„Läuft. Die Ausstel­lung zur Menstruation“

06.10.2023 bis 06.10.2024
Muse­um Europäis­ch­er Kul­turen – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Etwa 2 Mil­liar­den Men­schen auf der Welt men­stru­ieren. Über 1,5 Mil­liar­den weit­ere Men­schen hat­ten ihre Peri­ode oder wer­den sie bekom­men. Seit rund 10 Jahren nun wird die Men­stru­a­tion in Europa öffentlich disku­tiert. Das MEK präsen­tiert die Ausstel­lung dazu.

„Läuft“ zeigt eine Geschichte des Prag­ma­tismus und der Utopi­en, des Erfind­ungsre­ich­tums und Aktivis­mus. Dafür ver­sam­melt die Ausstel­lung rund 100 his­torische und brand­neue Men­stru­a­tion­sar­tikel sowie Wer­beanzeigen. Schaubilder, Inter­views und Hands-On-Sta­tio­nen ver­mit­teln den aktuellen Wis­sens­stand. Mit knapp 200 All­t­ags­ge­gen­stän­den, Fotos, Grafiken, Zeitungsar­tikeln und Social-Media-Posts fächert die Ausstel­lung die Diskurse auf, die Men­stru­ierende seit Jahrzehn­ten begleit­en: Es geht um The­men wie Leis­tung, Peri­o­den­ar­mut, Müll, „Nor­mal­ität“, Naturver­bun­den­heit, Stim­mung und einige mehr – und natür­lich um Aktivis­mus! Denn im Zen­trum ste­hen die Stim­men und Erfahrun­gen von Men­stru­ieren­den selb­st. Wir laden dazu ein, ihnen in Inter­views zu lauschen und sich selb­st auszu­tauschen. Fil­mauss­chnitte, Musik und Kunst­werke run­den die Ausstel­lung ab.

Mehr Infos unter http://www.smb.museum/flow.

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CfP for a Pan­el on „Ethno­gra­phies of Expert Knowl­edges in Men­tal Health, Neu­ro­di­ver­gence, and Disability”
10th Ethnog­ra­phy and Qual­i­ta­tive Research con­fer­ence, the inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ence of ERQ, one of Italy’s most promi­nent jour­nals in soci­ol­o­gy and anthropology
July 10–12, 2025
Tren­to, Italy

The dead­line for sub­mit­ting abstracts is Jan­u­ary 20 

33. Ethno­gra­phies of expert knowl­edges in men­tal health, neu­ro­di­ver­gence, and disability:

Nowa­days, there has been a «dis­cur­sive expolo­sion» sur­round­ing men­tal health, dis­abil­i­ty, and neu­ro­di­ver­gence result­ing in a wide array of het­ero­ge­neous nar­ra­tives and rep­re­sen­ta­tions in pub­lic and aca­d­e­m­ic debates. Par­tic­u­lar­ly on dig­i­tal plat­forms, we wit­ness a rise in con­tent focused on «pos­i­tiv­i­ty» and the rever­sal of stig­ma. These can cer­tain­ly be seen as an incur­sion into the polit­i­cal sphere by mad/crip activism; how­ev­er, it is impor­tant to rec­og­nize how (part of) these dis­cours­es could be absorbed into a neolib­er­al frame­work. In a con­text of per­for­ma­tive and extrac­tivist log­ic, mad/crip/neurodivergent pos­i­tiv­i­ty risks becom­ing yet anoth­er tool that decrees the «sal­va­tion» of those with the resources to fit into the frame­work of «diver­si­ty» val­ori­sa­tion, while lead­ing to process­es of «mon­stri­fi­ca­tion» towards those who devi­ate from this con­struc­tion of subjectivity.

Cen­tral in oper­at­ing this dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion is the role of expert knowl­edge. Although men­tal health, dis­abil­i­ty, and neu­ro­di­ver­gence remain still framed with­in a pre­dom­i­nant­ly bio­med­ical par­a­digm, a range of tech­ni­cal fig­ures are inter­ven­ing in the con­struc­tion of cat­e­gories and the «take charge of users». An arch­i­pel­ago of expert knowl­edges – social work­ers, legal actors, tutors, edu­ca­tion­al ser­vices, (for­mer) patients who take on roles as «expert users», NGO vol­un­teers – thus inter­vene in iden­ti­ty and rela­tion­al con­struc­tions, defin­ing life tra­jec­to­ries, pro­duc­ing spaces and ser­vices that inher­ent­ly nav­i­gate the con­sti­tu­tive ambi­gu­i­ty between care and con­trol, treat­ment and neglect. Among these are the social sci­ences, both in their pro­duc­tion of knowl­edge and in pro­vid­ing tools for social care prac­tices. They con­tribute to defin­ing, iden­ti­fy­ing, clas­si­fy­ing, and quan­ti­fy­ing the users, posi­tion­ing them with­in the grids of «deserving/appropriate» vs «irrecov­er­able» patient, «reha­bil­itable» vs excluded.

The cur­rent con­fig­u­ra­tion, result­ing from the dis­man­tling of nation­al social pro­tec­tion sys­tems in the wake of aus­ter­i­ty poli­cies and the shift of respon­si­bil­i­ty to the pri­vate sec­tor, rep­re­sents only the lat­est phase in a long-stand­ing process of dif­fer­en­tial inclu­sion and exclu­sion, deeply embed­ded in the very struc­ture of social wel­fare and the State itself.

