'I'm Not that Kind of Doctor': On Being In-Between in a Global Health Intervention. Issue 1 (1st March 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Nelson, Erica
• Is Part Of: Anthropology in action. Volume 26:Issue 1(2019)
• Page Start: 12
• Page End: 20
• Publication Date: 2019-03-01
• Subjects: adolescence -- community participation -- critical ethnography -- gender -- global health -- Latin America -- reproductive health; Applied anthropology -- Periodicals; Anthropology -- Periodicals; 306
• DOI: 10.3167/aia.2019.260102
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1752-2285

Abstract

Abstract : Within multi-disciplinary global health interventions, anthropologists find themselves navigating complex relationships of power. In this article, I offer a critical reflection on this negotiated terrain, drawing on my experience as an embedded ethnographer in a four-year adolescent sexual and reproductive health research intervention in Latin America. I critique the notion that the transformative potential of ethnographic work in global health remains unfulfilled. I then go on to argue that an anthropological practice grounded in iterative, inter-subjective and self-reflexive work has the potential to create 'disturbances' in the status quo of day-to-day global health practice, which can in turn destabilise some of the problematic hubristic assumptions of health reforms.