Studying Up from the Margins in a white-supremacist-cis-hetero-patriarchal-capitalist culture.

Abstract

This article examines the citational politics of teaching, learning, and doing ethnographic projects that study up in medical anthropology by examining the references that are often cited, the ones that exist but are not widely circulated, and the gaps in between. I take a reflexive approach to understanding how my positionality shaped my path toward studying up. In so doing, I reveal the complex tensions of implementing ethnographic methods in spaces that are (intentionally) challenging to access while simultaneously being embedded within academic and social environments that are plagued by hierarchical power relations. My approach critically examines the liberal, feminist, and Marxist legacies in anthropology that have shaped traditional forms of studying up and highlights the Black, Indigenous, postcolonial, and feminist methods that are vital for understanding how to study power from the margins.