Translating critical public health

Abstract

One of the abiding challenges of engaging critically with public health practice is speaking across disciplinary lines. I ask critical public health scholars to consider the technologies and practices that may render their ideas inaccessible to others, while also exploring the importance of retaining those practices. I propose that if critical scholars must take seriously health promotion’s focus on knowledge translation (KT) to rethink their own forms of communication, they will need to find strategies for doing so without compromising key aspects of their work. Although KT is praised for its paradigm-shifting break from knowledge transfer, it still involves conceptualizing knowledge as a commodity to be packaged for application. Nonetheless, a creative engagement with KT may be possible. Drawing on Emily Apter’s complementary and contradictory theses – ‘Nothing is translatable’ (xi) and ‘Everything is translatable’ (xii) – I suggest a new direction for thinking through the impossible and imperative task of translating critical public health scholarship.

Keywords:

• knowledge translation
• health promotion
• critical inquiry
• translation theory

Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the Canadian Sociological Association. Special thanks to the ‘New Directions in Public Health’ session organizer Eric Mykhalovskiy, discussant Martin French, and panelists Katherine Frohlich and Melanie Rock for their insight and encouragement. Thank you also to the two anonymous reviewers, the Associate Editor, and Victoria Millious for their helpful comments. Heather Gainforth, since you are always willing to talk about knowledge translation – this one’s for you!

Notes

1. This paper was inspired by a session organized for the 2012 Canadian Sociological Association Annual Meeting, in which critical health scholar Eric Mykhalovskiy challenged panelists to ‘move beyond [the] well-rehearsed forms of critique’ in sociology of public health.

2. Many thanks to Michelle Helstein for pointing out the pedagogical value of many varied examples at a time when I was feeling particularly discouraged.

3. In Canadian universities, many critical public health scholars are trained in diverse fields such as sociology, geography, and anthropology, but tend to hold positions in public health departments. The situation differs somewhat in Australia, where sociology of health and medicine has largely emerged as a specialization within sociology (Collyer 2012).