Complications: Never-Was Futures: Prevention’s Paradox in the Pacific.

While at the Brocher Foundation, I will complete Chapter 2 of the book, based on archival research scheduled at the WHO and FAO (summer 2025). Being in residence at the Brocher Foundation will allow me to complete this chapter, conduct any necessary follow-up research at the WHO, and engage with the multidisciplinary community to critically examine the ethical, legal, and social implications of prevention in global health. This engagement will deepen the analysis of prevention as a speculative, colonial logic and contribute to broader conversations on medical development, health policy, and societal impact. All other chapters are drafted.

An important innovation of this book is that it blends theoretical analysis and collaborative ethnography, with solo-authored chapters focusing on the temporal, technological, and historical aspects of prevention as a colonial, speculative logic. Co-authored chapters, with Saunima'a Ma Fulu-Aiolupotea, Tauaitala Lees, Uila Laifa Lima, Ramona Boodoosingh, Falelua Maua, and Tausala Aiavao, emphasize the collaborative, relational nature of the research process and feature Samoan narratives. The aim is to challenge conventional medical paradigms and propose a new, relational approach to prevention.

Introduction, “Never-Was Futures: Prevention’s Paradox in the Pacific”: This chapter introduces prevention as a socially and historically constructed concept, framing it through the ethnographic story of  a woman named Vaimea and her experience of a double amputation. It then presents the theoretical framework of speculative care and an overview of the imperial production of health in Samoa.

Chapter 1, “When Methods Hurt: Embracing the Ethics of Relational Inquiry”: This co-authored chapter outlines the project’s methodology, focusing on relational and Indigenous methodologies, especially Talanoa Research Methodology, we developed. It discusses how this approach reshapes knowledge production and challenges structural and cultural barriers to effective diabetes care in Pacific communities.

Chapter 2, "The Colonial Roots of Prevention in the Pacific": This chapter traces the emergence of prevention as a key concept in public health, focusing on its development in the mid-20th century. Drawing on archival research from the South Pacific Commission and planned research at the WHO and FAO in 2025, the chapter examines how public health systems evolved during the independence period and shaped the geopolitical landscape of the modern Pacific.

Chapter 3, “Natural Experiments and Anthropological Ghosts: Reading Whiteness and ‘As If’ Scientific Erasures of Colonialism:” This chapter critiques the colonial legacies in anthropological and epidemiological research in the Pacific, highlighting how the natural experiment model perpetuates racialized health disparities and calling for a transformative, accountable approach to ethnography.

Chapter 4, “Subjunctive Health and Instrumentalizing the Future”: This chapter examines how vegetables in Samoa serve both as health tools and economic commodities, critiquing prevention frameworks that ignore the historical and systemic factors shaping health and food practices.

Chapter 5, “On the Invisibility of Living with Diabetes”: This co-authored chapter explores how prevention efforts in Samoa create knowledge gaps that delay diagnosis and worsen complications, advocating for a life-course approach and highlighting the role of traditional healers in addressing inequities in diabetes care.

Chapter 6, “Healing and Chronic Amputation”: This co-authored chapter delves into the social dimensions of wound management and amputation in Samoa, examining the role of traditional healers and the cultural complexities of diabetes care.

Conclusion, “Temporalities of Prevention”: The book concludes by framing prevention as a colonial logic that erases its impacts and constructs impossible futures. It argues for a life-course approach to diabetes care, emphasizing the realities of living with dysregulated glucose and calling for a shift in global health efforts toward addressing systemic inequities and failures in diabetes prevention.