At the borders of biomedicine: how health and care are reconfigured as do-able problems beyond biomedical expertise

Datum
11. Juni – 13. Juni 2025 

CfP for a con­fer­ence in Milano, Italy

CfP for the pan­el „At the bor­ders of bio­med­i­cine: how health and care are recon­fig­ured as do-able prob­lems beyond bio­med­ical expertise”
10th STS Italia Con­fer­ence “Techno­science for Good: Design­ing, Car­ing, and Reconfiguring”
Politec­ni­co di Milano, Milan, Italy
11–13 June 2025

Fol­low this link: https://stsitalia.org/submission-2025/ and sub­mit a title, an abstract of up to 500 words, and key­words by 3 Feb­ru­ary 2025 (this dead­line will NOT be extended). 

Pan­el 25

At the bor­ders of bio­med­i­cine: how health and care are recon­fig­ured as do-able prob­lems beyond bio­med­ical expertise

In con­tem­po­rary soci­eties, neolib­er­al eco­nom­ic arrange­ments and the rise of con­sumerism have sig­nif­i­cant­ly reshaped cul­tur­al expec­ta­tions and rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the body, fram­ing health as a high­ly indi­vid­u­al­ized and moral­ly charged respon­si­bil­i­ty. Indi­vid­u­als are expect­ed to seek knowl­edge, exer­cise moral judg­ment, par­tic­i­pate in health­care deci­sions, and min­i­mize health risks through per­son­al choic­es. This empha­sis on per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty is reflect­ed not only in pub­lic health dis­cours­es but also in knowl­edge domains that sit at the epis­temic bound­aries of bio­med­i­cine. Con­se­quent­ly, it is impor­tant to explore how these new pub­lic health dis­cours­es have cre­at­ed space for alter­na­tive practices—such as med­i­ta­tion, nutri­tion­al ther­a­pies, dance ther­a­py, and heal­ing meth­ods drawn from natur­opa­thy and homeopathy—to enter the health­care are­na. These prac­tices are sup­port­ed by an increased empha­sis on indi­vid­ual choice, ther­a­peu­tic plu­ral­ism, and asso­ci­at­ed fund­ing packages. 

Approach­es that encom­pass health and well­ness prac­tices that lie out­side and are not accept­ed with­in bio­med­i­cine, oth­er­wise labeled as “refused knowl­edge”, do not sim­ply reflect an alleged oppo­si­tion to bio­med­ical advice stem­ming from health illit­er­a­cy or dis­trust of med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers. Instead, they sig­ni­fy a demand from cit­i­zens, con­sumers, and patient advo­ca­cy groups to become more informed and account­able in their rela­tion­ship with bio­med­i­cine. This trend involves “open­ing the black box” of bio­med­i­cine, crit­i­cal­ly assess­ing its inner work­ings. Fur­ther research is need­ed to explore how alter­na­tive knowl­edge sys­tems chal­lenge bio­med­ical bound­aries and con­tribute to shap­ing con­tem­po­rary under­stand­ings of health and care. 

This pan­el aims to bring togeth­er mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary STS research to deep­en our under­stand­ing of the social and epis­temic con­di­tions under which health and care are dis­cur­sive­ly and mate­ri­al­ly enact­ed as “do-able prob­lems” at the mar­gins of bio­med­ical sci­ence. It seeks to ana­lyze the extent to which such enact­ment may reduce indi­vid­u­als’ reliance on pre­vail­ing med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers by pro­mot­ing activ­i­ties such as self-care, health enhance­ment, chron­ic dis­ease man­age­ment, and the acqui­si­tion of diag­nos­tic and ther­a­peu­tic skills, there­by increas­ing­ly shift­ing med­ical exper­tise and respon­si­bil­i­ty to the individual.

We invite schol­ars and prac­ti­tion­ers to sub­mit the­o­ret­i­cal, empir­i­cal, and/or method­olog­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions that explore how forms of health and care emerg­ing at the bound­aries of sci­ence reshape bio­med­ical author­i­ty while becom­ing entan­gled in con­tem­po­rary pol­i­tics of life. 

We espe­cial­ly encour­age a focus on the inter­sec­tion of knowl­edge-mak­ing prac­tices and indi­vid­u­al­iza­tion process­es, and how these process­es are enact­ed in rela­tion to bod­i­ly expe­ri­ences, health, and care man­age­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly with regard to the empha­sis on per­son­al and moral respon­si­bil­i­ty for health. 

Con­trib­u­tors may focus on the fol­low­ing dimensions: 

• Ana­lyze how health and care are prac­ticed at the bound­aries of bio­med­ical sciences. 

• Exam­ine clas­si­fi­ca­tion sys­tems, tech­ni­cal objects, ther­a­peu­tic prac­tices, care rela­tion­ships, self-exper­i­men­tal tech­niques, evi­dence pro­duc­tion, and pub­lic com­mu­ni­ca­tion strate­gies that either rein­force or chal­lenge the nar­ra­tives and nor­ma­tive stances fram­ing health as an indi­vid­u­al­ized moral respon­si­bil­i­ty and per­son­al duty. 

• Explore knowl­edge legit­imiza­tion strate­gies employed to frame health and care as do-able prob­lems beyond bio­med­ical expertise. 

• Pro­vide method­olog­i­cal reflec­tions on the impor­tance of main­tain­ing a non-nor­ma­tive, sym­met­ri­cal per­spec­tive when study­ing health and care prac­tices beyond the bio­med­ical, while also con­sid­er­ing the researcher’s posi­tion­al­i­ty in the field.

If you have any ques­tions please email to stefano.crabu@unipd.it.