Transfigurations of Uncertainty in Health and Medicine

In the inter­con­nect­ed and poly­cen­tric world in which we live, cer­tain­ty and uncer­tain­ty of knowl­edge are both cen­tral to the ways of how health and med­i­cine are organ­ised, expe­ri­enced and prac­ticed. In spite of the rapid­ly grow­ing exten­sion of sci­ence-based knowl­edge, this very knowl­edge, its reli­a­bil­i­ty, valid­i­ty and rel­e­vance has become con­test­ed. Pop­ulism, scep­ti­cism or plain hos­til­i­ty towards sci­ence, and “alter­na­tive facts” some­times replace informed debates. This cri­sis of knowl­edge-informed prac­tices are all the more rel­e­vant in the face of suf­fer­ing, ill­ness and dying, when the via­bil­i­ty and well­be­ing of one­self and of those close to us are threat­ened and when tra­di­tion­al ways of cop­ing are called into ques­tion. The quest for cer­tain­ty has always been a defin­ing fea­ture of med­ical prac­tice, and espe­cial­ly for diag­no­sis and sub­se­quent treat­ment options. In this modal­i­ty, this quest and the aris­ing uncer­tain­ty are not only inher­ent in med­ical prac­tice per se, but, impor­tant­ly, they are also a prod­uct of the inter­con­nect­ed­ness of var­i­ous het­ero­ge­neous social domains and process­es, such as neolib­er­al­i­sa­tion, the leap­ing pace of tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion, or new alliances of polit­i­cal actors.

We sug­gest the recent­ly devel­oped con­cept of trans­fig­u­ra­tion as an ana­lyt­i­cal lens by which to explore the inter­con­nect­ed­ness of social domains as they are entan­gled with cur­rent social and med­ical prac­tices. The con­cept lends itself par­tic­u­lar­ly well, we believe, for tack­ling and com­pre­hend­ing the het­ero­gene­ity and com­plex­i­ty involved in cur­rent med­ical prac­tices, of which uncer­tain­ty is an impor­tant aspect. Trans­fig­u­ra­tion fol­lows the approach of fig­u­ra­tional the­o­ry, devel­oped by Nor­bert Elias (1978), and fur­ther devel­ops the work on social­i­ty of Mar­i­lyn Strath­ern (1988), Long and Moore (2013) and oth­ers. By trans­fig­u­ra­tion Mattes, Hadolt and Obrist (under review) refer to “(1) the con­stant­ly unfold­ing process of par­tic­u­lar extend­ed fig­u­ra­tions encoun­ter­ing, affect­ing and becom­ing enmeshed in each oth­er as well as (2) the (tem­porar­i­ly) sta­bi­lized fig­u­ra­tional arrange­ments emerg­ing from these enmesh­ments”. We aim for a posthu­man­ist per­spec­tive by putting cen­tre stage the “proces­su­al engage­ment and dis­en­gage­ment of humans with each oth­er and their mate­r­i­al and non- mate­r­i­al worlds with­in and across par­tic­u­lar fig­u­ra­tions, i.e. rela­tions of pow­er and webs of social inter­de­pen­dences” (Mattes et al.; see also Kehr et al. 2019).

