Events

Event calendar

In this section we present selected events from the interdisciplinary field of anthropology and medicine.

We appreciate any references to relevant events. Please send an e-mail to events@agem.de

May 31 – Jun 3, 2023

Creating futures: Revisiting (the transformation of) care networks in African countries

Pan­el

Pan­el at the Euro­pean Con­fer­ence on African Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cologne

Short Abstract:

For­mal and infor­mal care net­works are increas­ing­ly emerg­ing in African coun­tries as a way of cre­at­ing sol­i­dar­i­ties and mak­ing futures. We ask what/who con­sti­tutes this future and for whom, how social net­works come to be imag­ined, con­sti­tut­ed, engaged, nego­ti­at­ed, and contested.

Long Abstract:

Social net­works are cru­cial in con­fronting cri­sis and secur­ing African futures. African coun­tries are wit­ness­ing a pro­lif­er­a­tion of dif­fer­ent forms of for­mal and infor­mal care net­works emerg­ing in the con­text of grow­ing health, eco­log­i­cal and envi­ron­men­tal crises. Rang­ing from reli­gious and neigh­bor­hood net­works to self-help groups and pro­fes­sion­al sol­i­dar­i­ties, these col­lec­tives are increas­ing­ly tak­ing a cen­ter stage as forms of dis­tri­b­u­tion and shar­ing in the cur­rent era of the chang­ing dynam­ics of the rela­tion­ship between cit­i­zens, the state and the mar­ket, health and socio-eco­nom­ic crises, and glob­al finan­cial­iza­tion. A grow­ing mid­dle-class pop­u­la­tion and new dig­i­tal and mobile tech­nolo­gies are inter­act­ing with­in reg­is­ters of a long his­to­ry of mutu­al aid soci­eties in African con­texts shap­ing social net­works in dif­fer­ent ways. Mean­while, the state is seem­ing­ly tak­ing a cen­tral role in experimenting/expanding social and finan­cial pro­tec­tion through dif­fer­ent mech­a­nisms such nation­al health insur­ance schemes and cash trans­fer inter­ven­tions, which, in turn are open­ing up ways of bring­ing peo­ple togeth­er in var­ied forms. Along­side these, social and eco­nom­ic hav­oc, pre­car­i­ty, and grow­ing inequal­i­ties (health, eco­nom­ic, social), increas­ing mar­ke­ti­za­tion and access to cred­it con­tin­ue to shape and chal­lenge sol­i­dar­i­ty, while tak­ing new mean­ings across dif­fer­ent gen­er­a­tions, class­es, and gen­ders in dif­fer­ent con­texts. Peo­ple increas­ing­ly become part of net­works as a way of cre­at­ing sol­i­dar­i­ties and mak­ing futures. We ask what/who con­sti­tutes this future and for whom, how social net­works come to be imag­ined, con­sti­tut­ed, engaged, nego­ti­at­ed, and contested.

Please sub­mit your paper pro­pos­al here.

https://ecasconference.org/2023/programme#12488

We look for­ward to your submissions!

Con­venors

Jac­in­ta Vic­to­ria Muinde (Uni­ver­si­ty of Oslo)

Edwin Ame­so (Uni­ver­si­ty of Leipzig)

Ruth Prince (Uni­ver­si­ty of Oslo)

Chair

Lena Kroek­er (Bayreuth University)

 

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Jun 5 – Jun 9, 2023

Plantes médicinales et médecines du 21ème siècle

Oth­er

Fort­bil­dung der Société Française d’Ethnopharmacologie

Jun 7 – Jun 10, 2023

Medical Precarity in Uncertain Times: Understanding Contemporary Healthcare Design, Malfunction, and Collapse

Pan­el

Pan­el at the 16th inter­na­tion­al SIEF con­gress in Brno, Czech Republic

        Short Abstract:
When, why, and in what social and mate­r­i­al con­di­tions does med­ical or
health­care col­lapse occur? This pan­el invites papers that critically
reflect on con­di­tions of health­care or med­ical cri­sis, uncer­tain­ty, and
col­lapse.
        Long Abstract:
While the pan­dem­ic has exposed the many seri­ous short­com­ings and
inad­e­qua­cies of con­tem­po­rary health­care sys­tems, the ensu­ing economic
decline has put a seri­ous strain on their func­tion­ing and accessibility,
some­times push­ing them to the verge of col­lapse. The last three years
have brought atten­tion to the pre­car­i­ty and fragili­ty of contemporary
health­care and med­ical sys­tems, though calls for their post-pandemic
reimag­in­ing or reform have arguably been sparse.
With­in the broad­er rubric of uncer­tain­ty, draw­ing on the entire spectrum
of sys­tem­at­ic mal­func­tions, this pan­el invites papers that speak about
cas­es of med­ical pre­car­i­ty, includ­ing instances of sys­temic malfunction,
pol­i­cy mis­man­age­ment, and polit­i­cal abuse that lead malfunctioning
sys­tems to col­lapse. When, why, and in what social and material
con­di­tions does med­ical or health­care col­lapse occur? By what met­rics or
stan­dards do peo­ple define and mea­sure med­ical or health­care collapse?
Alter­na­tive­ly, how do health­care and med­i­cine co-exist, or even thrive,
under con­di­tions of sys­tem­at­ic mal­func­tion? In what ways might Western
bio­med­i­cine con­tribute to med­ical pre­car­i­ty, includ­ing some patients and
some dis­eases at the expense of others?
We wel­come papers tak­ing on top­ics such as, for example:
- pan­dem­ic and post-pan­dem­ic health­care malfunctions,
- cost-dri­ven health­care inaccessibility,
- war-time healthcare,
- inequal­i­ty by design: med­ical exclu­sion of cer­tain groups or health
issues,
- var­i­ous stages of sys­temic health­care malfunction,
- health­care or med­ical col­lapse in all its forms.

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Jun 7 – Jun 9, 2023

Psychology and Anthropology in a Changing World

Con­fer­ence

Hybrid Con­fer­ence of the Euro­pean Net­work for Psy­cho­log­i­cal Anthro­pol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oslo

The con­fer­ence is meant as an inclu­sive forum for schol­ars from a wide range of dis­ci­pli­nary and the­mat­ic ori­en­ta­tions. Crit­i­cal per­spec­tives on the con­cepts of main­stream psy­chol­o­gy are encour­aged; pro­duc­tive engage­ments across the dis­ci­pli­nary bound­aries of anthro­pol­o­gy and cog­ni­tive sci­ence, psy­chi­a­try, phi­los­o­phy, evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gy, and oth­ers will also be welcome.

The con­fer­ence will be pre­ced­ed by the Writ­ing Work­shop for Grad­u­ate Stu­dents and Ear­ly Career Schol­ars. The orga­niz­ers will be able to offer sev­er­al needs-based trav­el sup­port stipends to stu­dents and ear­ly career schol­ars cov­er­ing the extra night of the pre-conference.

Fur­ther infor­ma­tion and updates can be found at: https://enpanthro.net/enpa2023- conference/. If you have any fur­ther ques­tions regard­ing the con­fer­ence and the work­shop, please do not hes­i­tate to con­tact the orga­niz­ers at conference@enpanthro.net

 

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Jun 9 – Jun 10, 2023

Beyond Binaries: Gender, Sexuality and Medicine in Post-War Europe

Con­fer­ence

A con­fer­ence orga­nized by the Cen­tre for the Study of Health, Ethics and Soci­ety, Uni­ver­si­ty of Ham­burg at the War­burg-Haus, Hamburg

Sub­mis­sion Dead­line: 6th March 2023

How can gen­der and sex­u­al­i­ty – broad­ly con­ceived both method­olog­i­cal­ly and the­mat­i­cal­ly – help to inform his­tor­i­cal under­stand­ing of the role of med­i­cine in post-war Europe? This con­fer­ence will bring togeth­er schol­ars work­ing in dif­fer­ent dis­ci­plines to exam­ine how the­o­ret­i­cal approach­es incor­po­rat­ing gen­der and sex­u­al­i­ty can shed light on med­ical ethics, sci­en­tif­ic prac­tices, and pol­i­cy­mak­ing asso­ci­at­ed with health across the ide­o­log­i­cal divide. How can his­to­ries of gen­der and sex­u­al­i­ty illu­mi­nate indi­vid­ual med­ical expe­ri­ences and the com­plex rela­tions between patients, doc­tors, pol­i­cy­mak­ers, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies, and med­ical ethi­cists dur­ing the Cold War period?

