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Paper short abstract:

This paper foreground grounds matters of ‘complicity’ in medical anthropological research. Complicity here might take the form of the (perhaps unwitting, potentially unavoidable) reproductions of problematic exclusions, inequalities, or claims that might emerge out of research practice.

Paper long abstract:

In what ways might we as researchers engage in forms of ‘complicity’? The term has anchored a critique of researcher-stakeholder ‘rapport’ (e.g Marcus, 2001). Building on this, we use complicity as an explorative heuristic for thinking through the methodological politics of contemporary social science and humanities research in the broad area of health. Complicity here might take the form of (perhaps unwitting, potentially unavoidable) reproductions of problematic exclusions/inequalities/claims.

In this paper, we think this through with reference to two empirical contexts: (1) in Hollin's work on Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (or, CTE, cumulative damage caused by head trauma), most research is done with sportsmen – predominantly because of the ease of studying this sample. This is as true for ethnographers as epidemiologists, for in the UK it is challenging to secure access to relevant constituencies beyond predominantly male, white sports teams. Does this constitute complicity in, e.g., the erasure of domestic abuse victims within this research domain? (2) in Williams' work at the intersection of race/biomedicine, Black and Minority Ethnicity (BME) activists employ biologically essentialist tropes of race to encourage BME participation in biomedical projects. Whilst sympathies with activists’ political projects might be found, there remains an unease about claims of race’s essential nature. Does silence in the face of these claims amount to complicity in their propagation?

This paper also introduces a forthcoming Sociology of Health and Illness special issue/monograph on methodological complicities, contributors to which are amongst speakers in this panel.