As an ana­lyt­i­cal tool, uncer­tain­ty can both be con­cep­tu­alised as a gen­uine epis­te­mo­log­i­cal cri­sis of cur­rent med­ical prac­tice and as an onto­log­i­cal state of the patients and prac­ti­tion­ers who finds them­selves thrown into the above described nexus. Which are cru­cial modes of cur­rent uncer­tain­ties in health and med­i­cine and how do they emerge? How do they shape and yield med­ical prac­tices, dis­cours­es and envi­ron­ments? In which ways can we make sense of the dynam­ic con­nec­tiv­i­ty that links med­i­cine with a mul­ti­tude of oth­er soci­etal domains such as pol­i­cy-mak­ing, pub­lic admin­is­tra­tion, sci­en­tif­ic research, the pri­vate prof­it-mak­ing sec­tor, human­i­tar­i­an work, the media, reli­gion or law, and by doing so engen­ders forms of uncer­tain­ty? What are the man­ners by which we can under­stand health relat­ed phe­nom­e­na and the impli­cat­ed uncer­tain­ty as they become man­i­fest and change over time – some­times incre­men­tal­ly, some­times abrupt­ly – in var­i­ous prac­tices, con­stel­la­tions and atmos­pheres? How, final­ly, can we make sense of the appre­hen­sions, con­cerns, hopes, imag­ined futures and feel­ings of the peo­ple who affect and are affect­ed by such process­es as they con­sti­tute their spe­cif­ic worlds and them­selves and vice versa?

1

These are cen­tral ques­tions that the 11th MAAH con­fer­ence 2020 seeks to dis­cuss. We invite con­tri­bu­tions, prefer­ably both ethnog­ra­phy-based and the­o­ry inspired, that address these issues in one or more of the fol­low­ing four the­mat­ic clusters:

(1) Med­ical futures

Besides ‘risk talk’, med­ical prac­tice has always been under­pinned by a dis­course on hope and a bet­ter future. The pro­claimed rev­o­lu­tions in med­i­cine, such as the def­i­nite can­cer cure, has char­ac­terised med­ical pop­u­lar dis­course and imag­i­na­tion ever since the big tech­no­log­i­cal rev­o­lu­tions of the 19th and 20th cen­tu­ry. Today, these dis­cours­es are focussed on the usages of syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy, gene edit­ing, and of Big Data and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gences. The dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion of med­i­cine and of health care data of patients has been dom­i­nat­ing pub­lic debates for the last twen­ty years. Pub­lic health offi­cials have resort­ed to a dis­course of the ‘tech­ni­cal fix’ of med­ical prob­lems, and of pre­ven­tion and risk to tame uncer­tain­ty by cast­ing ques­tions of fac­tu­al­i­ty and poten­tial­i­ty in terms of prob­a­bil­i­ty. In doing so, they con­tribute to a gen­er­al cli­mate of uncer­tain­ty, e.g. on debates of con­trol­ling epi­demics and pan­demics. This is becom­ing ever more so polit­i­cal prac­tice when it comes to the future impact of cli­mate change on health and illness

(2) Med­ical tech­nolo­gies, infra­struc­tures and materialities

Tech­no­log­i­cal advances of diag­nos­tic and ther­a­peu­tic med­ical pro­ce­dures and the – expect­ed and unex­pect­ed – field of action that they afford have at the same time enabled and hin­dered inno­va­tion. In part, this has been due to the pace in which bureau­cra­cy and the spe­cif­ic gov­er­nance of its appli­ca­tion often lag behind. Pol­i­cy mak­ers in the UK, for exam­ple, allow for the inno­v­a­tive usage of ultra­sound on a pri­vate com­mer­cial lev­el in form of keep­sake ultra­sounds but the usage of portable ultra­sound for diag­nos­tic use in GP surg­eries is not allowed. Nec­es­sary changes in data pro­tec­tion of indi­vid­u­als have led to an ever-increas­ing bur­den of bureau­cra­cy on researchers and med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers, lead­ing to the devel­op­ment of new pro­fes­sions such as data man­agers. These emerg­ing pro­fes­sions deal with the spaces of uncer­tain­ty that Big Data pro­duces. Med­ical pro­ce­dures that rely heav­i­ly on tech­nol­o­gy, such as remote surgery, are chang­ing the rela­tion­ship between med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers and patients, but also between one gen­er­a­tion of prac­ti­tion­ers and anoth­er. Increas­ing­ly, body parts are even more decon­tex­tu­al­ized from real humans than they were ever before in med­ical his­to­ry. Tablet com­put­ers are increas­ing­ly used in rur­al areas of the Glob­al South to scan and send med­ical infor­ma­tion such as ultra­sound images to spe­cialised med­ical cen­tres for diag­nos­tic pur­pos­es, to give the impres­sion of diag­nos­tic cer­tain­ty. Despite offer­ing an oppor­tu­ni­ty to arrive at a bet­ter diag­no­sis, these tech­nolo­gies also con­tribute to the lack of fund­ing for rur­al areas. The rela­tion­ship between the Glob­al South and Glob­al North has influ­enced not only the ways of how med­ical prod­ucts and ser­vices are pro­duced and dis­trib­uted and how ideas, mate­ri­als and humans trav­el, but also research prac­tices, e.g. when it comes to clin­i­cal tri­als and stem cell research and their eth­i­cal dilemmas.