We are par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in papers which exam­ine gen­der, sex­u­al­i­ty, and med­i­cine in Cen­tral and East­ern Europe in order to gain greater insight into how med­i­cine was imag­ined, man­aged, sold and expe­ri­enced across Europe. Explor­ing gen­der and sex­u­al­i­ty in the con­text of post-war med­i­cine can help us to dis­cern poten­tial sim­i­lar­i­ties in med­ical prac­tices, poli­cies, and expe­ri­ences across Europe, which moves beyond the secu­ri­ty con­text and ide­o­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences of the Cold War to high­light the exchange of sci­en­tif­ic ideas across the “Iron Cur­tain”. Exam­in­ing gen­der, sex­u­al­i­ty and med­i­cine in the post-war peri­od can bring about a new schol­ar­ly per­spec­tive on Europe as a con­ti­nent that was to some extent unit­ed by shared expe­ri­ences, poli­cies, and beliefs.

Please send a 250-word abstract and title, togeth­er with your insti­tu­tion­al affil­i­a­tion and a brief bio, to Dr Kate Dock­ing and Dr David Peace by 6 March 2023. Accom­mo­da­tion and meals for accept­ed speak­ers will be pro­vid­ed by the con­fer­ence organ­is­ers. The con­fer­ence pro­ceed­ings will be pub­lished in an edit­ed volume.

Sub­jects of papers might include, but are cer­tain­ly not lim­it­ed to:
– Repro­duc­tion: abor­tion, con­tra­cep­tion, repro­duc­tive rights, sexology
– Pro­phy­lax­is: vac­ci­na­tion, health­care campaigns
– Clin­i­cal tri­als and human experimentation
– Med­ical expe­ri­ences of trans‑, non-bina­ry, and queer persons
– Con­cepts of nor­mal­i­ty, enhance­ment, dis­abil­i­ty, and pathology
– Gen­dered natures and impli­ca­tions of eth­i­cal codes
– Gen­der inequal­i­ties in access to med­ical care and health responsibilities
– Rep­re­sen­ta­tions of gen­der and sex­u­al­i­ty in media and the arts
– Forms of protest and resis­tance: patients, pro­fes­sion­al groups
– Role of data sci­ence and genet­ics in tar­get­ed medicine
– Psy-dis­ci­plines: psy­chol­o­gy, psy­chi­a­try, psy­chodra­ma, psy­cho­analy­sis etc
– The­o­ret­i­cal reflec­tions on the writ­ing of gen­der and sexuality

Kon­takt

kate.docking@uni-hamburg.de

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Jun 23 – Jun 25, 2023

Psychoanalyse und Körper: Berührung

Con­fer­ence

13. Wiener Sym­po­sium »Psy­cho­analyse und Kör­p­er« an der Sig­mund-Freud-Pri­vatu­ni­ver­sität in Wien

Das The­ma Berührung ist wohl eines der strit­tig­sten im Span­nungs­feld von Psy­cho­analyse und Kör­perpsy­chother­a­pie. In der als ›Redekur‹ konzip­ierten psy­cho­an­a­lytis­chen Behand­lung ereignet sich kör­per­liche Berührung in der Regel nur im kon­ven­tionellen Kon­text von Begrüßung und Ver­ab­schiedung. Berührung fig­uri­ert hier in ein­er all­ge­meineren Bedeu­tung, etwa im Sinne der emo­tionalen oder gestisch-mimetis­chen, leib­lichen Ein­wirkung aufeinan­der. Im Gegen­satz dazu teilen Kör­perpsy­chother­a­peuten mehrheitlich die Mei­n­ung, konkrete kör­per­liche Berührung sei ein wesentlich­er Bestandteil ein­er ther­a­peutis­chen Zugangsweise, die das kör­per­liche Geschehen inner­halb der Psy­chother­a­pie wirk­lich ernst nimmt. Sie sprechen von »heil­samen Berührun­gen« (Gün­ter Heisterkamp).

Die Unter­schiedlichkeit der Per­spek­tiv­en hat eine lange Tra­di­tion und beste­ht seit Freud. Sie hat jedoch an Aktu­al­ität nichts einge­büßt. So schreibt der dur­chaus kör­per­be­zo­gen denk­ende Psy­cho­an­a­lytik­er Sebas­t­ian Leik­ert, mehrfach Vor­tra­gen­der am Wiener Sym­po­sium »Psy­cho­analyse und Kör­p­er«, in seinem 2022 erschiene­nen Buch »Das kör­per­liche Unbe­wusste in der psy­cho­an­a­lytis­chen Behand­lung­stech­nik«: »Die fak­tis­che tak­tile Berührung ist verzicht­bar, denn die Stimme der Ana­lytik­erin oder des Ana­lytik­ers berührt das Kör­perselb­st, die gemein­same Aufmerk­samkeit berührt das Leib­liche, das res­o­nante Spüren der leib­lichen Gegenüber­tra­gung hat eine Wirkung auf das Kör­perselb­st der Analysandin oder des Analysanden. Absti­nenz ist in der Arbeit mit leib­lichen Kon­stel­la­tio­nen zen­tral, weil hier Ver­let­zlichkeit und Gefahr der Retrau­ma­tisierung beson­ders groß sind« (S. 14).

Unschw­er ist zu erken­nen, wie weit die Posi­tio­nen auseinan­der­liegen. Während sich all­ge­mein in den Behand­lungs­the­o­rien so manche Übere­in­stim­mungen find­en, zeigen sich an dieser Stelle in der Konzep­tion der ther­a­peutis­chen Sit­u­a­tion und des ther­a­peutis­chen Rah­mens Span­nungslin­ien und Kon­tro­ver­sen, die ger­ade in ihrer Grund­sät­zlichkeit nach einem interkol­le­gialen Diskurs suchen. Wie ste­ht es also um die Bedeut­samkeit konkreter kör­per­lich­er Berührung bzw. des Verzicht­es darauf? Und wie wären in diesem Kon­text z.B. Ergeb­nisse der Säuglings- und Bindungs­forschung in Betra­cht zu ziehen?

Auf der Tagung wer­den wir dieses Span­nungs­feld aus vor­wiegend klin­is­ch­er Per­spek­tive beleucht­en. Sechs Ref­er­entin­nen und Ref­er­enten wer­den aus ihrer jew­eili­gen ther­a­peutis­chen Zugangsweise her­aus eine Pati­entin / einen Patien­ten vorstellen, zen­tri­ert um die Frage, wie jew­eils ther­a­peutis­che Verän­derung möglich war, wie also die Pati­entin / der Patient in seinem Inner­sten berührt wer­den konnte.

Der interkol­le­gialen Diskus­sion wird auf dieser Tagung bre­it­er Raum gegeben. Prax­is­be­zo­gene Work­shops ergänzen das Angebot.

Ter­min
23. bis 25. Juni 2023

Ver­anstal­tung­sort
Sigmund-Freud-Privatuniversität
Freud­platz 1
A‑1020 Wien

Anmel­dung und Infor­ma­tion per Peter Geißler peter@geissler-info.at oder 0043–699-11874690 oder über die Tagung­shome­page www.psychoanalyseundkoerper.at

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Jun 28 – Jun 30, 2023

“Ageing contested”. Exploring anti-ageing bio-hacking and repair practices in later life

Pan­el

Pan­el at the STS Italia Con­fer­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bologna

Orga­niz­ers: Francesco Miele (1); Michela Coz­za (2)
1: Uni­ver­si­ty of Tri­este, Italy; 2: Mälardalen Uni­ver­si­ty, Sweden

Top­ics: Every­day life and design of the mun­dane; Algo­rith­mic knowl­edge, media ecolo­gies and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence; Inno­va­tion imag­i­nar­ies, prac­tices and poli­cies; The val­ue of sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, inno­va­tion and research prac­tices; Het­ero­ge­neous assem­blages in bio­med­ical research

Key­words: Anti-age­ing, bio-hack­ing, geron­tech­nolo­gies, socio-mate­r­i­al practices.

