 2021, a team of anthropologists, including myself, was sent on field to collaborate with the Response. If ethnography allowed to obtain essential data and supported collaboration with local populations, it appeared clearly that anthropologists were considered as “augmented” mediators by the Response, ethnography being conceived as an advanced communication skill. Our presence as ‘natural communicators with the communities’ justified the lack of dialogue and consideration between the Response and local actors. Thus, far from questioning the way local communities were treated during the epidemics, anthropology was being waved as a white flag of “human-focus” community approach by the Response, without any real consideration for the knowledge it produced – becoming a communication tool for crisis management. Stuck in an uncomfortable in-between, anthropologists associated with the Response – neither fully anthropologists nor fully interveners – had to navigate between these different and sometimes opposed identities. Practical and ethical questions arose from the disjunction between the emergency intervention requirements – short-term punctual intervention including active participation and identification of Ebola cases – and the ‘classical’ anthropological methodology – long-term fieldwork with participant observation, informed consent and anonymity of informants. Relations with informants were also rendered difficult by this in-between position. Drawing on the work of Olivier de Sardan, Price, Gruénais, Fassin, Becker et al., Fluehr-Lobban, Bell, and others, this communication analyses how anthropology is institutionalized – and sometimes instrumentalized – during public health emergencies, focusing on the experience of 2021 Ebola resurgence in Guinea.