(3) Moral quan­daries and the polic­ing of health

Eth­i­cal and moral dilem­mas in med­i­cine and med­ical research prac­tice have con­tributed to the devel­op­ment of new legal prac­tices in some coun­tries but not in oth­ers and fos­tered med­ical tourism based on these dif­fer­ences with­in and beyond the EU. The com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion of health has also con­tributed to these phe­nom­e­na, espe­cial­ly when it comes to per­son­alised med­ical devices such as self-track­ing wear­ables or ultra­sound keep­sakes. These prac­tices have opened up new areas of quantification/economisation of health and health care, includ­ing new health insur­ance regimes. Gene edit­ing is becom­ing a new real­i­ty and brings about the moral ques­tion of who can afford it and thus who can ben­e­fit from it. Biorepos­i­to­ries enable researchers to spec­i­fy trends in pop­u­la­tion health but at the same time reduce com­plex indi­vid­u­als who live in all kinds of con­texts to a set of num­bers in a decon­tex­u­alised data set. On the pub­lic health lev­el, we encounter dif­fer­ent modes of moral­i­ties and nov­el alliances such as between NGOs and big busi­ness, for instance in the case of immu­ni­sa­tion and vac­ci­na­tion poli­cies where big busi­ness funds vac­ci­na­tion poli­cies. Unreg­u­lat­ed tech­nolo­gies produce

2

a myr­i­ad of data that could poten­tial­ly be used to inform pub­lic health poli­cies in ways that sup­port the inter­ests of par­tic­u­lar stake­hold­ers con­flict­ing with pub­lic inter­est. The pub­lic, but also med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers, researchers, and com­pa­nies seem­ing­ly demand a cer­tain­ty that pol­i­cy mak­ers, legal courts, or pub­lic health, with its dis­course on prob­a­bil­i­ty, often can­not guarantee.

(4) Feel­ings, sub­jec­tiv­i­ties and ways of nav­i­gat­ing health and illness

We know that emo­tions, affects, and feel­ings do not only play a part in how indi­vid­u­als make deci­sions about their care, but they also heav­i­ly influ­ence pol­i­cy mak­ing in pub­lic health. Anx­i­ety aris­es when uncer­tain­ties pro­lif­er­ate. Pol­i­cy mak­ers used psy­cho­log­i­cal terms such as resilience and cop­ing strate­gies rather than address­ing anx­i­eties. This enables a dri­ve towards mak­ing and expect­ing pop­u­la­tions to be more resilient, espe­cial­ly when it comes to health chal­lenges in rela­tion to aging, par­tic­u­lar life styles and chang­ing cli­mate. The dri­ve towards self-opti­mi­sa­tion and a dis­course in pol­i­cy mak­ing of indi­vid­ual respon­si­bil­i­ty con­tribute to these new sub­jec­tiv­i­ties of health and ill­ness which give a false sense of cer­tain­ty in num­bers. On a per­son­al lev­el, many peo­ple inter­pret and deal with these uncer­tain­ties and respon­si­bil­i­ties by resort­ing to con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and believ­ing in “fake news” (e.g. con­cern­ing vac­ci­na­tion and refugees that are blamed of spread­ing diseases).