Over the last decades, the nexus between bio­log­i­cal age­ing and func­tion­al decline has been more and more ‘con­test­ed’ (Vin­cent, 2006), espe­cial­ly by crit­i­cal schol­ars – among them, also STS schol­ars – com­mit­ted to eman­ci­pat­ing from bio­log­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal nat­u­ral­i­sa­tions of age cat­e­gories. The rela­tion­ship between age­ing and techno­sci­en­tif­ic inno­va­tion can be analysed by focus­ing on the con­stel­la­tions of socio-mate­r­i­al prac­tices through which the rela­tion­ship itself is per­formed. Our pan­el aims at explor­ing mate­r­i­al-dis­cur­sive tex­tures asso­ci­at­ed with age­ing, by focus­ing on two inter­re­lat­ed macro-topics.

The first top­ic refers to the so-called bio-hack­ing, defined as the use of “sci­ence-based tools and short­cuts for opti­miz­ing your own bio­log­i­cal poten­tial” (Lee, 2015: 8) and for max­imis­ing longevi­ty. In line with process­es of bio­med­ical­i­sa­tion of the body (Coz­za et al., 2022), dis­cours­es and ini­tia­tives relat­ed to bio-hack­ing pop­u­late online com­mu­ni­ties and social move­ments, which gen­er­ate, share, and repro­duce techno­sci­en­tif­ic prac­tices to coun­ter­act and reverse age­ing (e.g., the quan­ti­fied-self move­ment). Sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ties and mar­kets are also involved in extreme anti-age­ing prac­tices to extend lifes­pan (e.g., gene edit­ing). The phe­nom­e­non of bio-hack­ing relies on neolib­er­al prin­ci­ples which, in turn, dic­tate the ulti­mate goal of enhanc­ing the human body through tech­nolo­gies that ‘improve’ its oth­er­wise dete­ri­o­rat­ing func­tion­al­i­ties well beyond what is actu­al­ly nec­es­sary to sus­tain or repair the body itself.

From the first top­ic descends the sec­ond focus relat­ed to a process that we would call repair­ing age­ing. In this case, we bring atten­tion to the main­te­nance of aged human bod­ies, rather than to deep manip­u­la­tive inter­ven­tions upon them. We may refer to the soft­est forms of anti-age­ing med­i­cine to cure dis­eases asso­ci­at­ed with old age and to extend life expectan­cy as much as pos­si­ble (Vin­cent, 2006). The under­ly­ing eth­ic of care induces patients, fam­i­lies, and clin­i­cians to refrain from say­ing “no” to med­ical solu­tions as embody­ing a promise of bet­ter age­ing (Kauf­man, 2004). In par­al­lel, also most of assis­tive geron­tech­nolo­gies aim at repair­ing the effects of age­ing process­es on the human body, match­ing with an imag­i­nary of old­er peo­ple as ‘in need’ of being helped, in accor­dance with the ideals of ‘inde­pen­dent liv­ing’ in lat­er life.

Hav­ing this frame­work as our start­ing point,here is a not exhaus­tive list of indica­tive top­ics that might be considered:

- Enhance­ment tech­nolo­gies for aged human bodies.

- Hack­ing age.

- Repair­ing prac­tices in lat­er life.

- Algo­rith­mic elder­ly care.

- Age­ing and self-quantification.

- Assis­tive tech­nolo­gies and emerg­ing care practices.

- Age­ing and neo-liberalism.

- Ageism in design practices.

- Clin­i­cal inter­ven­tions and life-extensions.

- Eth­i­cal dilem­mas relat­ed to bio-med­ical anti-age­ing interventions.

Ref­er­ences

Coz­za, M., Kirsten L. E., and Katz S. (2022). Hack­ing age. Soci­ol­o­gy Com­pass, 16(10), e13034.

Kauf­man, S. R., Shim, J. K., and Russ, A. J. (2004). Revis­it­ing the bio­med­ical­iza­tion of aging: Clin­i­cal trends and eth­i­cal chal­lenges. The Geron­tol­o­gist, 44(6), 731–738.

Lee, J. (2015). The bio­hack­ing man­i­festo: The sci­en­tif­ic blue­print for a long, healthy and hap­py life using cut­ting edge anti-aging and neu­ro­science based hacks. Cre­ate­Space Inde­pen­dent Pub­lish­ing Platform.

Vin­cent, J. A. (2006). Age­ing con­test­ed: Anti-age­ing sci­ence and the cul­tur­al con­struc­tion of old age. Soci­ol­o­gy, 40(4), 681–698.

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Jun 28 – Jun 30, 2023

Interesting worlds as matters of caring and commoning

Pan­el

Pan­el at the 9th STS Italia Con­fer­ence in Bologna

https://eventi.unibo.it/stsitalia2023/panel-26

The dead­line for abstract sub­mis­sion is Jan­u­ary 15, 2023.
Please, find below the details.

Orga­niz­ers: Mari­acristi­na Scian­nam­blo (1); Mau­r­izio Teli (2); Gia­co­mo Poderi (3)

1: Sapien­za Uni­ver­si­ty of Rome, Italy; 2: Aal­borg Uni­ver­si­ty; 3: IT Uni­ver­si­ty of Copenhagen

Top­ics: Knowl­edge co-cre­ation, cit­i­zens sci­ence, co-design process­es, mate­r­i­al publics and grass­root inno­va­tion; Method­olog­i­cal chal­lenges in a more-than-human world; Every­day life and design of the mun­dane; The val­ue of sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, inno­va­tion and research prac­tices; Extrac­tivist pow­ers, imag­i­nar­ies and asym­me­tries; Build­ing alliances in pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion and engagement

Key­words: car­ing, com­mon­ing, col­lab­o­ra­tive research, co-design, engagement

The con­cept of ‘inter­est’ has been cen­tral in STS since its incep­tion (Cal­lon and Law 1982; Cal­lon 1982), when it was intro­duced to describe net­works of rela­tion­ships between human and non-human actors through the employ­ment of devices, the devel­op­ment of inter­pre­ta­tions, and the mobi­liza­tion of alliances. The dis­cus­sion of the for­ma­tion of inter­ests and its relat­ed process­es of trans­la­tion has brought the issue of pow­er, and its reconfiguration(s), under the spot­light, as mean­ing­ful­ly artic­u­lat­ed by Cal­lon through the ques­tions: “Who speaks in the name of whom? Who rep­re­sents whom?”.

More recent­ly, the increas­ing promi­nence of crit­i­cal approach­es – e.g. fem­i­nist and post­colo­nial STS – and the inter­sec­tions with cog­nate research fields – e.g. par­tic­i­pa­to­ry design, infor­ma­tion sci­ence, envi­ron­men­tal human­i­ties – have stressed the polit­i­cal­ly engaged char­ac­ter of STS which empha­sized its ‘activist inter­est’ (Sis­mon­do, 2008). That has spurred the emer­gence of a „col­lab­o­ra­tive turn” in STS (Farías, 2017) that we see as a direct con­se­quence of STS con­cerns with pow­er. The col­lab­o­ra­tive turn has brought about ques­tions on the eth­i­cal, affec­tive, and polit­i­cal dimen­sions of research­ing by means of col­lab­o­ra­tive and com­mit­ted action-research projects based on dia­logue, mutu­al learn­ing, and car­ing rela­tion­ships with­in het­ero­ge­neous collectives.

These con­cerns have been trou­bled and fur­ther elab­o­rat­ed by fem­i­nist think­ing in STS, in par­tic­u­lar with the pro­lif­ic reflec­tions on the con­cept and prac­tice of care (Mol et al. 2010; Mar­tin et al. 2015), which empha­size the ambiva­lent, sit­u­at­ed, and mate­r­i­al char­ac­ter of care as well as our own care and con­cerns as STS researchers and prac­ti­tion­ers (Puig de la Bel­la­casa 2017).

