The Wicked Problem of AMR
My first academic task of 2023 is to write and submit to my supervisors a rough draft that outlines what the theoretical framework for my PhD project is. The purpose of this theoretical framework is to put my work into conversation with other writers and thinkers in addition to making the contribution or purpose of the thesis into relief.
My PhD project is about academic AMR researchers and solving wicked problems. AMR is the ability of microbes to become resistant to antimicrobial/antibacterial/antifungal compounds - most notably antibiotics. The scale of AMR is immense and is already impacting healthcare for humans and animals as well as agriculture and environmental health. The scale and significance of the challenge of AMR means that there have been diverse efforts across sectors to try and solve the problem. These range from waste water treatment, new prescribing guidelines for physicians, research into new drugs, agricultural reforms, better diagnostic tests and research into the causes or ‘drivers’ of resistance itself.
AMR is a wicked problem. The term ‘wicked problem’ was coined in 1973 by German designers Rittel and Webber and refers to a problem is that is unique, complex and has no single solution or definition. The scale of AMR is vast, so vast that it is difficult to find a discipline or sector that in one way or another is not involved with some kind of work on antimicrobial resistance. However, AMR research is emerging as its own field with research funding, special job titles, conferences, initiatives and communities set up under this common umbrella. My PhD project takes one such community, the AMR Forum at the University of Edinburgh, and attempts to understand how AMR is ‘made’ as a research object if what counts as AMR research is so diverse. Wicked problems like AMR, climate change or disease pandemics are some of the biggest challenges humanity has faced. As we move into the future we need to be able to understand how we configure scientific research and in practice how those configurations produce knowledge about wicked problems.
I am especially fascinated by the more-than-human aspect of AMR and how scientific knowledge frames the more-than-human world. AMR implicates entire ecosystems from humans to microbes to farm animals to wild geese, how do they appear in scientific research on AMR? Are we at war with non-humans/ Are they co-collaborators in the fight against resistance? What narratives inform our approaches?
Then I am fascinated by the scientists themselves. There is something so interesting to me about what it means to make your living from solving problems and conducting research. On the surface, these jobs seem like they are full of meaning and potentially fulfilment. But from data gathered from my research and from my own experience as part of a research community - the reality is very different. Burnout, mental health crises, imposter syndrome, high levels of academic precarity in addition to structural issues of racism and mysogny are severely impacting the lives of research scientists. This is before we have touched the subjects of publishing in academia, how research is funded and the colonial legacies that continue to influence research agendas and resource allocation.
Finally, I am interested in what it means to be complicit in all of this. I conducted research during the lockdown era of the covid-19 pandemic. My original research plans changed and I pivoted to a fully digital ethnographic study of my place of work - the Univeristy of Edinburgh. Traditional anthropological studies typically require an extended period of participant observation in a far away ‘exotic’ land with people and customs very different to the anthropologists own (often along lines as colonial and problematic as you might imagine). So I was doing anthropology at home, from home and at my place of work. As much grief as I had for the project that might have been (studying biotech companies and bioartists in the United States), I am fascinated by what it means to be working and thinking from the messy middle of anthropology. How can I use anthropology as a tool to help contribute to solving problems in collaboration with others without the benefit of a protective academic distance.
So where does that leave my theoretical framework? Well, that is still in the works. I hope that by writing here and sharing my thoughts it will lead me a little closer to that rarest of treasures: knowing what the damn thesis is actually about… and being able to write about it.
Until next time!
Iona