We are look­ing for­ward to receiv­ing your propo­si­tions for con­tri­bu­tions and an excit­ing conference.

On behalf of the MAAH Sci­en­tif­ic Com­mit­tee, Bern­hard Hadolt and Andrea Stöckl

Ref­er­ences

Elias, Nor­bert (1978). What is Soci­ol­o­gy? New York, Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Press.
Kehr, Jan­i­na, Han­sjo­erg Dil­ger & Peter van Eeuwijk (2019). Trans­fig­u­ra­tions of health and the moral econ­o­my of med­i­cine: Sub­jec­tiv­i­ties, mate­ri­al­i­ties, val­ues. Zeitschrift für Eth­nolo­gie 143(2018): 1–20.
Long, Nicholas J. & Hen­ri­et­ta L. Moore (2013). Intro­duc­tion: Sociality’s New Direc­tions. In: N. J. Long & H. L. Moore, Social­i­ty: New Direc­tions. New York, Berghahn Books: 1–24.Mattes, Dominik, Bern­hard Hadolt & Brig­it Obrist (under review). Rethink­ing Social­i­ty and Health through Transfiguration.
Strath­ern, Mar­i­lyn (1988). The Gen­der of the Gift: Prob­lems with Women and Prob­lems with Soci­ety in Melane­sia. Berke­ley, Calif. [etc.], Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia Press. ***

Con­fer­ence For­mat and Sub­mis­sion Process

We invite con­tri­bu­tions address­ing the con­fer­ence theme and issues men­tioned above. Please sub­mit an abstract (max: 250 words) and a bio­graph­i­cal state­ment by Decem­ber 1, 2019, to maah2020(at)univie.ac.at. A noti­fi­ca­tion of accep­tance will be sent to you by Decem­ber 20, 2019. Due to the work­shop-char­ac­ter of the con­fer­ence, the num­ber of par­tic­i­pants pre­sent­ing a paper will be lim­it­ed to 30. Par­tic­i­pants are expect­ed to read all papers in advance. Com­plete papers (max: 3000 words) to be dis­trib­uted to all par­tic­i­pants must be sub­mit­ted by April 1, 2020.

Loca­tion and Transportation

The con­fer­ence will take place at the Schüttkasten Geras, Aus­tria, locat­ed in a love­ly rur­al area about 80 min­utes by coach north of Vien­na. The Schüttkasten orig­i­nal­ly served as grain stor­age build­ing of the adja­cent Pre­mon­straten­sian monastery Geras. Recent­ly, the build­ing has been ren­o­vat­ed and con­vert­ed into a hotel and con­fer­ence cen­tre. For more details see: https://www.schuettkasten-geras.at/de/schuettkasten/der-schuettkasten.html

Trans­porta­tion by coach from and to Vien­na city cen­tre or Vien­na air­port will be pro­vid­ed. More details will follow.

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Con­fer­ence Fees & Payment

The con­fer­ence fee is esti­mat­ed at 500 € (includ­ing 3 nights accom­mo­da­tion, all meals (excl. drinks), ban­quet din­ner, coach from and to Vien­na city cen­tre or Vien­na air­port). Pay­ment infor­ma­tion will fol­low with noti­fi­ca­tion of acceptance.

Gen­er­al Inquiries & Reg­is­tra­tion Information:

maah2020(at)univie.ac.at
There will be a MAAH 2020 web­site for the con­fer­ence. The web address will be com­mu­ni­cat­ed at a lat­er date. Any fur­ther infor­ma­tion and con­fer­ence updates will be con­veyed via the con­fer­ence website.