In par­al­lel, STS research has explored the impor­tance of the com­mons whether these are nat­ur­al, mate­r­i­al, human made, or imma­te­r­i­al (Papadopou­los 2018). Com­mon­ing prac­tices can indeed be con­sid­ered mat­ters of care as they attend to every­thing we do to main­tain, con­tin­ue, and repair our world (Tron­to 1993). Addi­tion­al­ly, com­mon­ing prompts us to recon­sid­er human-nature and more-than-human rela­tion­ships in ways that chal­lenge dom­i­nant exist­ing extrac­tive cap­i­tal­ist mod­els, towards “the pro­duc­tion of our­selves as a com­mon sub­ject” (Fed­eri­ci 2018). These allow us to stay with the trou­bles that attend to mat­ters of care and the relat­ed impli­ca­tions of unpack­ing the log­ics, con­tra­dic­tions, and mul­ti­ple rup­tures gen­er­at­ed by cap­i­tal­ism. Against this back­drop, we hope to make vis­i­ble the neglect­ed and often invis­i­ble labor of repro­duc­ing the com­mons, and to ques­tion which and whose mate­r­i­al, polit­i­cal, and eth­i­cal orders come into play when research­ing and inter­ven­ing in/for the commons.

This pan­el invites pre­sen­ta­tions that explore the inter­sec­tions between car­ing and com­mon­ing in the con­text of STS inter­ven­tion-ori­ent­ed research. Both empir­i­cal and the­o­ret­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions are wel­come. These may include (but are not lim­it­ed to):

-        dis­ci­pli­nary inter­sec­tions among STS, design, and com­mon­s/-ing studies;

-        knowl­edge co-cre­ation, co-design process­es, mate­r­i­al publics and grass­root innovation;

-        ICT, labor, and precariousness;

-        the­o­ries and method­olog­i­cal approach­es as forms of car­ing and commoning;

-        com­plex­i­ties, oppor­tu­ni­ties, and con­tra­dic­tions of mak­ing new alliances between researchers, activists, local pop­u­la­tions, and institutions;

-        sites of ambiva­lence and con­tra­dic­tions in car­ing and com­mon­ing practices.

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Jun 28 – Jun 30, 2023

Interesting Worlds to Come. Science & Technology Studies facing more-than-human

Con­fer­ence

9th STS Italia Con­fer­ence host­ed by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bologna, Italy

The list of rel­e­vant panels:
Pan­el 5. ‘Out­break’: Sci­ence, gov­er­nance, and respond­ing oth­er­wise to chal­lenges to come.
Pan­el 29. Mate­ri­al­i­ty and research in muse­ums of sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, and medicine.
Pan­el 36. Diag­no­sis, prog­no­sis, treat­ment – Towards fair and sus­tain­able care pro­vi­sions in health sys­tems and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal innovation.
Pan­el 41. More-than-human med­i­cine? Unpack­ing the use of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (AI) tech­nolo­gies in health­care settings.
Pan­el 44. Explor­ing Promis­ing Tech­nol­o­gy in Neuroscience.

http://www.stsitalia.org/9th-sts-italia-conference-interesting-worlds-to-come-science-technology-studies-facing-more-than-human-challenges-28th-1st-june-2023-bologna-italy/

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Jun 30 – Jul 1, 2023

Natur machen: Wissen, Praktiken und Technologien der Umweltgestaltung in der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts

Work­shop

Inter­diszi­plinär­er Work­shop am His­torischen Sem­i­nar der Uni­ver­sität Siegen

Die 1950er Jahre gel­ten als Zäsur der Umwelt­geschichte. Davon zeu­gen Schlag­worte wie jene des „1950er Syn­droms“ (Pfis­ter), der „Großen Beschle­u­ni­gung“ (McNeill/Engelke), aber auch des Anthro­pozäns, dessen Beginn bisweilen auf die Nachkriegszeit datiert wird. Die tief­greifend­en Umwälzun­gen gesellschaftlich­er Naturver­hält­nisse gin­gen indes ein­her mit einem weniger beachteten Wan­del des Stel­len­wertes „der Natur“ inner­halb indus­tri­al­isiert­er Gesellschaften. Auch wenn sich der Beginn dieser Entwick­lung auf ver­schiede­nen Feldern bere­its in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhun­derts aus­machen lässt, war Natur ab den 1950er Jahren flächen­deck­end nicht mehr etwas, von dem es sich zu emanzip­ieren galt, noch etwas zu Kon­servieren­des. Vielmehr rück­te das Her­stellen von Natur in den Fokus – Natur wurde auf eine jew­eils neue Weise prob­lema­tisiert, in poli­tis­che Ratio­nal­itäten inte­gri­ert und erhielt spez­i­fis­che Funktionen.

Exem­plar­isch dafür kann die Geschichte des Naturschutzes in bei­den deutschen Staat­en nach dem Zweit­en Weltkrieg betra­chtet wer­den. In der Bun­desre­pub­lik stand der soge­nan­nte „Glas­glocken­naturschutz“ in der Kri­tik, die planer­isch-gestal­ter­ische Lan­despflege set­zte sich als Mod­ernisierungsange­bot durch. Ganz ähn­lich galt in der DDR der kon­servierende Naturschutz als Relikt bürg­er­lich­er Naturäs­thetik und wurde in die Land­schaft­spflege – bald „sozial­is­tis­che Lan­deskul­tur“ – inte­gri­ert. Aus Naturschutzge­bi­eten wur­den „Frei­land­lab­o­ra­to­rien“, Wis­sensprak­tiken wie jene der Veg­e­ta­tion­skartierung ließen sich in ein anwen­dung­sori­en­tiertes Forschung­spro­gramm zur (Re-)Konstruktion von Ökosys­te­men umschreiben.

Die an diesem Prozess beteiligten Akteure begrün­de­ten die Notwendigkeit Natur herzustellen – ob großflächige Land­schaften oder klein­teiligeres Stadt­grün – oft­mals damit, dass sie etwa ökonomis­che, medi­zinis­che und ökol­o­gis­che Funk­tio­nen erfülle. Darunter fie­len mit jew­eili­gen Kon­junk­turen solche der Erhol­ung sowie gesund­heit­spoli­tis­che Auf­gaben im All­ge­meinen oder auch solche der Reg­u­la­tion von Umweltme­di­en sowie des Kli­maschutzes. Lassen sich manche dieser Vorstel­lun­gen bis um die Jahrhun­der­twende zurück­ver­fol­gen, wur­den sie nun ver­wis­senschaftlicht in umfängliche Pla­nung­sprozesse über­set­zt. Natur galt aus dieser Per­spek­tive als Mit­tel gegen jene neg­a­tiv­en Effek­te, die mit der „Großen Beschle­u­ni­gung“ ver­bun­den wur­den. Dafür bedurfte es jedoch nicht nur Natur-Wis­sen, son­dern eine anhand dieses Wis­sens gestal­tete Natur. Nicht sel­ten war dieser Zugriff auf die äußere Natur des Men­schen verknüpft mit Vorstel­lun­gen sein­er inneren Natur. Etwa dann, wenn eine dem Men­schen naturgemäße Umwelt gefordert wurde, da sie der gesellschaftlichen Reg­ulierung diene. Natur­poli­tik und ‑gestal­tung sind in diesem Sinne auch als Regierungs- und Sozial­tech­nolo­gien zu analysieren.

Natur machen beschreibt dieses het­ero­gene Ensem­ble. Im Zen­trum ste­hen Wis­sens­for­ma­tio­nen, Prak­tiken und Tech­nolo­gien wie etwa jene der Rena­turierung und ‑kul­tivierung, der Landschafts‑, Stadt- und Humanökolo­gie, der Inge­nieur­biolo­gie und Land­schaft­s­pla­nung, des Arten- und Biotop- sowie des Prozesss­chutzes. Deren Beginn fällt zwar bisweilen in die erste Hälfte des 20. Jahrhun­derts: Sys­tem­a­tis­che Forschung, umfängliche Anwen­dung und Insti­tu­tion­al­isierung erfuhren sie in der Regel jedoch erst ab den 1950er Jahren. Darin unter­schei­den sie sich von Ein­grif­f­en in den Land­schafts- und Naturhaushalt im All­ge­meinen sowie von länger eingeübten Prak­tiken, etwa der Melio­ra­tion. Es geht nicht um die „Eroberung der Natur“ (Black­bourn), son­dern um ihre bewusste (Re-)Konstruktion in Form arti­fizieller Natur-Rep­li­ka. Ein Beispiel dafür ist die seit den 1970er Jahren ver­stärkt auszu­machende Prax­is der Flussre­na­turierung, die auf eine jahrhun­dertealte Prax­is der Begr­a­di­gung reagierte. Ger­ade darin zeigt sich indes die Wider­sprüch­lichkeit des Natur Machens. Ein­er­seits lassen sich diese neuen Naturen nur als tech­no-sozio-nat­u­rale Assem­bla­gen denken, ander­er­seits erfüllen sie ihre Funk­tion als Sim­u­lakrum darüber, dass sie ihre sozio- und techno­genen Anteile ver­schleiern. Auch daher gin­gen Prozesse der Her­stel­lung häu­fig ein­her mit ontol­o­gis­chen und ethis­chen Debat­ten darüber, was Natur ist – und was sie in der indus­tri­al­isierten Gesellschaft sein soll.

