Paper short abstract:

Encounters with representatives of states in the course of anthropological health research, and research-based insights into mutual contingencies between states and persons, provide the substance for this personal account of changing state practices in Aotearoa New Zealand and some Pacific nations.

Paper long abstract:

Encounters with representatives of states in the course of anthropological health research, and research-based insights into mutual contingencies between states and persons, provide the substance for this personal account of changing state practices in Aotearoa New Zealand and some Pacific nations. I draw on my own research and that of research group colleagues and of my PhD students to provide brief research stories which contribute to insights about states and about how states and persons are intertwined. My time-frame is from the 1980s to the present. Early insights from my PhD research about internal struggles even within that single branch of the state concerned with health; and my first PhD student, Sally Abel's, conclusion based on research on the New Zealand Nurses Amendment Act (1990) in the context of ongoing health reforms, that no one was in charge, have informed my thinking about states as often contradictory, chameleon-like and diffuse networks. Nonetheless, and pace the conference theme statement, tentacles of the state can be seen to be 'set against' citizens and communities, as our later research into living with haemophilia and the political ecology of TB, demonstrated. I see this as one facet of mutual contingency, rather than an 'older' view. I conclude with an instance of a positive outcome for members of a biosocial group as a result of a state that they had shifted, and some hopes for other, similar, outcomes.