XI MAAH 2020 Sci­en­tif­ic Orga­niz­ing Committee:

Bern­hard Hadolt (Uni­ver­si­ty of Vien­na): bernhard.hadolt(at)univie.ac.at Andrea Stöckl (Uni­ver­si­ty of East Anglia): A.Stockl(at)uea.ac.uk

In the inter­con­nect­ed and poly­cen­tric world in which we live, cer­tain­ty and uncer­tain­ty of knowl­edge are both cen­tral to the ways of how health and med­i­cine are organ­ised, expe­ri­enced and prac­ticed. In spite of the rapid­ly grow­ing exten­sion of sci­ence-based knowl­edge, this very knowl­edge, its reli­a­bil­i­ty, valid­i­ty and rel­e­vance has become con­test­ed. Pop­ulism, scep­ti­cism or plain hos­til­i­ty towards sci­ence, and “alter­na­tive facts” some­times replace informed debates. This cri­sis of knowl­edge-informed prac­tices are all the more rel­e­vant in the face of suf­fer­ing, ill­ness and dying, when the via­bil­i­ty and well­be­ing of one­self and of those close to us are threat­ened and when tra­di­tion­al ways of cop­ing are called into ques­tion. The quest for cer­tain­ty has always been a defin­ing fea­ture of med­ical prac­tice, and espe­cial­ly for diag­no­sis and sub­se­quent treat­ment options. In this modal­i­ty, this quest and the aris­ing uncer­tain­ty are not only inher­ent in med­ical prac­tice per se, but, impor­tant­ly, they are also a prod­uct of the inter­con­nect­ed­ness of var­i­ous het­ero­ge­neous social domains and process­es, such as neolib­er­al­i­sa­tion, the leap­ing pace of tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion, or new alliances of polit­i­cal actors.

We sug­gest the recent­ly devel­oped con­cept of trans­fig­u­ra­tion as an ana­lyt­i­cal lens by which to explore the inter­con­nect­ed­ness of social domains as they are entan­gled with cur­rent social and med­ical prac­tices. The con­cept lends itself par­tic­u­lar­ly well, we believe, for tack­ling and com­pre­hend­ing the het­ero­gene­ity and com­plex­i­ty involved in cur­rent med­ical prac­tices, of which uncer­tain­ty is an impor­tant aspect. Trans­fig­u­ra­tion fol­lows the approach of fig­u­ra­tional the­o­ry, devel­oped by Nor­bert Elias (1978), and fur­ther devel­ops the work on social­i­ty of Mar­i­lyn Strath­ern (1988), Long and Moore (2013) and oth­ers. By trans­fig­u­ra­tion Mattes, Hadolt and Obrist (under review) refer to “(1) the con­stant­ly unfold­ing process of par­tic­u­lar extend­ed fig­u­ra­tions encoun­ter­ing, affect­ing and becom­ing enmeshed in each oth­er as well as (2) the (tem­porar­i­ly) sta­bi­lized fig­u­ra­tional arrange­ments emerg­ing from these enmesh­ments”. We aim for a posthu­man­ist per­spec­tive by putting cen­tre stage the “proces­su­al engage­ment and dis­en­gage­ment of humans with each oth­er and their mate­r­i­al and non- mate­r­i­al worlds with­in and across par­tic­u­lar fig­u­ra­tions, i.e. rela­tions of pow­er and webs of social inter­de­pen­dences” (Mattes et al.; see also Kehr et al. 2019).

As an ana­lyt­i­cal tool, uncer­tain­ty can both be con­cep­tu­alised as a gen­uine epis­te­mo­log­i­cal cri­sis of cur­rent med­ical prac­tice and as an onto­log­i­cal state of the patients and prac­ti­tion­ers who finds them­selves thrown into the above described nexus. Which are cru­cial modes of cur­rent uncer­tain­ties in health and med­i­cine and how do they emerge? How do they shape and yield med­ical prac­tices, dis­cours­es and envi­ron­ments? In which ways can we make sense of the dynam­ic con­nec­tiv­i­ty that links med­i­cine with a mul­ti­tude of oth­er soci­etal domains such as pol­i­cy-mak­ing, pub­lic admin­is­tra­tion, sci­en­tif­ic research, the pri­vate prof­it-mak­ing sec­tor, human­i­tar­i­an work, the media, reli­gion or law, and by doing so engen­ders forms of uncer­tain­ty? What are the man­ners by which we can under­stand health relat­ed phe­nom­e­na and the impli­cat­ed uncer­tain­ty as they become man­i­fest and change over time – some­times incre­men­tal­ly, some­times abrupt­ly – in var­i­ous prac­tices, con­stel­la­tions and atmos­pheres? How, final­ly, can we make sense of the appre­hen­sions, con­cerns, hopes, imag­ined futures and feel­ings of the peo­ple who affect and are affect­ed by such process­es as they con­sti­tute their spe­cif­ic worlds and them­selves and vice versa?