Der Work­shop will sich diesem The­ma aus ver­schiede­nen Per­spek­tiv­en näh­ern und sucht nach Beiträ­gen aus den Geistes- und Sozial­wis­senschaften, die obige Gedanken aufnehmen. Sie kön­nen sowohl the­o­retisch als auch empirisch aus­gerichtet sein und sich auf die Geschichte des Natur Machens im gesamten 20. Jahrhun­dert beziehen. Neben his­torischen Fall­stu­di­en etwa der Rekul­tivierungs- und Rena­turierung­sprax­is – von dev­astierten Flächen des Tage­baus über Stadt­be­grü­nung bis zur (Wieder-)Herstellung von Ökosys­te­men – und ihrer Rezep­tion inter­essieren auch Analy­sen obiger Diszi­plinen und Prak­tiken. Aus the­o­retis­ch­er Per­spek­tive stellen sich etwa Fra­gen der Mate­ri­al­ität und hybri­den Ontolo­gien inner­halb der Prozesse des Natur Machens sowie auch nach der Anwend­barkeit von in jün­ger­er Zeit disku­tierten Konzepten wie jen­em der Öko-Gouvernementalität.

Vorschläge für einen Vor­trag (20 Minuten) im Umfang von ca. 300 Wörtern sowie ein kurz­er akademis­ch­er Werde­gang wer­den bis zum 31. Jan­u­ar 2023 erbeten per E‑Mail an: martina.huttner@uni-siegen.de

Vor­be­haltlich zur Ver­fü­gung ste­hen­der Mit­tel kön­nen Reise- und Über­nach­tungskosten über­nom­men werden.

Für Fra­gen ste­hen die Organ­isatoren des Work­shops zur Verfügung:

Prof. Dr. Noy­an Dinçkal, Europäis­che Wis­sens- und Kom­mu­nika­tion­s­geschichte der Mod­erne, Uni­ver­sität Siegen (dinckal@geschichte.uni-siegen.de)

Dr. Philipp Kröger, Geschichte der Gegen­wart, Uni­ver­sität Siegen (philipp.kroeger@uni-siegen.de)

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Jul 25 – Jul 28, 2023

Being in/ at Work: Repositioning Knowledge about Work, Disability, Chronicity

Pan­el

Pan­el at the DGSKA (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sozial- und Kul­tur­an­thro­polo­gie) con­fer­ence in Munich

Just a short reminder of our pan­el on work and disability/chronicity at next year’s DGSKA (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sozial- und Kul­tur­an­thro­polo­gie) con­fer­ence in Munich (25–28 July 2023). We hope to cre­ate a plat­form for schol­ars inter­est­ed in how people’s being at/in work relate to expe­ri­ences of dis­abil­i­ty and chronic­i­ty, in par­tic­u­lar in (but not restrict­ed to) con­texts of the Glob­al South. Your con­tri­bu­tions to the pan­el will hope­ful­ly lead to a spe­cial issue that taps into this (neglect­ed) field.

Sub­mis­sions (max. 200 words) should go to stefanie.mauksch@uni-leipzig.de. The Call for Paper runs until 15 Decem­ber 2022. Please con­sid­er sub­mit­ting an abstract and cir­cu­late widely.

Being in/ at Work: Repo­si­tion­ing Knowl­edge about Work, Dis­abil­i­ty, Chronic­i­ty (Work­shop)

Dis­abil­i­ty and chronic­i­ty are terms that seek to cap­ture bioso­cial expe­ri­ences that inter­sect with, and affect, how peo­ple engage in work, labor or employ­ment. This pan­el is focused on how peo­ple nav­i­gate dis­abling, debil­i­tat­ing and/or are enabling expe­ri­ences in and through work, and how these expe­ri­ences are shaped by the social local­i­ties from which they emerge. We place empha­sis on how work becomes sig­nif­i­cant for peo­ple whose bod­i­ly con­di­tions or appear­ances are pro­duced as ‘oth­er’ in respec­tive soci­eties, or who expe­ri­ence pain or chron­ic ill­ness that delim­it (but maybe also reshape or expand) their pos­si­bil­i­ties to con­tribute to com­mu­ni­ties and oth­er social arrange­ments. Depart­ing from the focus on work-relat­ed exclu­sion put for­ward in pre­vi­ous inquiries in anthro­pol­o­gy and relat­ed dis­ci­plines, we attend to pos­i­tive rela­tions between occu­pa­tion­al iden­ti­ties and work embod­i­ments on the one hand, and expe­ri­ences of dis­abil­i­ty and chronic­i­ty on the oth­er. Explor­ing new angles on the inter­play between ‘being dis­abled’ and ‘being in/at work’, we ask whether and how work ‘works’ as a form to aban­don or to prob­lema­tize con­struc­tions of dis­abil­i­ty. The work­shop will bring togeth­er schol­ars who address one or more of the fol­low­ing concerns:

Co-Con­sti­tu­tion: How are forms of dis­abil­i­ty and/or chronic­i­ty defined in con­nec­tion to notions and ideas of work? And vice ver­sa, how do dis­abil­i­ty and chronic­i­ty shape extant forms of labor?

Mean­ing-Mak­ing: How do peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ty and/or chron­ic con­di­tions in dif­fer­ent local­i­ties around the globe per­form and talk about their work?

Cri­tique: How can embed­ded under­stand­ings of dis­abil­i­ty, chronic­i­ty and work be brought to estrange the work­ings of admin­is­tra­tive pro­ce­dures, ide­olo­gies and polit­i­cal arrangements?

Reflec­tion and Auto-Ethnog­ra­phy: To what degree is the labor of anthro­pol­o­gists shaped by ableist con­cep­tions? Which poten­tial does dis­abil­i­ty hold to explore exclu­sion­ary dimen­sions of anthro­po­log­i­cal work?

Best, Ste­fanie Mauksch
Insti­tut für Ethnologie
Fakultät für Geschichte, Kun­st und Regionalwissenschaften
Uni­ver­sität Leipzig
+49 341 97 37 227
stefanie.mauksch@uni-leipzig.de

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Jul 25 – Jul 28, 2023

Families Managing Health and Wellbeing in Times of Crisis

Pan­el

Pan­el at the Ger­man Anthro­po­log­i­cal Association’s (DGSKA e.V.) bian­nu­al con­fer­ence „Con­test­ed Knowl­edge: Per­spec­tives in Social
and Cul­tur­al Anthro­pol­o­gy” at the Lud­wig-Max­i­m­il­ians-Uni­ver­sität München

