‘I'm Not that Kind of Doctor’: On Being In-Between in a Global Health Intervention
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 re-
mains 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.
Citation
Nelson, E. (2019) "‘I'm Not that Kind of Doctor’: On Being In-Between in a Global Health Intervention", Anthropology in Action, 26, no. 1 (Spring 2019): 12–20, Berghahn Books, DOI: 10.3167/aia.2019.260102DOI
10.3167/aia.2019.260102Rights holder
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