1

These are cen­tral ques­tions that the 11th MAAH con­fer­ence 2020 seeks to dis­cuss. We invite con­tri­bu­tions, prefer­ably both ethnog­ra­phy-based and the­o­ry inspired, that address these issues in one or more of the fol­low­ing four the­mat­ic clusters:

(1) Med­ical futures

Besides ‘risk talk’, med­ical prac­tice has always been under­pinned by a dis­course on hope and a bet­ter future. The pro­claimed rev­o­lu­tions in med­i­cine, such as the def­i­nite can­cer cure, has char­ac­terised med­ical pop­u­lar dis­course and imag­i­na­tion ever since the big tech­no­log­i­cal rev­o­lu­tions of the 19th and 20th cen­tu­ry. Today, these dis­cours­es are focussed on the usages of syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy, gene edit­ing, and of Big Data and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gences. The dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion of med­i­cine and of health care data of patients has been dom­i­nat­ing pub­lic debates for the last twen­ty years. Pub­lic health offi­cials have resort­ed to a dis­course of the ‘tech­ni­cal fix’ of med­ical prob­lems, and of pre­ven­tion and risk to tame uncer­tain­ty by cast­ing ques­tions of fac­tu­al­i­ty and poten­tial­i­ty in terms of prob­a­bil­i­ty. In doing so, they con­tribute to a gen­er­al cli­mate of uncer­tain­ty, e.g. on debates of con­trol­ling epi­demics and pan­demics. This is becom­ing ever more so polit­i­cal prac­tice when it comes to the future impact of cli­mate change on health and illness

(2) Med­ical tech­nolo­gies, infra­struc­tures and materialities

Tech­no­log­i­cal advances of diag­nos­tic and ther­a­peu­tic med­ical pro­ce­dures and the – expect­ed and unex­pect­ed – field of action that they afford have at the same time enabled and hin­dered inno­va­tion. In part, this has been due to the pace in which bureau­cra­cy and the spe­cif­ic gov­er­nance of its appli­ca­tion often lag behind. Pol­i­cy mak­ers in the UK, for exam­ple, allow for the inno­v­a­tive usage of ultra­sound on a pri­vate com­mer­cial lev­el in form of keep­sake ultra­sounds but the usage of portable ultra­sound for diag­nos­tic use in GP surg­eries is not allowed. Nec­es­sary changes in data pro­tec­tion of indi­vid­u­als have led to an ever-increas­ing bur­den of bureau­cra­cy on researchers and med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers, lead­ing to the devel­op­ment of new pro­fes­sions such as data man­agers. These emerg­ing pro­fes­sions deal with the spaces of uncer­tain­ty that Big Data pro­duces. Med­ical pro­ce­dures that rely heav­i­ly on tech­nol­o­gy, such as remote surgery, are chang­ing the rela­tion­ship between med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers and patients, but also between one gen­er­a­tion of prac­ti­tion­ers and anoth­er. Increas­ing­ly, body parts are even more decon­tex­tu­al­ized from real humans than they were ever before in med­ical his­to­ry. Tablet com­put­ers are increas­ing­ly used in rur­al areas of the Glob­al South to scan and send med­ical infor­ma­tion such as ultra­sound images to spe­cialised med­ical cen­tres for diag­nos­tic pur­pos­es, to give the impres­sion of diag­nos­tic cer­tain­ty. Despite offer­ing an oppor­tu­ni­ty to arrive at a bet­ter diag­no­sis, these tech­nolo­gies also con­tribute to the lack of fund­ing for rur­al areas. The rela­tion­ship between the Glob­al South and Glob­al North has influ­enced not only the ways of how med­ical prod­ucts and ser­vices are pro­duced and dis­trib­uted and how ideas, mate­ri­als and humans trav­el, but also research prac­tices, e.g. when it comes to clin­i­cal tri­als and stem cell research and their eth­i­cal dilemmas.

