Illustrating Anthropology

How a UBC researcher used the power of art in community engagement and overdose crisis advocacy

Sophie McKenzie

I, Sophie, acted as ethnographer and artist which allowed me to deepen my engagement and harness immediacy as a critical tool to translate peers’ narratives into drawings (Mendonca, 2021). My ability to draw during meetings with collaborators or soon after allowed me to capture unique sociocultural dynamics and elicit instant commentary from peers to generate more nuanced storylines.

– Sophie McKenzie; Peer Life; P. 5

Anthropology and art both encourage us to tell stories. Through illustrations, field encounters come to life in animated representations. In ‘Peer Comic Book Project,’ anthropologist Sophie McKenzie illustrates scenarios and circumstances highlighted and recounted to her via her peer worker collaborators.  She emphasizes that “the situations presented here will always be in motion.” This work then captures a “reified snapshot” (McKenzie, 2023, 4). Ethnographic work often strives to connect with the community of focus, improve the lives of those that it analyzes, and be well received by those that it represents, a kind of engagement particularly fitting to attend to the imminent community health crisis that is the drug overdose epidemic. In combining her skills as an artist, activist, and anthropologist, McKenzie delivers her analysis through intimate illustrations with peer workers on the frontlines of overdose response, harm reduction, and care intervention. This project delivers complex individual characters and strives to connect peer workers beyond the British Columbia Lower Mainland by recognizing and attesting to their shared experiences. Graphic work offers an empathetic account that moves beyond the stigma that so often shadows individuals who use drugs or whose lives are imbricated by them. This technique captures different layers of her analysis, lends a sense of transparency to her process, brings her collaborators to life, and invites instant feedback. McKenzie describes how this method drew the attention of her collaborators by engendering curiosity, investment, and rapport in a way that conventional field notes—which tend to be more private and less visually compelling—don’t necessarily. This involves an active engagement with collaborators in the ongoing process of their representations and translations, to convey the unique experiences and burdens of the overdose crisis that they share. In an emotionally-laden community that is often the source of stigma and routinely struck with loss and grief, this sense of engagement, ongoing rapport, and genuine connection is vital to articulating the crisis and envisioning collective approaches. The comic book project was eventually well-accessed and well-received by the community, and resonated with the experiences of her collaborators who advocated for its wide distribution. In attending to the distance that so often accompanies fieldwork and blurring the boundaries between public and scholarly engagement, McKenzie’s work maintains the rigor of academic research while exploring creative approaches to reach broader audiences and extend its impact. McKenzie also recorded fieldnotes throughout the comic book-creation process, some of which can be found in her MA thesis.

McKenzie, S. (2023). The peer comic book project : illustrating peer workers’ experiences working throughout the overdose crisis in the suburban Lower Mainland (T). University of British Columbia. Retrieved from https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/ubctheses/24/items/1.0435490

Discussion question

Exploring the Boundaries: The Impact of Visual Representation on Ethnographic Methods

How does Sophie McKenzie’s use of visual representation, particularly through her ‘Peer Comic Book Project,’ challenge and enrich traditional ethnographic methods? What are the potential benefits and challenges of incorporating graphic work in anthropological research?