What is the social science of AMR?
This online event challenges prevailing assumptions about the contribution of social science methods and insights for the reduction of antimicrobial resistance. Social science is often mistakenly construed as exterior to the biological problem of AMR, that is, outside the scientific endeavour that describes the problem and how to address it. In this reckoning of the science-society relationship, social science is understood to have a secondary role in framing policy and the means by which scientific knowledge about AMR is communicated to the world at large.
In this webinar, leading AMR social researchers offer corrective perspectives on AMR social science. They examine how to strengthen the application of social science and how the insights it provides advance our capacity to act on the growing and ramifying AMR threat to life.
Social Science on the sidelines: Expert disenchantment and values in AMR and OH policymaking
Chris Degeling
In both expert and public discourses, the social sciences are expected to play a significant role in antimicrobial stewardship and the One Health approach. Research consistently shows that once you pan out from the bugs, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and other One Health issues more broadly, are inherently social phenomenon that have socio-cultural, political, and economic structural determinates. It therefore follows that the questions and objects of the social sciences are arguably more immediately relevant to developing solutions and a much broader public discussion. But when it comes to public funding and policy impact, social science is commonly construed by decision-makers and other policy actors as an afterthought or exotic luxury. In this talk I will explicate and then reflect on three causes for why the social sciences get stuck on the sidelines, a consequent impasse, and a wholly inadequate solution (or two).
Bio: Chris Degeling is Principal Research Fellow at the Australian Centre for Engagement, Evidence and Values at the University of Wollongong. A health social scientist and empirical bioethicist, he leads programs of research focused on the intersection of social and public health policy and infectious disease control and prevention. See more at: https://scholars.uow.edu.au/christopher-degeling/publications
Regulating AMR: virtual consumers, animal health and the audit lock-in
Stephen Hinchliffe
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has become one of the defining challenges of the 21st century, requiring social science input to evaluate and develop successful and sustainable interventions. Food production and farming are a key if troubling component of the challenge. Livestock production accounts for well over half of annual global consumption of antimicrobials, though the contribution of the sector to drug resistance remains unclear. The result is a pressing if legally difficult situation, requiring innovation in terms of regulatory approach. Focusing on higher income settings, where buyer-led governance and audits have been leveraged to generate changes to routine antibiotics uses, the research evaluates the use of audit-led governance of AMR. The paper takes the UK poultry sector as exemplary of a device- and audit-led approach that has, in recent years, achieved impressive reductions in antibiotic use. Drawing on qualitative interview and focus group data with farmers and veterinarians, the paper charts the changing practices that have accompanied this reduction in treatments. Analysis of the materials raises the following cautions. Audits can lock farms and animals into particular versions of farming and animal health; they can elevate harmful compensatory practices; and they can reproduce an actuarial approach to an issue that does not fit the conventions of risk management. The paper presents the considerable successes that have been achieved over a short period of time in a livestock sector, while generating significant notes of caution concerning their impact and sustainability. The paper underlines the need for social science informed work that can embed AMR strategies within their social and economic situations, and can take a critical approach to the ways in which ‘health’ is being formatted in One Health issues.
Bio: Steve Hinchliffe, PhD, is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Exeter, UK and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. His books include Pathological Lives (2016, Wiley Blackwell) and Humans, animals and biopolitics: The more than human condition (2016, Routledge) and he has published numerous papers and chapters on One Health, AMR, biosecurity, Science and technology studies and human-nature relations. He currently works on interdisciplinary projects on disease, biosecurity and antimicrobial resistant infections, focusing on Europe and Asia. He is a member of the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health at Exeter, and as well as serving on the UK Government's Scientific Advisory Committee on Exotic Diseases, until recently he was also a member of DEFRA’s Science Advisory Group’s Social Science Expert Group.