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Accepted Paper:
Does coproduction solve the problems of ethnographic representation?
Neil Armstrong
(Oxford University)
The anthropology of mental health is beset by representational problems. Investigations of power inequalities can be undermined by the production of new inequalities and new modes of exclusion. Drawing on ongoing collaborative work, I consider whether and how coproduction might be an answer.
Paper long abstract:
Medical anthropology is seen as having the methodological and theoretical resources to address power inequalities in mental health research. Indeed, ethnographic work can be framed as an intervention, just as biomedical treatments is often framed, but in this case of ethnography, the patient is mental healthcare itself. But ethnographic methods bring with them fresh inequalities and asymmetries and risk introducing a new means by which patient voices are suppressed. Coproduction has recently been seen as a means of correcting these imbalances and decentering the anthropologist as the arbiter of truth. This paper considers these claims in the light of ongoing collaborative ethnographic work. I reflect on the strengths and shortcomings of coproduction and suggest ways that is might become an accepted way of working in the emancipatory project of medical anthropology.