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Kim Clark
My research program has been informed since my graduate work by an interest in livelihood strategies and struggles, in the formation over time of relations among social groups with differing degrees and kinds of power, and by the uneven processes by which groups and regions are incorporated politically and economically into the Ecuadorian national polity. I have approached these questions by seeking what Max Gluckman called many years ago “social situations,” or contexts of encounter where members of different social groups are drawn into interactions, bringing with them varying and sometimes overlapping interests and intentions. While my research has taken place in specific locations, it is not primarily community-based.
My 1998 book The Redemptive Work: Railway and Nation in Ecuador, 1895-1930 explored uneven experiences of national incorporation by region, ethnicity and class in Ecuador by examining a link that connected localities: the national railway. That infrastructure project was shot through by political processes, which were evident even in the choice of route. It also was incorporated into rather different political and economic projects by different regional groups, although their interests converged sufficiently to allow for a fragile consensus to emerge around the railway project (facilitated by the use of a shared but contested discourse). At the local level, too, specific instances of social conflict revealed the constellations of opportunities and problems that simultaneously were associated with railway construction, and how various social groups aligned themselves in different ways vis-à-vis the project in different circumstances.
I then moved to a consideration of racial and national ideologies during postdoctoral work and thereafter, both as expressed during peasant livelihood struggles and as articulated by dominant groups in a range of public venues. I was interested there in such issues as the triangular relationship between indigenous peasants, landowners, and the state, and in general in practices, strategies, and negotiations, as well as ideologies. Some of this work is presented in journal articles and in a volume co-edited with Marc Becker (Highland Indians and the State in Modern Ecuador) that challenged other scholars to bring their disparate work on indigenous-state relations in Ecuador into a common conversation.
In the process of exploring archival sources on those topics, I became aware of the rich documentation about the everyday activities involved in Ecuadorian medicine and public health, which oriented my research during my first sabbatical in 2002. I approached public health initially as a site where members of dominant and subordinate groups came together, and where ideologies were forged about the problematic biology and behaviour of subordinate groups. As I pursued those topics, however, the evidence led me to consider public health workers as much more varied in background and perspective, and the public health service itself as a state agency and workplace where different groups of employees came together with a range of motivations, which often had a significant effect on the design of programs and how they were delivered. I became increasingly interested in the implications of this material for how we understand governance and state formation, tied to my ongoing interest in political processes. Rather than impute motives to the actors involved in these processes, to the extent possible I seek to explore what they thought they were doing in particular situations and programs, and to understand the complex social landscape on which they were acting, with its pressures, limits, and opportunities. Because state practices to control the spread of diseases are not only about ideologies and social relationships, but also about the specific characteristics of different diseases, I had to also become familiar with new issues such as, in the case of bubonic plague, disease ecology. A decade of research on these topics is presented in part in my 2012 book Gender, State and Medicine: Modernizing Women, Modernizing the State in Highland Ecuador, 1895-1950, and in my current book project that I envision as a historical institutional ethnography of the Public Health Service.
My 1998 book The Redemptive Work: Railway and Nation in Ecuador, 1895-1930 explored uneven experiences of national incorporation by region, ethnicity and class in Ecuador by examining a link that connected localities: the national railway. That infrastructure project was shot through by political processes, which were evident even in the choice of route. It also was incorporated into rather different political and economic projects by different regional groups, although their interests converged sufficiently to allow for a fragile consensus to emerge around the railway project (facilitated by the use of a shared but contested discourse). At the local level, too, specific instances of social conflict revealed the constellations of opportunities and problems that simultaneously were associated with railway construction, and how various social groups aligned themselves in different ways vis-à-vis the project in different circumstances.
I then moved to a consideration of racial and national ideologies during postdoctoral work and thereafter, both as expressed during peasant livelihood struggles and as articulated by dominant groups in a range of public venues. I was interested there in such issues as the triangular relationship between indigenous peasants, landowners, and the state, and in general in practices, strategies, and negotiations, as well as ideologies. Some of this work is presented in journal articles and in a volume co-edited with Marc Becker (Highland Indians and the State in Modern Ecuador) that challenged other scholars to bring their disparate work on indigenous-state relations in Ecuador into a common conversation.
In the process of exploring archival sources on those topics, I became aware of the rich documentation about the everyday activities involved in Ecuadorian medicine and public health, which oriented my research during my first sabbatical in 2002. I approached public health initially as a site where members of dominant and subordinate groups came together, and where ideologies were forged about the problematic biology and behaviour of subordinate groups. As I pursued those topics, however, the evidence led me to consider public health workers as much more varied in background and perspective, and the public health service itself as a state agency and workplace where different groups of employees came together with a range of motivations, which often had a significant effect on the design of programs and how they were delivered. I became increasingly interested in the implications of this material for how we understand governance and state formation, tied to my ongoing interest in political processes. Rather than impute motives to the actors involved in these processes, to the extent possible I seek to explore what they thought they were doing in particular situations and programs, and to understand the complex social landscape on which they were acting, with its pressures, limits, and opportunities. Because state practices to control the spread of diseases are not only about ideologies and social relationships, but also about the specific characteristics of different diseases, I had to also become familiar with new issues such as, in the case of bubonic plague, disease ecology. A decade of research on these topics is presented in part in my 2012 book Gender, State and Medicine: Modernizing Women, Modernizing the State in Highland Ecuador, 1895-1950, and in my current book project that I envision as a historical institutional ethnography of the Public Health Service.
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