Dear col­leagues,
On behalf of the work group Med­ical Anthro­pol­o­gy we warm­ly invite you to
our work­shop at the Ger­man Anthro­po­log­i­cal Association’s (DGSKA e.V.)
next bian­nu­al con­fer­ence „Con­test­ed Knowl­edge: Per­spec­tives in Social
and Cul­tur­al Anthro­pol­o­gy” (Lud­wig-Max­i­m­il­ians-Uni­ver­sität München,
25–28 July 2023), see abstract below. The work­shop will include a
keynote address by Prof. Sjaak van der Geest (Emer­i­tus Pro­fes­sor of
Med­ical Anthro­pol­o­gy, Uni­ver­si­ty of Ams­ter­dam). Please send your
abstract of *max. 200 words* to a.bochow1@gmail.com and
dominik.mattes@fu-berlin.de *by 15 Decem­ber 2022*. We look for­ward to
your con­tri­bu­tions!
Best wish­es,
Astrid Bochow and Dominik Mattes
—-
*Fam­i­lies Man­ag­ing Health and Well­be­ing in Times of Crisis*
AG Med­ical Anthropology
PD Dr. Astrid Bochow, Georg-August-Uni­ver­sität Göttingen
Dr. Dominik Mattes, Freie Uni­ver­sität Berlin
Post­colo­nial the­o­ry crit­i­cizes that knowl­edge about the body, health,
and well­be­ing is deeply con­nect­ed to vary­ing forms of governmentality
and sub­mis­sion. Post­colo­nial ethnog­ra­phy, for instance, documents
con­tests over health epis­te­molo­gies and author­i­ty in con­texts of medical
plu­ral­ism and shows that fam­i­lies are cru­cial in the sense of “ther­a­py
man­ag­ing groups” that help medi­ate dif­fer­ent health epistemologies
rec­on­cil­ing, for instance, social-spir­i­tu­al with phys­i­cal aspects of
heal­ing. Fam­i­lies also par­take in the nego­ti­a­tions around diverging
con­cep­tu­al­iza­tions of health and well-being between indi­vid­ual patients
and bio­med­ical insti­tu­tions. Final­ly, fam­i­lies may medi­ate particular
forms of sub­jec­ti­va­tion pur­sued by state insti­tu­tions, while themselves
sub­du­ing indi­vid­u­als to local forms of gen­der and age-relat­ed hierarchies.
Mean­while, recent social phe­nom­e­na such as long-term lock­downs during
the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, dra­mat­i­cal­ly ris­ing dai­ly liv­ing expenses,
grow­ing num­bers of peo­ple being forced to leave their home coun­tries, as
well as envi­ron­men­tal cat­a­stro­phes rein­force pub­lic and scholarly
inter­ests in fam­i­lies as resources of social and mate­r­i­al care and
sup­port for vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple includ­ing chil­dren and elder­ly peo­ple. We
invite papers that reflect on how fam­i­lies shape health man­age­ment in
these (and oth­er) con­texts of cri­sis where mul­ti­ple forms of knowledge
and insti­tu­tion­al expec­ta­tions col­lide. Among oth­ers, they may address
the fol­low­ing questions:
How do fam­i­ly mem­bers medi­ate (com­pet­ing) insti­tu­tion­al knowl­edge, e.g.
relat­ed to nutri­tion, sports, med­ica­tion but also loss and trauma?
Which sources and bod­ies of knowl­edge are deemed legit­i­mate for what
rea­sons, and how are they negotiated?
Do dai­ly health-relat­ed deci­sions reflect gen­der and age-related
hier­ar­chies?
How do fam­i­ly mem­bers deal with gov­ern­men­tal and oth­er institutional
expec­ta­tions con­cern­ing their role as cen­tral sites of caregiving?

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Jul 25 – Jul 28, 2023

Troubled Knowledge: Health, Harm and the Environment in late Industrialism

Pan­el

Pan­el at the DGSKA (Deutsche Gesel­len­schaft für Sozial- und Kul­tur­an­thro­polo­gie) con­fer­ence in Munich

Over the last decades, a grow­ing num­ber of schol­ars in the nat­ur­al and
social sci­ences have shown the dev­as­tat­ing health effects of
envi­ron­men­tal pol­lu­tion on humans and oth­er liv­ing beings. Hydrocarbon
extrac­tion, chem­i­cal pol­lu­tants with­in exten­sive plan­ta­tion regimes as
well as the envi­ron­men­tal effects of glob­al sup­ply-chains are only some
exam­ples of con­tem­po­rary eco­nom­ic, indus­tri­al, agri­cul­tur­al and medical
activ­i­ties, which are deeply gen­dered and racial­ized. All this has
con­tributed to envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion, the break­down of biological
and social sys­tems as well as the increase of chron­ic health problems,
hit­ting par­tic­u­lar­ly the most pre­car­i­ous, in both the Glob­al South and
North. While numer­ous pub­lic actors cor­rob­o­rate the valid­i­ty of such
knowl­edge, oth­er actors, how­ev­er, con­test not only the intertwinements
between envi­ron­men­tal pol­lu­tion and health issues but also its
anthro­po­ge­n­e­sis.
We wish to dis­cuss in how far anthro­po­log­i­cal meth­ods pro­vide the
nec­es­sary time and depth to fur­ther knowl­edge on expe­ri­ences and
rela­tions through which grow­ing lev­els of tox­i­c­i­ty, pol­lu­tion, and
atmos­pher­ic warm­ing man­i­fest as health is-sues, as well as to understand
the con­tro­ver­sial and infor­mal forms of knowl­edge pro­duc­tion that
sur­round this. There­fore, we ask: Through which knowl­edge prac­tices do
eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal actors try to obfus­cate the con­nec­tions between
pol­lu­tion, tox­i­c­i­ties and human and more-than-human dis­ease? Which role
does anthro­po­log­i­cal knowl­edge play in ongo­ing debates about the health
effects of late indus­tri­al­ism? How do peo­ple and activists on the ground
pro­duce and spread de-colo­nial, anti-ableist, par­tic­i­pa­to­ry and
col­lab­o­ra­tive knowl­edge about the rela­tions between health and
envi­ron­ments? In which ways do dai­ly liv­ing expe­ri­ences, that
anthro­po­log­i­cal knowl­edge is based on, chal­lenge and com­pli­cate existing
causative mod­els about the dis/juncture between envi­ron­men­tal pollution
and health effects in human afterlives?
Please send a text of max. 200 words direct­ly to the workshop
orga­niz­ers. Dead­line: 15 Decem­ber 2022
Gior­gio Brocco
Depart­ment of Social and Cul­tur­al Anthropology
Uni­ver­si­ty of Vienna
Uni­ver­sitätsstraße 7 (NIG)
1010 Wien
Raum: C0412
T: +43–1‑4277–49535

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Aug 21 – Aug 23, 2023

The Psychology of Religion in an Entangled World

Con­fer­ence

IAPR con­fer­ence in Groningen

Schol­ars in the Psy­chol­o­gy of Reli­gion (PoR) employ dif­fer­ent dis­ci­pli­nary and method­olog­i­cal per­spec­tives to study diverse top­ics, such as lived spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, reli­gious diver­si­ty and health and well­be­ing. Chal­lenges such as glob­al­iza­tion, cli­mate change and shift­ing pow­er struc­tures make many of these top­ics increas­ing­ly com­plex. The PoR requires new hori­zons to tack­le them: nov­el method­olog­i­cal tools, the­o­ret­i­cal insights, col­lab­o­ra­tions and a crit­i­cal rein­ter­pre­ta­tion and decol­o­niza­tion. This con­fer­ence aims to bring togeth­er experts who can offer fresh per­spec­tives to the PoR because of their unique method­olog­i­cal approach or (inter)disciplinary back­ground and who will inspire the field to address today’s chal­lenges in new ways.

To explore new hori­zons for the PoR, we have invit­ed keynote speak­ers from dif­fer­ent dis­ci­pli­nary back­grounds who, in their research, all focus on cur­rent soci­etal and sci­en­tif­ic chal­lenges. Their keynotes will engage in dia­logue with the PoR and offer new per­spec­tives on reli­gion, men­tal health and stress resilience; extrem­ism, ter­ror­ism, and con­flict; cli­mate change and envi­ron­men­tal­ism; and reli­gion, gen­der and diversity.

https://www.netherlands.iaprweb.org/

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Aug 24 – Aug 25, 2023

Reproductive technologies and the Remaking of Life and Death

Con­fer­ence

Inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ence by Techn­oDeath at Aal­borg Uni­ver­si­ty in Copenhagen

The increas­ing glob­al devel­op­ment and use of repro­duc­tive tech­nolo­gies have prompt­ed repro­duc­tive schol­ars with­in the social sci­ences and human­i­ties to raise ques­tions regard­ing how fam­i­ly, kin­ship, race, gen­der, sex­u­al­i­ty, and dis­abil­i­ties inter­sect. Such stud­ies have focused not least on how the selec­tion of gametes, chil­dren, and par­ents takes place dur­ing med­ical treat­ment. Over­all, these stud­ies have illus­trat­ed how repro­duc­tive tech­nolo­gies are always tech­nolo­gies of biopol­i­tics, as they poten­tial­ly reflect on the gov­ern­ing of both life and death. Mean­while, com­pared to how repro­duc­tive tech­nolo­gies are seen to remake life, the tech­no­log­i­cal remak­ing of death has yet to be grant­ed the same amount of schol­ar­ly attention.

