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Intimate mediation: hormones and endocrine disruption across species, place, and time

Datum
23. April – 24. April 2025 

CfP for Pan­el at 2025 Health, Envi­ron­ment, and Anthro­pol­o­gy (HEAT) Con­fer­ence, UK


CFP below for a pan­el on „Inti­mate medi­a­tion: hor­mones and endocrine dis­rup­tion across species, place, and time”
2025 Health, Envi­ron­ment, and Anthro­pol­o­gy (HEAT) Conference
Durham Uni­ver­si­ty, UK
April 23–24, 2025
Co-organ­ised by Durham and Edin­burgh uni­ver­si­ties and spon­sored by the Roy­al Anthro­po­log­i­cal Soci­ety (RAI)

The call is sched­uled to close on 13 Jan­u­ary, although we will keep this under review and extend if it seems necessary. 

Abstracts can be sub­mit­ted via the Abstract Man­age­ment por­tal. The web­site includes guid­ance and a list of pan­els a pro­pos­er can select from. 

Pan­el #21: „Inti­mate medi­a­tion: hor­mones and endocrine dis­rup­tion across species, place, and time”

Key­words: hor­mones, chem­i­cals, endocrine dis­rup­tion, EDCs, plas­tics, pre­scrip­tion drugs, side effects, alter­life, green chemistry

This pan­el invites con­sid­er­a­tion of endocrine dis­rupt­ing chem­i­cals (EDCs) as a key link between health and envi­ron­ment. EDCs are syn­thet­ic chem­i­cals that inter­act with the hor­mon­al mes­sag­ing process­es of humans and oth­er ani­mals, com­mon­ly found in every­day items, notably many plas­tics. These ubiq­ui­tous sub­stances tran­scend local envi­ron­ments through weath­er pat­terns and indus­tri­al chains, defy con­sumer ratio­nales of per­son­al pro­tec­tion through „organ­ic” or „green” choic­es, and have effects that are unpre­dictable and may remain latent for gen­er­a­tions. EDCs are now con­sti­tu­tive of our bod­ies, com­pli­cat­ing any ideas about an un-altered „pure” state, and have been linked to health issues as dis­parate as dia­betes, endometrio­sis, asth­ma, ear­ly puber­ty, obe­si­ty, and gen­der dys­pho­ria. There is good rea­son to con­sid­er hor­mon­al­ly-active phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals as EDCs, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en how they can exceed the consumer’s bod­i­ly sys­tem and enter into water­ways and oth­er shared envi­ron­ments. EDCs trou­ble stan­dard polit­i­cal posi­tions around indi­vid­ual auton­o­my and choice, com­pli­cat­ing con­ser­v­a­tive impuls­es towards pro­tec­tion­ism and immu­ni­ty. Study­ing „the expo­some” trou­bles stan­dard ways of mak­ing knowl­edge about chem­i­cals: chem­i­cal effects come into being in inter­ac­tion with one anoth­er instead of as iso­lat­ed vari­ables, and tim­ing of expo­sure often mat­ters more than dosage (counter to the tox­i­co­log­i­cal max­im ‚the dose makes the poi­son’). Add to this the lob­by­ing pres­sure from petro­le­um and chem­i­cal indus­tries, and it is clear why it can be pro­found­ly dif­fi­cult to acknowl­edge and take action about EDCs. Yet, some med­ical research cen­ters, activist groups, artists, and even indus­tri­al ini­tia­tives around „green chem­istry” are doing so. This nexus begs fur­ther anthro­po­log­i­cal inquiry.