The radically humanistic essays in Arc of Interference refigure our sense of the real, the ethical, and the political in the face of mounting social and planetary upheavals. Creatively assembled around Arthur Kleinman’s medical anthropological arc and eschewing hegemonic modes of intervention, the essays advance the notion of a care-ful ethnographic praxis of interference. To interfere is to dislodge ideals of naturalness, blast enduring binaries (human/nonhuman, self/other, us/them), and redirect technocratic agendas while summoning relational knowledge and the will to create community. The book’s multiple ethnographic arcs of interference provide a vital conceptual toolkit for today’s world and a badly needed moral perch from which to peer toward just horizons.

Contributors. Vincanne Adams, JoÃo Biehl, DavÍd Carrasco, Lawrence Cohen, Jean Comaroff, Robert Desjarlais, Paul Farmer, Marcia Inhorn, Janis H. Jenkins, David S. Jones, Salmaan Keshavjee, Arthur Kleinman, Margaret Lock, Adriana Petryna

“This is a book about life and death and about the aftermath of death. That alone makes it relevant to our species and to others, but Arc of Interference is also a book about the possibility of something more and something wonderful: across the continents, people struggle to care for one another.” - Paul Farmer, from the Foreword “In this rich collection, leading medical anthropologists demonstrate ethnography as care. Attending to intimate realities and to the productive power of narrative, they use anthropology for collective healing.” - Helena Hansen, coauthor of (Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America) “Arc of Interference is essential reading for anyone who cares about our troubled times. Its ethnographic creations mend what is broken by asking us to listen, care, and act.” - Angela Garcia, author of (The Pastoral Clinic: Addiction and Dispossession along the Rio Grande) “A major undertaking of humanist anthropology, this volume insists on the necessity of medical anthropology for facing the great challenges of our time, from pandemics and structural violence to climate change and political oppression. Arc of Interference is a milestone in medical anthropology.” - Susan Reynolds Whyte, editor of (Second Chances: Surviving AIDS in Uganda)

“Biehl, Adams, and their contributors have . . . penned a classic in Arc of Interference. . . . In our current times of reckoning–both global and disciplinary–contributions like Arc of Interference are a good place to start.” 

- Evelyn Hoon (LSE Review of Books)

"As a family physician who treats patients, not disease states, I found this book both reinvigorating and challenging. ... The book is a worthwhile read for physicians who care for their patients, whether domestically or globally."

- Mark K. Huntington (Family Medicine)

JoÃo Biehl is Susan Dod Brown Professor and Chair of Anthropology at Princeton University and coeditor of Unfinished: The Anthropology of Becoming, also published by Duke University Press.

Vincanne Adams is Professor of Medical Anthropology at the University of California, San Francisco and author of Glyphosate and the Swirl: An Agroindustrial Chemical on the Move, also published by Duke University Press.

Paul Farmer (1959–2022) was Kolokotrones University Professor and Chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School.