(3) Moral quan­daries and the polic­ing of health

Eth­i­cal and moral dilem­mas in med­i­cine and med­ical research prac­tice have con­tributed to the devel­op­ment of new legal prac­tices in some coun­tries but not in oth­ers and fos­tered med­ical tourism based on these dif­fer­ences with­in and beyond the EU. The com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion of health has also con­tributed to these phe­nom­e­na, espe­cial­ly when it comes to per­son­alised med­ical devices such as self-track­ing wear­ables or ultra­sound keep­sakes. These prac­tices have opened up new areas of quantification/economisation of health and health care, includ­ing new health insur­ance regimes. Gene edit­ing is becom­ing a new real­i­ty and brings about the moral ques­tion of who can afford it and thus who can ben­e­fit from it. Biorepos­i­to­ries enable researchers to spec­i­fy trends in pop­u­la­tion health but at the same time reduce com­plex indi­vid­u­als who live in all kinds of con­texts to a set of num­bers in a decon­tex­u­alised data set. On the pub­lic health lev­el, we encounter dif­fer­ent modes of moral­i­ties and nov­el alliances such as between NGOs and big busi­ness, for instance in the case of immu­ni­sa­tion and vac­ci­na­tion poli­cies where big busi­ness funds vac­ci­na­tion poli­cies. Unreg­u­lat­ed tech­nolo­gies produce

2

a myr­i­ad of data that could poten­tial­ly be used to inform pub­lic health poli­cies in ways that sup­port the inter­ests of par­tic­u­lar stake­hold­ers con­flict­ing with pub­lic inter­est. The pub­lic, but also med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers, researchers, and com­pa­nies seem­ing­ly demand a cer­tain­ty that pol­i­cy mak­ers, legal courts, or pub­lic health, with its dis­course on prob­a­bil­i­ty, often can­not guarantee.

(4) Feel­ings, sub­jec­tiv­i­ties and ways of nav­i­gat­ing health and illness

We know that emo­tions, affects, and feel­ings do not only play a part in how indi­vid­u­als make deci­sions about their care, but they also heav­i­ly influ­ence pol­i­cy mak­ing in pub­lic health. Anx­i­ety aris­es when uncer­tain­ties pro­lif­er­ate. Pol­i­cy mak­ers used psy­cho­log­i­cal terms such as resilience and cop­ing strate­gies rather than address­ing anx­i­eties. This enables a dri­ve towards mak­ing and expect­ing pop­u­la­tions to be more resilient, espe­cial­ly when it comes to health chal­lenges in rela­tion to aging, par­tic­u­lar life styles and chang­ing cli­mate. The dri­ve towards self-opti­mi­sa­tion and a dis­course in pol­i­cy mak­ing of indi­vid­ual respon­si­bil­i­ty con­tribute to these new sub­jec­tiv­i­ties of health and ill­ness which give a false sense of cer­tain­ty in num­bers. On a per­son­al lev­el, many peo­ple inter­pret and deal with these uncer­tain­ties and respon­si­bil­i­ties by resort­ing to con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and believ­ing in “fake news” (e.g. con­cern­ing vac­ci­na­tion and refugees that are blamed of spread­ing diseases).