At this inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ence, we want to recen­ter the focus of repro­duc­tive stud­ies to explore how tech­nolo­gies remake death as it inter­sects with life. We hope to engage in a range of dif­fer­ent cas­es regard­ing how life and death emerge and are under­stood, such as dur­ing the cry­op­reser­va­tion and stor­age of gametes, in stud­ies of fam­i­ly plan­ning, in the use of pre­na­tal screen­ing, and in tech­nolo­gies involved in mis­car­riages, fetal reduc­tion, abor­tions, still births, births, neona­tal care, and infant death. We there­by hope to unpack how death emerges in rela­tion to tech­nolo­gies involved, how cells, fetal tis­sue, and bod­ies that are dead become man­aged, and how peo­ple live with deaths after they have ter­mi­nat­ed a preg­nan­cy or expe­ri­enced infant death. We hope to bring for­ward embod­ied sto­ries of how tech­no­log­i­cal remaking’s of life and death are expe­ri­enced, unpack­ing these sto­ries in rela­tion to how repro­duc­tive inequal­i­ties and cur­rent local and glob­al forms of repro­duc­tive and pop­u­la­tion pol­i­tics unfold.

We invite con­tri­bu­tions to think about and relate to ques­tions such as the following:

How does tech­nol­o­gy remake death and dying at the begin­ning of life?
How are colo­nial pasts, as well as racial­ized and gen­dered per­cep­tions of bod­ies, entan­gled in the use of tech­nolo­gies of life and death at the begin­ning of life?
What bio- and necrop­o­lit­i­cal prac­tices are involved in the pop­u­la­tion pol­i­tics at stake glob­al­ly regard­ing bod­ies that are enabled to either live or die?
How does the cry­op­reser­va­tion of gametes relate to life and death, giv­en that the sus­pen­sion of life is enabled?
How does tech­nol­o­gy shape expe­ri­ences and pol­i­tics regard­ing abor­tion globally?
As med­ical staff, what is it like to work with tech­nolo­gies enabling life and death?
How are abor­tion and fetal reduc­tion expe­ri­enced by preg­nant persons?
How are tech­nolo­gies entan­gled with affect or emo­tions dur­ing the process of mak­ing life and death?
How do legal and med­ical tech­nolo­gies inter­sect as per­cep­tions of qual­i­ty of life are assessed in deci­sions on whether to allow some­one to live or die?
How are tech­nolo­gies used to man­age the deaths of fetus­es and infants in mater­ni­ty wards and neona­tal inten­sive care units until the bur­ial or dis­pos­al of the body, and what norms of affect and griev­ing are implied?
How do par­ents who have lost a child or ter­mi­nat­ed a preg­nan­cy live with the remak­ing of death and dying through technologies?
How can tech­nolo­gies of life and death at the begin­ning of life be the­o­ret­i­cal­ly conceptualized?
What are the method­olog­i­cal chal­lenges of study­ing tech­nolo­gies of life and death at the begin­ning of life?

Kind regards,
Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor Stine Willum Adri­an and PhD fel­low Lau­ra Louise Heinsen

https://www.kultur.aau.dk/forskning/forskningsgrupper/caf/technodeath/konference

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Sep 8 – Sep 9, 2023

AGEM Annual Conference 35 – Krisen, Körper, Kompetenzen. Methoden und Potentiale medizinanthropologischen Forschens

AGEM event

35. Jahresta­gung der Arbeits­ge­mein­schaft Eth­nolo­gie und Medi­zin (AGEM) in Koop­er­a­tion mit dem 20. Arbeit­str­e­f­fen der Kom­mis­sion Medi­z­inan­thro­polo­gie der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Empirische Kul­tur­wis­senschaft (DGEKW) im War­burg-Haus in Hamburg

Krisen und die Rede von Krisen haben Kon­junk­tur. Neben Umwelt‑, Versorgungs‑, und Finanzkrise haben nicht zulet­zt die Ver­bre­itung von SARS-CoV­‑2 und die damit ver­bun­de­nen erhe­blichen sozialen, poli­tis­chen, gesund­heitlichen und wirtschaftlichen Fol­gen vie­len vor Augen geführt, wie frag­il Gesellschaften und gesellschaftlich­er Zusam­men­halt sind.  Krisen- und Lim­i­nal­ität­ser­fahrun­gen stellen soziale Ord­nun­gen in ihren alltäglichen Selb­stver­ständlichkeit­en in Frage und sind im sozialen Wan­del bspw. an Übergän­gen des Lebensver­laufes wie Geburt, Schulein­tritt, Pubertät, Beruf­swahl, Part­ner­schaft, Kinder, Ruh­e­s­tand oder dro­hen­der Tod selb­st alltäglich. Als per­sön­liche Krisen kön­nen sie das Leben erschüt­tern, z. B. durch die Diag­nose ein­er unheil­baren oder chro­nis­chen Krankheit oder durch den Ver­lust eines nah­este­hen­den Men­schen und Risse in der eige­nen Biogra­phie verur­sachen, die, neben unvorherge­se­henen Ereignis­sen, durch inter­sek­tionale soziale Mar­gin­al­isierun­gen, bspw. im Kon­text von Dis­abil­i­ties, ver­stärkt wer­den. In der gegen­wär­ti­gen Sit­u­a­tion spitzt sich die Frage nach den in Krisen einge­bun­de­nen Kör­pern weit­er zu.

Mit dieser Tagung richt­en wir den Fokus auf die medi­z­inan­thro­pol­o­gis­che Erforschung der alltäglichen Erfahrun­gen und kör­per­lichen Dimen­sio­nen von Krisen. Wir fra­gen nach den Verkör­pe­run­gen per­ma­nen­ter Krisen­er­fahrun­gen und Mod­i­fika­tio­nen der sinnlichen Wahrnehmung und des Erlebens, die in ihren Fol­gen selb­st im Gesund­heitssys­tem rel­e­vant wer­den, eben­so wie nach deren Bew­er­tun­gen im Span­nungs­feld von Degen­er­a­tion und Resilienz als ver­lorene oder gewonnene Kom­pe­ten­zen. Gle­ichzeit­ig fra­gen wir nach den Poten­tialen medi­z­inan­thro­pol­o­gis­chen Forschens und laden dazu ein, method­ol­o­gis­che Fra­gen gegen­stands­be­zo­gen zu disku­tieren. Zen­tral für diese Diskus­sion sind unter anderem kol­lab­o­ra­tive und par­tizipa­tive Forschungsan­sätze, die die kon­ven­tionelle Dichotomie der Forschen­den und der zu Erforschen­den hin­ter­fra­gen. Die medi­z­inan­thro­pol­o­gis­che Forschung zeigt, wie Gesund­heit­sideen und ‑prak­tiken soziale Ungle­ich­heit nicht nur zum Aus­druck brin­gen, son­dern auch per­pe­tu­ieren und ver­stärken kön­nen. Mögliche weit­ere Fra­gen sind, welche Her­aus­forderun­gen sich bei der Erforschung kör­per­lich­er Erfahrung und sinnlich­er Wahrnehmungen für das ethno­graphis­che Schreiben ergeben, welche method­ol­o­gis­chen Neuerun­gen, die vor allem durch die pan­demis­che Aus­nahme­si­t­u­a­tion ent­standen sind, das qual­i­ta­tive Forschungsspek­trum der Medi­z­inan­thro­polo­gie erweit­ern und welche neuen Wege zur Reflex­ion dig­i­taler Forschungsmeth­o­d­en sich eröffnet haben.

Keynote: Prof. Dr. Hel­la von Unger (LMU München).

Die Tagung ist inter­diszi­plinär aus­gerichtet und wen­det sich an Wissenschaftler*innen aus Eth­nolo­gie, Europäis­ch­er Ethnologie/Kulturanthropologie, Medi­z­inan­thro­polo­gie, Sozi­olo­gie, Geschichte, Geschlechter­forschung, Medi­zin, Reli­gions- und Medi­en­wis­senschaft sowie angren­zen­den Diszi­plinen. Dabei möcht­en wir expliz­it auch Nachwuchswissenschaftler*innen ein­laden, sich am inter­diszi­plinären Aus­tausch zu beteili­gen. Die Tagungssprache wird Deutsch sein.

