Tuesday April 2nd, 13:00 – 15:00, Swingland Room, Marlowe Building, University of Kent
This workshop explores the notion of legitimacy and its contribution to the analysis of medical practices, including alternative health practices. The ethnographic perspective can shed valuable light to informal ideas about legitimacy at the grassroots. How are public health authorities and their policies legitimised and how do they gain public trust? Do migrants have a legitimate right to healthcare, regardless of their immigration status? How can we explain the public’s trust in alternative and unregulated medical practices when legitimate, biomedical care is available for free? Who has the authority to decide whether various medical practices are legitimate?
The event will address such questions in dialogue with long-standing anthropological debate and recent work on the concept of legitimacy (see Pardo and Prato (2018), Legitimacy: Ethnographic and Theoretical Insights).
The event is free and open to all.
Programme of talks
13:05 – Welcome by Professor Dimitrios Theodossopoulos
13:08 – Introduction (Dr Anna Waldstein and Dr Mike Poltorak)
Part A: Concepts and examples
13:15 – Legitimacy: An outline (Professor Italo Pardo)
13:20 – Public Health: A legal and legitimate right (Dr Giuliana Prato)
13:25 – Migrant legitimacy and access to healthcare (Dr Anna Waldstein)
13:30 – Us and them: Trust and the legitimacy of experience among mental health activists in London (Keira Pratt-Boyden)
13:35 – Alternative medical practices and legality in Suriname (Mayra Sumter)
13:40 – Legitimacy of herbal medicines: Jamaican roots tonics in London (Jason Irving)
13:45 – Homeless in Kent: Legitimacy narratives among a community of a self-medicating community using intravenous drugs at home (Joe Spence)
13:50 – Herbalists, unruly plants and the law (Nayeli Urquiza)
14:00 – Divine legitimacy and Fatongia in Tonga: The Healer and the Psychiatrist [short film] (Dr Mike Poltorak)
Part B: Legitimacy and medical practice – a comparative perspective
14:10 – Discussion
14:55 – End of the event