Carcinogenesis, Toxicity and the Epidemic of Cancer

Datum
13. Jan­u­ar 2025 

CfP for Pan­el at Health, Envi­ron­ment and Anthro­pol­o­gy (HEAT) Con­fer­ence at Durham University

CfP for pan­el on „Car­cino­gen­e­sis, Tox­i­c­i­ty and the Epi­dem­ic of Cancer”
Health, Envi­ron­ment and Anthro­pol­o­gy (HEAT) Con­fer­ence at Durham University
23–24 April 2025
Dead­line 13th of January

If you would like to join the pan­el, please sub­mit an abstract of 250 words via the Abstract Man­age­ment por­tal.

CFP: Car­cino­gen­e­sis, Tox­i­c­i­ty and the Epi­dem­ic of Cancer

The cli­mat­ic and envi­ron­men­tal changes brought about by the forces of indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion, cap­i­tal­ism, empire, and glob­al ‘devel­op­ment’ are becom­ing increas­ing­ly vis­i­ble. But vital too are changes wrought that are less vis­i­ble – the chem­i­cal alter­ations induced in water, soil, air, crops, ani­mal and human bod­ies that are hav­ing pro­found effects on health and well­be­ing. Respon­si­bil­i­ty and con­se­quences are dis­trib­uted in deeply unequal ways (Choy 2016). In this pan­el we focus specif­i­cal­ly on the car­cino­genic effects of this tox­i­c­i­ty. While sci­en­tif­ic inves­ti­ga­tion into links between indus­tri­al envi­ron­men­tal con­t­a­m­i­na­tion and car­cino­gen­e­sis has been under­de­vel­oped in favour of that which fore­grounds per­son­al agency and indi­vid­ual choice, a grow­ing body of anthro­po­log­i­cal schol­ar­ship has begun to reori­ent this research agen­da. Draw­ing on exam­ples such as peanut pro­duc­tion in Sene­gal (Tou­sig­nant 2022), open-pit min­ing in Spain (Fer­nán­dez-Navar­ro et al., 2012), nuclear waste dis­pos­al in the USA (Cram 2023 & Mas­co 2021), and agri­cul­tur­al pes­ti­cide use in Kenya (Prince 2021), schol­ars have start­ed to probe the con­nec­tions between cor­po­rate and indus­tri­al inter­ests and the ‘epi­dem­ic’ of can­cer, in an effort to think through the rela­tion­ship between the liv­ing and its milieu in nov­el ways (Can­guil­hem 2001). We invite papers that advance these analy­ses of ‘car­cino­genic account­abil­i­ty’, and exam­ine how risks of car­cino­genic expo­sure are made vis­i­ble and invis­i­ble, embraced and resist­ed, and stud­ied. We are par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in research which under­takes semi­otic and mate­r­i­al cul­tur­al analy­ses of the fol­low­ing con­cepts: ‘exposed’, ‘tox­ic’, ‘safe’, ‘car­cino­genic’, and/or inter­ro­gate the eth­i­cal, epis­temic, and reg­u­la­to­ry con­junc­tures with­in which these cat­e­gories operate. 

You do not have to be an RAI or ASA mem­ber to pro­pose a paper. 

Pro­pos­als should con­sist of: 

- The title of the panel
– The title of the paper you wish to present
– An abstract of no more than 250 words. 

Paper pro­pos­als must be sub­mit­ted via the sub­mis­sion sys­tem and will be reviewed by pan­el convenors.