Events

Panel

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 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 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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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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Past panels

2023

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 11 - Apr 14, 2023

The human social in psychiatric practice

Panel

Panel at the ASA 2023 conference "An unwell world? Anthropology in a speculative mode" in London

Link to this event

Apr 11 - Apr 14, 2023

Is all well with birth? Anthropological contributions to reproductive and maternal health systems

Panel

Panel at the ASA 2023 conference "An unwell world? Anthropology in a speculative mode" in London

Link to this event

Apr 11 - Apr 14, 2023

Creating well-being: biosocial approaches to practices of making well

Panel

Panel at the ASA 2023 conference „An Unwell World? Anthropology in a Speculative Mode” at the University of London

Link to this event

Apr 11 - Apr 14, 2023

Capitalism, Labour and Being ‘Unwell’: Workers in and Beyond Toxic Embodiments

Panel

Panel at the ASA 2023 conference "An Unwell World? Anthropology in a Speculative Mode" at the University of London

Link to this event

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