Ethno­graph­ic prac­tice high­lights pow­er struc­tures, fos­ter­ing crit­i­cal reflec­tion on the role of social work and expert knowl­edges. This approach chal­lenges estab­lished insti­tu­tions and mod­els while also sit­u­at­ing the process­es sur­round­ing care and treat­ment with­in rela­tion­ships, con­texts, and every­day tactics.

We invite con­tri­bu­tions that address men­tal health, dis­abil­i­ty, and neu­ro­di­ver­gence, with­in and beyond the care/control bina­ry. We ask what is the role of «expert knowl­edges» – con­sid­ered in their sin­gu­lar­i­ty or inter­sec­tions – in the con­struc­tion of sub­jec­tiv­i­ties, in the pro­duc­tion of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, and in the process­es of dis­tinc­tion and frag­men­ta­tion of the user base; and how prac­tices of sub­trac­tion or resis­tance to such devices configure.

Open ques­tions

What process­es shape the con­struc­tion of mean­ing around the cat­e­gories of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and fragili­ty (across dis­abil­i­ty, neu­ro­di­ver­gence, and men­tal health), and how do these cat­e­gories influ­ence social work in tak­ing charge and man­ag­ing users?
How can an ethno­graph­ic cri­tique of con­cepts such as pater­nal­ism and pietism in social wel­fare be framed, start­ing from prac­tices of care, con­trol, neglect, and treatment?
How do prac­tices of dis­tinc­tion with­in social ser­vices (broad­ly defined) emerge between the «deserv­ing» user and the «prob­lem­at­ic» user, and how do these distinctions—simultaneously prac­ti­cal, orga­ni­za­tion­al, and moral—affect the bal­ance between care and control?
How does the rela­tion­ship between fam­i­lies, pub­lic ser­vices, and care­givers con­fig­ure the every­day dynam­ics of care and con­trol with­in a con­text of poly-cri­sis and dis­man­tling the wel­fare state? How do the «third sec­tor», human­i­tar­i­an orga­ni­za­tions, and vol­un­teer­ing inter­sect in this relationship?
How do mad/crip/neurodivergent sub­jec­ti­va­tion process­es unfold, both with­in and beyond med­ical­iza­tion and the fram­ing of ser­vice users?
What impact do social inequalities—based on struc­tur­al axes of class, race, gen­der, sex­u­al­i­ties, and others—have on the ratio­nale of social ser­vices? How do these process­es influ­ence street-lev­el bureau­cra­cy prac­tices, and how do they shape sub­jec­ti­va­tion with­in these systems?
What forms of with­draw­al and detach­ment from the con­trol­ling dimen­sions of social and clin­i­cal work exist, and what pos­si­bil­i­ties do they open up?
What are the process­es of spa­tial­iza­tion of disability/neurodivergence/mental health, and how do they relate to social and clin­i­cal work? What are the geo­gra­phies of these process­es, and what do they add to our understanding?

At the link, you’ll find all the infor­ma­tion need­ed for the appli­ca­tion: https://erq-conference.soc.unitn.it/call-for-contributions/

If you have any ques­tions, please don’t hes­i­tate to reach out: fabio.bertoni@ics.ulisboa.pt and/or luca.sterchele@unito.it

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CfP for Euro­pean Con­fer­ence on Social Med­i­cine (ECSM) 2025
Uni­ver­si­ty of Oslo, Norway

Dead­line: 31st of Jan­u­ary 2025

Details:

We are very excit­ed to announce the open­ing of our call for papers for the first ever ECSM! We are accept­ing indi­vid­ual paper sub­mis­sions, com­plete pan­els formed from 3 papers, round­table sub­mis­sions and con­tri­bu­tions to our «Mak­ing and Doing» session.
Abstracts are due on Jan­u­ary 31st, 2025 at 11:59pm CET. For the full call for papers or to sub­mit an abstract, please go to the conference
web­site. We wel­come abstracts for indi­vid­ual papers and con­tri­bu­tions to pan­els in some way relat­ed to our over­ar­ch­ing theme: Prac­tice. The­o­ry. Action. 

The ECSM will be an are­na for health pro­fes­sion­als with dual train­ing in the social sci­ences or human­i­ties whose work engages one or all of these three modes: prac­tice, the­o­ry, and action. Social sci­ence or human­i­ties schol­ars who see them­selves in the work of social med­i­cine are also wel­come. We seek to ground our con­fer­ence in the shared pur­pose of build­ing healthy futures and invite con­tri­bu­tions that approach prac­tice, the­o­ry, and action with curios­i­ty. In com­ing togeth­er, we hope to cre­ate a com­mu­ni­ty of schol­ars who strive to address the inter­con­nect­ed chal­lenges that our col­lec­tive health and health sys­tems face as well as sug­gest solu­tions and ini­tia­tives by call­ing upon meth­ods from the health pro­fes­sions, social sci­ences, and the humanities. 

We invite sub­mis­sions on any top­ic at the cross-sec­tion of the health pro­fes­sions and social sci­ence and the human­i­ties, and wel­come a range of dis­ci­pli­nary approach­es, time peri­ods and geo­graph­i­cal con­texts. We par­tic­u­lar­ly encour­age pro­pos­als that address aspects of the con­fer­ence theme – prac­tice, the­o­ry, and action – in the work of con­tem­po­rary social med­i­cine. Abstracts are wel­come from all fields in the health pro­fes­sions, social sci­ences, and human­i­ties, includ­ing inter- and trans-dis­ci­pli­nary projects. 

If you have any ques­tions, please con­tact us at ecsm-contact@helsam.uio.no.
We can­not wait to see you in Oslo in June 2025!

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