The politics of collaboration in a Papua New Guinean hospital: distributing expert knowledge, authority and agency in medical practice
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Sussex
Department Name: Sch of Global Studies
Abstract
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People |
ORCID iD |
| Alice Street (Principal Investigator / Fellow) |
Publications
Cross J
(2009)
Anthropology at the bottom of the pyramid
in Anthropology Today
Street A
(2011)
Affective Infrastructure Hospital Landscapes of Hope and Failure
in Space and Culture
Street A
(2009)
Failed Recipients: Extracting Blood in a Papua New Guinean Hospital
in Body & Society
Street A
(2012)
Introduction Real and Imagined Spaces
in Space and Culture
Street A
(2011)
Artefacts of not-knowing: the medical record, the diagnosis and the production of uncertainty in Papua New Guinean biomedicine.
in Social studies of science
Street A
(2010)
Belief as relational action: Christianity and cultural change in Papua New Guinea Belief as relational action
in Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
Street A
(2012)
Seen by the state: Bureaucracy, visibility and governmentality in a Papua New Guinean hospital
in The Australian Journal of Anthropology
| Description | This postdoctoral fellowship was primarily intended as an opportunity to build on and disseminate research conducted in the course of my PhD. This research examined the role of hospitals in resource-poor contexts and the ways in which doctors, patients, nurses and managers experience biomedical technologies in a place where the resources required to produce biomedical certainty are not always available. Two key findings were taken forward by this research 1) Making people visible through bureaucratic or biomedical work is crucial to generating social recognition, and that in resource-poor contexts recognition is very important to the health functioning of institutions. 2) Biomedical technologies are 'relational technologies'. On the one hand people in Papua New Guinea understand technologies to be mobilised by social relationships and social intentions. On the other hand we can think of all technologies as embedded in relationships between people and the material world. Looking at the relational aspects of technologies is important for improving the functioning of technical health systems. |
| Exploitation Route | These findings are important for health policy makers in Papua New Guinea and elsewhere who are seeking to build sustainable health infrastructures and want to know how to strengthen institutions. |
| Sectors | Healthcare |
| Description | The findings have been used by: 1) Academics - in anthropology, science and technology studies and medical sociology, who have cited the published articles in relationship to anthropology of bureaucracy, hospitals, institutions and Melanesia. My research introduced a focus on materiality, bureaucracy and personhood to the growing field of hospital ethnography. 2) I was invited to give presentations of my research in the department of health and the National Research Institute in Papua New Guinea, and the AusAID headquarters in Australia. In both cases they found the insights to the relationships upon which health interventions depend useful. Policy makers were particularly interested in the importance of recognition for Papua New Guinean health workers and how they might build this into health policy. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2009 |
| Sector | Healthcare |
| Impact Types | Policy & public services |