PRAGMATIC EVIDENCE AND THE POLITICS OF EVERYDAY PRACTICE ANN KELLY Introduction: Empirical Value Biomedicine tends to split afflictions of the mind from those of the body. However, various ethnographic data can show this assumption to be rudimentary and incorrect...In failing to surmount mind/body dualism, the concept of somatisation is no longer useful (Second-year medical anthropology essay, 2005). i Supervising undergraduates offers critical purchase on the topic of anthropological knowledge production. Though none of the Medical Anthropology lectures attended by my students directly addressed the evidentiary character of ethnography, during our discussions, the value of anthropological insight emerged as a topic of some concern. Students wanted to know what makes one analytical position better than another; and further, what good comes from debunking dominant discourses. Of course, this epistemological unease is endemic to the social sciences, and indeed, to any intellectual exercise that draws upon theoretical models to illuminate empirical material. But for those studying medical anthropology the problem is amplified. The tentative authority of ethnographic representation—balanced between scientific method and literary craft—is compounded by the uncertain utility of its claims. Whether or not an anthropologist’s observations of medical practices are “correct” sits awkwardly with the question of whether or not they are “relevant” to the well-being of those involved. Here, generating evidence—in the sense of information that gives a reason for believing something to be true— implicitly presupposes an audience (doctors, patients, researchers, and policy makers) for whom those claims will make a difference. Take, for example, an average undergraduate medical anthropology paper. Because students are asked to include Western science within the boundaries of their investigations, they learn to regard positivism as a historically contingent and culturally specific style of reasoning (Good