Inter­essierte wer­den gebeten, ein Abstract ihres Vor­trags­the­mas (500 Wörter) zusam­men mit ein­er Kurzbi­ogra­phie bis zum 1. Mai 2023 an fol­gende Adresse zu senden: info@agem.de

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Sep 13 – Sep 14, 2023

Socialist Governmentality? Healthcare, technologies of the self, and subjectification in European state socialism, 1945–1990

Work­shop

Work­shop at the Insti­tute for the His­to­ry of Med­i­cine and Ethics in Med­i­cine – Char­ité Uni­ver­sitätsmedi­zin Berlin

The two-day work­shop aims to dis­cuss the ques­tion, whether and how Michel Foucault’s ideas on lib­er­al (and cap­i­tal­ist) “gov­ern­men­tal­i­ty” can be pro­duc­tive­ly applied on con­tem­po­rary or his­tor­i­cal social­ist soci­eties. It intends to take a clos­er look at gov­ern­men­tal­i­ty, not from the per­spec­tive of pol­i­cy mak­ers or the pow­er appa­ra­tus, but by using the exam­ple of health­care in post-1945 Social­ist Europe.

Socialist Governmentality? Healthcare, technologies of the self, and subjectification in European state socialism, 1945–1990

After the col­lapse of the Cold War two-bloc sys­tem in 1989/90, his­to­ri­og­ra­phy and social sci­ences tend­ed to sharply con­trast post-World War II social­ist and non-social­ist soci­eties. Recent­ly, the focus has shift­ed to a more com­pre­hen­sive and nuanced per­spec­tive inter­est­ed in dif­fer­ences as much as par­al­lels, includ­ing inter­sec­tions and con­ver­gences between the two sys­tems. Some even ask, if the Iron Cur­tain might not be bet­ter described as a per­me­able Nylon Cur­tain. In this con­text, a more gen­er­al ques­tion has emerged: whether and how Michel Foucault’s ideas on lib­er­al (and cap­i­tal­ist) “gov­ern­men­tal­i­ty”, first for­mu­lat­ed in 1977/78, can be pro­duc­tive­ly applied on con­tem­po­rary or his­tor­i­cal social­ist soci­eties. After all, at first glance the lib­er­al and indi­vid­u­al­ized tech­nolo­gies of the self stand in sharp con­trast to the ide­o­log­i­cal­ly shaped and admin­is­tra­tive­ly medi­at­ed for­ma­tion of a “social­ist personality”.

It is hard­ly con­tro­ver­sial that the Fou­cauldian con­cept of “biopol­i­tics” – secur­ing and enhanc­ing “life” of the gov­erned “pop­u­la­tion” – is a very use­ful tool for ana­lyz­ing both social­ist and non-social­ist gov­ern­ment poli­cies when it comes to, for exam­ple, birth reg­u­la­tion and prona­tal­ism, agri­cul­tur­al poli­cies or pre­ven­tive health­care regimes. “Gov­ern­men­tal­i­ty” as defined by Fou­cault, how­ev­er, char­ac­ter­izes a kind of biopol­i­tics which seems to be specif­i­cal­ly con­nect­ed to a way of live in neolib­er­al-demo­c­ra­t­ic and cap­i­tal­ist soci­eties. The con­cept focus­es on “pri­vate” lifestyles (diet and phys­i­cal activ­i­ty, sex, emo­tions, etc.). The shap­ing of indi­vid­ual behav­ior and sub­jec­tiv­i­ty through a “con­duct of con­duct” ensures that the individual’s striv­ing for auton­o­my and their capac­i­ty for self-con­trol, self-reliance, and reflex­iv­i­ty serve the (pre­sumed) com­mon good. Gov­ern­men­tal­i­ty, then, describes how self-con­duct simul­ta­ne­ous­ly “gov­erns” oth­ers by gov­ern­ing one­self in ways that are desir­able for the poli­ty and accept­able to the governed.

In the last decades, the con­cept of gov­ern­men­tal­i­ty helped to under­stand how neolib­er­al­ism made cit­i­zens respon­si­ble for the for­mer tasks of the post­war-wel­fare state and how the mar­ket redis­trib­uted those tasks to the indi­vid­ual (sub­ject). From this the­o­ret­i­cal stand­point, gov­ern­men­tal­i­ty seems incom­pat­i­ble with social­ist ide­ol­o­gy, state con­trol, phys­i­cal repres­sion, and the pre­rog­a­tive of the col­lec­tive. In recent years, how­ev­er, we learned that pur­su­ing a bot­tom-up per­spec­tive can pro­vide addi­tion­al or even deep­er insights into the com­plex­i­ties of social­ist real­i­ties. This is the aim of the pro­posed work­shop: To take a clos­er look at gov­ern­men­tal­i­ty, not from the per­spec­tive of pol­i­cy mak­ers or the pow­er appa­ra­tus, but by using the exam­ple of health­care in post-1945 Social­ist Europe.

We pro­pose to explore con­crete exam­ples from every­day health­care set­tings – in psy­cho­log­i­cal coun­sel­ing, clin­i­cal social work, and com­mu­ni­ty med­i­cine, in treat­ing chron­ic dis­eases and in pre­ven­tive health­care, in school edu­ca­tion and the work­place, in healthy leisure activ­i­ties, and in shap­ing a hap­py fam­i­ly life. What mech­a­nisms of dis­sem­i­na­tion, recep­tion, and medi­a­tion of self-tech­niques can be found and ana­lyzed? Were ele­ments or pat­terns of gov­ern­men­tal­i­ty trans­ferred from the West to the East or do we also find “home-grown” inven­tions? Were social­ist soci­eties more “lib­er­al” than they realised and want­ed to be? If so, what does this mean for the way we look at gov­ern­men­tal­i­ty in “West­ern” societies?

The work­shop will be held in Berlin on Sep­tem­ber 13–14, 2023. We plan this to be a fair­ly small group of peo­ple to make the dis­cus­sions as open and live­ly as pos­si­ble. To facil­i­tate a pro­duc­tive dis­cus­sion, we invite papers from ongo­ing research that will be dis­trib­uted to par­tic­i­pants (and com­men­ta­tors) in advance. Expens­es for trav­el and hotel will be cov­ered. We wel­come abstracts in Eng­lish of no more than 300 words. Please send an abstract and a short CV by e‑mail (henriette.voelker@charite.de) by Decem­ber 19, 2022.

The work­shop is orga­nized by Dr. Alexa Geisthöv­el and Lau­ra Hot­ten­rott (both ERC Leviathan) and Prof. Dr. Vio­la Balz (FOR “normal#verrückt”). We grate­ful­ly acknowl­edge the sup­port of the Euro­pean Research Coun­cil (ERC Grant 854503) and the Ger­man Research Foun­da­tion (DFG FOR 3031). Please do not hes­i­tate to con­tact us if you have any questions.

Kon­takt

alexandra.geisthoevel@charite.de
laura.hottenrott@charite.de
viola.balz@charite.de
volker.hess@charite.de

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Past events

2023

May 24 , 2023

Cholera in the Indian Ocean World since the Nineteenth Century

Workshop

Workshop at the Institute for Social Anthropology (ISA), Austrian Academy of Sciences

Link to this event

May 23 - May 24, 2023

Global fat resources: Connecting themes, approaches and narratives, ca. 1850-2022

Conference

Conference at the University of Bergen

Link to this event

May 08 - May 10, 2023

Hope, Hype and Lowering Expectations in the Life Science Industry

Panel

Panel at the 21th Annual STS Conference Graz 2023 „Critical Issues in Science, Technology and Society Studies“

Link to this event

Apr 27 - Apr 30, 2023

In the Frictions. Fragments of Care, Health, and Wellbeing in the Balkans

Conference

Conference at the University of Zadar, Croatia organized by the Department of Ethnology and Anthropology, University of Zadar, Croatia and the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade, Serbia

Link to this event

Apr 27 - Apr 30, 2023

Ecologies of Mind

Conference

Biennial Meeting of the Society of Psychological Anthropology at the University of San Diego, CA

Link to this event

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