Biomedicine and the humanities: growing pains

Abstract

In this article, we discuss the challenges facing humanities researchers approaching studies in clinical and community health settings. This crossing of disciplines has arguably been less often explored in the countries we discuss—Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa—but our experiences also speak to broader trouble with disciplinary ‘ethnocentrism’ that hampers the development of knowledge. After a brief contextualising overview of the structures within our universities that separate or link the humanities, medicine and social science, we use case studies of our experiences as an arts researcher, an anthropologist and a historian to draw attention to the methodological clashes that can hobble research between one disciplinary area and another, whether this manifests in the process of applying for ethical clearance or a professional wariness between healthcare practitioners and humanities scholars in health spaces. We argue overall for the great potential of humanities in the health ‘space’—as well as the need for improved dialogue between the disciplines to bring a diverse community of knowledge to bear on our understandings of experiences of health. And we suggest the need for a robust awareness of our own positions in relation to medicine, as humanities scholars, as well as a patient persistence on both sides of the humanities–health science equation to create a broader and ultimately more effective research system.

Tales of treatment and new perspectives for global health research on antimicrobial resistance

“…177 However, a tension also remains between the benefits of co-producing knowledge and the risk of unintended consequences from public engagement and the presence of external research teams. Ours is not the first study to problematise hazards of potentially detrimental interpretations of narratives and arts-based engagement with the public, 178,179 misinterpretation of roles and competences of researchers 180 or issues of preproducing hierarchical relationships to the point of oppressing local communities. 181 The knowledge to evaluate such mixed consequences of public engagement and participatory research is yet limited and requires further methodological research.…”

“…However, knowledge co-production through visual methods and storytelling served primarily a supplementary purpose in our project-for our research objectives, it would have not have sufficed as an alone-standing research and knowledge production method (which comes with its own methodological and ethical challenges, compounded by interdisciplinary frictions in ethical review committees [172][173][174][175][176]. As the feedback from the photo exhibitions showed, presenting health-related practices could also potentially influence people's health behaviour even if the research team explicitly distanced themselves from advocating any particular practice.…”

“…The medical humanities intersect with the popular practice of public engagement, emphasising in particular creative co-production research that uses methods including theatre, storytelling or artistic production (we related to the medical humanities in this paper especially through creative, participatory and dialogical approaches from within the visual arts and social sciences/cultural studies branches of the medical humanities). 24,25 Medical humanities scholarship thereby shares an interest in the role of experience and expression of illness and healing, [26][27][28][29] and it has an important role to play in broadening debates away from reductionist towards a holistic and contextsensitive understanding of complex medical phenomena like AMR. [30][31][32] At the same time, explorations building on artistic and creative processes do not exist in opposition to but rather enable dialogue with established medical notions and conventions, giving them new perspectives and interpretations.…”

“…24,25 Medical humanities scholarship thereby shares an interest in the role of experience and expression of illness and healing, [26][27][28][29] and it has an important role to play in broadening debates away from reductionist towards a holistic and contextsensitive understanding of complex medical phenomena like AMR. [30][31][32] At the same time, explorations building on artistic and creative processes do not exist in opposition to but rather enable dialogue with established medical notions and conventions, giving them new perspectives and interpretations. [33][34][35][36] Building on this logic, this paper presents a case study of public engagement under the umbrella of the medical humanities in which we examine new and locally grounded perspectives on the sociocultural context of AMR and its related topics of medicine use and health systems.…”

Reflections on a field across time and space: the emergent medical and health humanities in South Africa

“…Some lean towards social science, or participatory action research. Some are oriented to medical education; some public health 15. Some are heavily engaged with anthropology, history, literature.…”