ASCERTAINING DEADLY HARMS: Aesthetics and Politics of Global Evidence

Abstract

This article asks what anthropology can contribute to public and scholarly debates about politics of knowledge in global governance and argues that bringing together insights from aesthetics of governance, science and technology studies, and theories of performativity offers a productive reorientation to existing approaches. My specific question is: how did WHO research that was intended to counter alarmist discourses about female genital cutting end up legitimizing them? For anthropologists who participated in the scientific controversy, the answer was clear: the study was driven by ideology. To expand the range of analytical responses, I suggest, we need to understand the rearrangements of knowledge and power in neoliberal governance, as well as a conception of authorship that uncouples scientific statements from sovereign subjects. Deadly harms were not made certain by ideology, I argue, but by aesthetics of expertise, WHO bundling of governance by emergency and governance by evidence, and performative iterations at the cultural boundaries of science. To make this argument, I analyze the historical conditions of possibility for the WHO study, offer an ethnography of knowledge production, and trace the social and governmental lives of fact and meaning‐making. [WHO, female genital cutting, science controversy, governance by evidence, anthropology in the public sphere, aesthetics, performativity]

Communicating “Evidence”: Lifestyle, Cancer, and the Promise of a Disease‐free Future

“…In many respects, the speakers engaged in what Hodžić () labels the “performance of objectivity.” As she observes, “objectivity has an aesthetic form, and it looks like a pendulum … swing[ing] back and forth between data interpretations and qualifying statements that acknowledge the limitations of the study” (p. 97). What is at stake is not objectivity itself, but its performance and the need to represent themselves as “impartial scientists in order to have their interpretations trusted” (Hodžić :98). Moreover, acknowledging such uncertainty also serves to manage it.…”

“…According to Broom and Adams (:3), “Evidence‐based paradigms now fundamentally shape the way health service providers, health funding bodies, governments and policy makers view ‘effectiveness,’ and their willingness to fund and support interventions, practices, models of care and practitioner groups.” The influence of the paradigm has therefore seen the rise of “evidence‐based advocacy,” with advocacy organizations increasingly articulating their goals and agendas in terms of evidence rather than explicit ideological or moral claims (see Storeng and Béhague ). As Hodžić () observes, evidence has become the lubricant that keeps resources flowing between donors, organizations, and policymakers.…”

Hybrid forum or network? The social and political construction of an international ‘technical consultation’: Male circumcision and HIV prevention

“…1 Studies of the activities carried out by WHO (Deveaud & Lemennicier, 1997;Hodžić, 2013;Verdrager, 2005) and the Pan American Health Organization (Cueto, 2007) deserve credit for their analyses of the limitations of these institutions. However, these analyses do not adequately take into account the work performed, the characteristics of the parties involved, the negotiating and decision-making processes, the line-up of forces and power struggles that are at stake in the work performed in these conferences.…”

“…It brings together international experts selected for the circumstances, staff persons from international organisations, 'bureaucrats' (Hodžić, 2013) and representatives from major global foundations, sponsors, funding organisations and non-governmental organisations (henceforth NGOs) of activists, patients and other interested persons not to forget officials from the governments and local or regional authorities to be concerned by the measure's adoption. The diversity of participants at that meeting and their characteristics raises the issue of the social and political inequalities and power relations between them according to country of origin, institution of work, discipline and expertise.…”

A Chilling Example? Uruguay, Philip Morris International, and WHO's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control

“…Anthropologists make invaluable contributions through their studies in this field, in tobacco control as in other areas (Nichter ). However, interest in the workings of international law at grassroots level has not been matched, at least not in medical anthropology, by research and analysis into how these laws are produced in the first place (Irwin ) or the knowledge processes by which global governance is exercised (Hodžić ). We shall first examine possible reasons for this lacuna, before introducing the FCTC and our research at COP4.…”