This panel explores the new forms of health inequality that come to emerge in social experiences of chronicity. In the fields of demography, medical geography, and global health, “the epidemiological transition theory” has structured a global imaginary of disease that is both chronological and geopolitical. According to this theory, the trajectory of economic development is marked by a shift from infectious diseases toward chronic diseases. Infectious diseases, then, ostensibly belong to the chronologically “behind” developing world, whereas chronic diseases are associated with modernity, prosperity, and the progressive improvement of the quality of life. The very notion of “chronic disease” under this framework prescribes a dichotomous biomedical paradigm•chronic versus acute•that has assigned specific “temporal assumptions in biomedical care” (Manderson and Smith-Morris 2010:14). Although it has been repeatedly debunked by empirical cases such as the current COVID-19 pandemic, the framework of epidemiological transition has prominently influenced the design and implementation of healthcare policy, biomedical research agenda, and global health intervention. Among anthropologists, however, the biomedical definition of chronicity has gained increasing scrutiny. For example, scholars have challenged it as being both individualistic and hegemonic (e.g., Solomon 2016; Yates-Doerr 2015). Further, ethnographic examples reveal how the science-centric framework of chronicity obscures the risks and vulnerabilities that are disproportionately distributed to socio-economically marginalized people (e.g., Hamdy 2012). Extending this line of study, this panel seeks to open up new political and ethical inquiries that the concept of chronicity entails. Addressing the AAA’s 2021 conference theme of “truth and responsibility,” this panel discusses how and by whom the notion of chronicity is defined, and how, accordingly, responsibilities of care temporally and spatially are assigned and to whom. We ask: How are the epidemiological, discursive, and institutional contours of chronic disease care configured in certain contexts? What kind of lifestyles and institutional support systems do chronic disease care paradigms presume? Moreover, probing the “social epidemiology” (Rapp 2000) of chronicity, how is chronicity conceived and contested by patients and their caregivers in everyday contexts? Furthermore, (assumedly) acute medical treatments often produce chronic effects, such as compromised economic potential, long-term medication, dependence on care, and stigma in social life. How, then, are these chronic effects experienced differently by people of different social positions? How does the narrow evaluation of chronicity inform clinical decision-making? To answer these questions, this panel includes papers that address a variety of topics including chronic diseases, care, and organ transplantation, seeking to explore the relationships between chronicity, responsibility, and health inequality in different socio-cultural and political contexts.  References: Hamdy, Sherine. 2012. Our Bodies Belong to God: Organ Transplants, Islam, and the Struggle for Human Dignity in Egypt. Berkeley: University of California Press. Manderson, Lenore., and Carolyn Smith-Morris, eds. 2010. Chronic Conditions, Fluid States: Chronicity and the Anthropology of Illness. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Solomon, Harris. 2016. Metabolic Living: Food, Fat, and the Absorption of Illness in India. Durham: Duke University Press. Yates-Doerr, Emily. 2015. The Weight of Obesity: Hunger and Global Health in Postwar Guatemala. Oakland, California: University of California Press.

Self-Care Dilemmas: Everyday Patchworking under the Chronic Conditions of Structural Abandonment

Stratified Responsibility: Politics and Ethics of Chronicity

technical paper

Truth and Responsibility
“Truth and Responsibility” is a call to reimagine anthropology to meet the demands of the present moment. The imperative to bear witness, take action, and be held accountable to the truths we write and circulate invites us to reflect on our responsibility in reckoning with disciplinary histories, harms, and possibilities. To whom are we giving evidence and toward what ends? For whom are we writing? To whom are we accountable, and in what ways? We are thrilled to announce the theme of the 2021 AAA Annual Meeting to be held in Baltimore, MD: Truth and Responsibility.

Many consider anthropology to be a holistic social science dedicated to cross-cultural understanding as a way to reduce bigotry and more fully comprehend “what it means to be human.” Others push against this readily circulated origin story, arguing that “human” remains a highly contested, political category—evident as the presumed set of rights and protections associated with the “human” continue to be stripped away violently in the communities in which some of us live and work. Which violent histories and epistemologies must anthropologists take responsibility for in telling truth(s) about the discipline’s development? How do the dual histories of settler colonialism and slavery continue to influence anthropological thought and practices? In these political times, how can anthropologists throughout the globe work to secure a capacious, progressive vision of the human? How might movements for anti-racism, decoloniality, queer liberation, and healing such as #BlackLivesMatter, #ProtectMaunaKea, and #MeToo push a future anthropology out of the ashes of the anthropological past? Finally, what are the limits and possibilities of the anthropological imagination?

Across subfields, we find truths in patterns of human behavior, language, evolution, and cultural worlds. Industry-positioned anthropologists do this by extending the boundaries of the discipline not as an administrative solution to job shortages but as a source of intervention and knowledge production. Increasingly, anthropologists who make use of the scientific method question how status and identity help to decide which facts come to represent truth. How might quantitative researchers use our methods to identify patterned truths, and what responsibility do we hold in challenging conventional wisdom about these patterns? What responsibility do we have to both our colleagues and larger publics, to push toward increased transparency and ethical grounding in our data collection, analysis, and presentation?

Pedagogy is a key medium for the communication of anthropological truths. Which (and whose) truths are foregrounded in our curricula? What are the possibilities for a liberatory pedagogy in a precarious, “post-truth” era? Conferences, museums, organizing spaces, and classrooms are sites where pedagogy and various forms of communication can help us interrogate the performativity of truth. How might anthropologists conceive of truth performances? Might visual, aural, and choreographic performances during AAA sessions offer anthropologists alternative genres for truth-telling and truth-making that provoke discussions about responsibility?

In accordance with the urgency of the year’s theme, the questions posed in this call for papers do not have easy answers. The hope is that those who submit proposals will take up these questions and engage in collective thinking and imagining about the truths we hold, the truths we challenge, and the responsibilities we bear in co-creating a free and more equitable world. All panel proposals should have a statement about how the panel has incorporated the goals of equity, diversity, and inclusion, and/or analysis of power.

Executive Session proposals have already been selected and speak directly to the theme “Truth and Responsibility.” To practice the critical reflexivity this call for papers invites, we asked that Executive Session submissions explicitly address the diversity of session participants, such as organizational/institutional affiliation, career stage, race, ethnicity, disability, sexuality, class, religion, national identity, and gender. Proposals for Executive Sessions that demonstrated a commitment to equity and inclusion and/or a clear analysis of power (i.e. anti-imperialist, anti-white supremacist, decolonial, anti-ableist, feminist, anti-transphobic, anti-xenophobic, etc) were given priority. We are excited to be in conversation with residents of the Baltimore region and look forward to the discussions, performances, and actions generated by the dynamic group of anthropologists attending the 2021 AAA Annual Meeting.

AAA Annual Meeting 2021

“Truth and Responsibility” is a call to reimagine anthropology to meet the demands of the present moment. The imperative to bear witness, take action, and be held accountable to the truths we write and circulate invites us to reflect on our responsibility in reckoning with disciplinary histories, harms, and possibilities. To whom are we giving evidence and toward what ends? For whom are we writing? To whom are we accountable, and in what ways? We are thrilled to announce the theme of the 2021 AAA Annual Meeting to be held in Baltimore, MD: Truth and Responsibility.

Laura Heinemann

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Presentations

Self-Care Dilemmas: Everyday Patchworking under the Chronic Conditions of Structural Abandonment