We are look­ing for­ward to receiv­ing your propo­si­tions for con­tri­bu­tions and an excit­ing conference.

On behalf of the MAAH Sci­en­tif­ic Com­mit­tee, Bern­hard Hadolt and Andrea Stöckl

Ref­er­ences

Elias, Nor­bert (1978). What is Soci­ol­o­gy? New York, Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Press.
Kehr, Jan­i­na, Han­sjo­erg Dil­ger & Peter van Eeuwijk (2019). Trans­fig­u­ra­tions of health and the moral econ­o­my of med­i­cine: Sub­jec­tiv­i­ties, mate­ri­al­i­ties, val­ues. Zeitschrift für Eth­nolo­gie 143(2018): 1–20.
Long, Nicholas J. & Hen­ri­et­ta L. Moore (2013). Intro­duc­tion: Sociality’s New Direc­tions. In: N. J. Long & H. L. Moore, Social­i­ty: New Direc­tions. New York, Berghahn Books: 1–24.Mattes, Dominik, Bern­hard Hadolt & Brig­it Obrist (under review). Rethink­ing Social­i­ty and Health through Transfiguration.
Strath­ern, Mar­i­lyn (1988). The Gen­der of the Gift: Prob­lems with Women and Prob­lems with Soci­ety in Melane­sia. Berke­ley, Calif. [etc.], Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia Press. ***

Con­fer­ence For­mat and Sub­mis­sion Process

We invite con­tri­bu­tions address­ing the con­fer­ence theme and issues men­tioned above. Please sub­mit an abstract (max: 250 words) and a bio­graph­i­cal state­ment by Decem­ber 1, 2019, to maah2020(at)univie.ac.at. A noti­fi­ca­tion of accep­tance will be sent to you by Decem­ber 20, 2019. Due to the work­shop-char­ac­ter of the con­fer­ence, the num­ber of par­tic­i­pants pre­sent­ing a paper will be lim­it­ed to 30. Par­tic­i­pants are expect­ed to read all papers in advance. Com­plete papers (max: 3000 words) to be dis­trib­uted to all par­tic­i­pants must be sub­mit­ted by April 1, 2020.

Loca­tion and Transportation

The con­fer­ence will take place at the Schüttkasten Geras, Aus­tria, locat­ed in a love­ly rur­al area about 80 min­utes by coach north of Vien­na. The Schüttkasten orig­i­nal­ly served as grain stor­age build­ing of the adja­cent Pre­mon­straten­sian monastery Geras. Recent­ly, the build­ing has been ren­o­vat­ed and con­vert­ed into a hotel and con­fer­ence cen­tre. For more details see: https://www.schuettkasten-geras.at/de/schuettkasten/der-schuettkasten.html

Trans­porta­tion by coach from and to Vien­na city cen­tre or Vien­na air­port will be pro­vid­ed. More details will follow.

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Con­fer­ence Fees & Payment

The con­fer­ence fee is esti­mat­ed at 500 € (includ­ing 3 nights accom­mo­da­tion, all meals (excl. drinks), ban­quet din­ner, coach from and to Vien­na city cen­tre or Vien­na air­port). Pay­ment infor­ma­tion will fol­low with noti­fi­ca­tion of acceptance.

Gen­er­al Inquiries & Reg­is­tra­tion Information:

maah2020(at)univie.ac.at
There will be a MAAH 2020 web­site for the con­fer­ence. The web address will be com­mu­ni­cat­ed at a lat­er date. Any fur­ther infor­ma­tion and con­fer­ence updates will be con­veyed via the con­fer­ence website.

XI MAAH 2020 Sci­en­tif­ic Orga­niz­ing Committee:

Bern­hard Hadolt (Uni­ver­si­ty of Vien­na): bernhard.hadolt(at)univie.ac.at Andrea Stöckl (Uni­ver­si­ty of East Anglia): A.Stockl(at)uea.ac.uk