Overcoming ‘Minimal Objectivity’ and ‘Inherent Bias’: Ethics and Understandings of Feminist Research in a Health Sciences Faculty in South Africa

Abstract

On an evening in 2016, the usually earnest atmosphere of an academic meeting and lecture venue was transformed by the sound of chatter, laughter, and exclamation, as people examined sketches of bones displayed on pin boards and observed, with varying degrees of interest, a group of students demonstrating a version of surya namaskar, the sun salutation, practised in yoga. On a table, copies of booklets containing poems and stories held the attention of those who stopped to read them. As the crowd made their way down to the lecture theatre to listen to music, singing, poetry, and spoken word pieces, they passed an exhibition of photos. Some participants cast a quick eye over the images, others stopped and looked, and read the captions underneath. The creators of these images engaged in conversations with the viewers-some of which were serious and some light-hearted. A similar scene-one that disrupted the usual use of space and place-had occurred in 2015 in another venue where other images addressing the experiences of being medical students in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Cape Town (UCT), in South Africa, were exhibited (Figures 1 & 2). The writing, drawings, yoga, music, and photographs were all part of evenings showcasing month-long special study modules facilitated by the Primary Health Care Directorate and undertaken by second year medical students registered for the Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBChB) degree. These special study modules were linked either to the field of Medical and Health Humanities (MHH)

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

“…Indeed our concern for closure, and the defining of things is perhaps symptomatic of the inability to speak across difference that, recalling Mbembe, above, may be identified with colonial intellectual practice—as well as a lack of what Tsampiras has called ‘epistemic generosity’  (p. 14) 18. In their assertion of a critical medical humanities, Viney et al develop this into a sense of ‘entanglement’ among disciplines, rather than a desire for one to act on another 14.…”

Walking up hills, through history and in-between disciplines: MHH and Health Sciences Education at the tip of Africa

“…The collections of photos are presented to the group and discussed and it is from this larger body of work that students eventually select images to form part of an exhibition (figure 3). Introducing feminist and humanities inspired methodologies which are intrinsically linked to subjectivities has not been easy when colleges making decisions on ethics approvals note that any project associated with these notions are ‘minimally objective’ 27. The struggle to even gain permission to undertake a research project that makes use of a methodology that is known on other parts of the campus but not considered appropriate for the ‘objective’ health sciences makes interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary work taxing 28.…”

Re‐Imagining Reproduction: Citation and Chosen Kin

“…Practices of epistemic generosity require disrupting these processes. See Tsampiras and Muller (2018, 14) and Tsampiras, Mkhwanazi, and Hume (2018, 219) for examples of what practices of epistemic generosity may look like.…”