Feldforschung in der Medizin: Mehrwert und Herausforderungen ethnografischer Zugänge zu Gesundheit
Konferenz
Tagung an der Universität Augsburg
Wie fragil sich Feldzugänge für Gesundheitsforscher*innen häufig gestalten, hat die Covid-19-Pandemie auch und gerade im Hinblick auf ethnografische Forschung in medizinischen Settings gezeigt. Doch nicht nur Lockdowns und verschärfte Besucher*innenregelungen können Feldforschung in der Medizin beeinflussen, erschweren oder unter Umständen sogar verunmöglichen. Medizinische Institutionen erweisen sich häufig als stark reglementierte Orte, die nicht unbedingt einfach ethnografisch zu erforschen sind. Dies zeigt sich beispielsweise an ausgeprägten (Wissens-)Hierarchien, spezifischen Hygienevorschriften oder regulierten(Fach-)Kompetenzen, die eine wirklich teilnehmende Beobachtung beeinträchtigen können. Zudem kommen Ethikkommissionen und besonders strenge Datenschutzregelungen zum Schutz vulnerabler Gruppen eine besondere Rolle im Gesundheitssektor zu, wodurch die Feldforschung sich hier möglicherweise anders gestaltet als in anderen Kontexten. Neben diesen feldspezifischen Hürden werden auch immer wieder »klassische« Probleme und Grundsatzfragen ethnografischer Forschung evident: Wann und wie steige ich am besten
in mein Feld ein – und wieder aus? Welchen Logiken folgt mein Feld – und wem folge ich? Und welche Rolle(n) kann, darf und will ich in welchem Setting einnehmen? Ethnografische Zugänge zu Gesundheit sind in diversen Disziplinen von großer Beliebtheit, können aber auch besonders herausfordernd sein. Diese Tagung möchte insbesondere Wissenschaftler*innen in der »frühen Phase« ihrer Karriere zum Austausch über ihre Erfahrungen als Forschende im Gesundheitswesen ermutigen. Wir möchten Raum bieten für das Sprechen über das Scheitern, über Umgehungs- und Lösungsstrategien, über Modifikationen. Wir interessieren uns für Eure Geschichten aus der Praxis, über Euer Kopfzerbrechen am Schreibtisch, für Eure Reflexionen über Eure Rolle im Feld. Das übergeordnete Ziel dieser Tagung ist es, Forscher*innen aus diversen Disziplinen, die sich mit den gesellschaftlichen Aspekten von Krankheit und Gesundheit befassen, zusammenzubringen, um über ihre Forschung in verschiedenen medizinischen Feldern und über unterschiedlichste Akteur*innen sowie Berufsgruppen im Gesundheitssystem gemeinsam (methodologisch) zu diskutieren.
Von Interesse könnten folgende Fragen sein:
Was bedeutet es, Insider*in/Outsider*in zu sein im Kontext medizinischer Forschung?
Wie wichtig ist eigenes Erfahrungswissen, z.B. im Gespräch mit Patient*innen?
Welche Umgangsweisen helfen bei der Distanzierung (und Befremdung) im Feld, und wie geht man mit möglichen eigenen (medizinischen/pflegerischen) Fachkompetenzen um?
Inwiefern unterscheiden sich der Lai*innen- und Expert*innen-Status im Hinblick auf Krankheit/Gesundheit im Vergleich zu anderen Feldern?
Welche autoethnografischen Perspektiven bringen wir als (private) Mitglieder des Gesundheitssystems mit – und ein?
Wie können ethnografische Zugänge zu einem vertieften Verständnis der zunehmenden Digitalisierung, Technologisierung und Personalisierung des Gesundheitssystems beitragen?
Welche Rolle spielen Materialität(en) und Körperlichkeit(en)?
Wie sind sie zu begreifen und zu gewichten in einem Feld, in dem der Körper häufig als Dreh- und Angelpunkt fungiert?
Gerahmt wird der Austausch durch Keynotes von Prof. Dr. Milena Bister (HU Berlin) und Prof. Dr. Cornelius Schubert (TU Dortmund). In Euren Vorträgen soll es allerdings weniger um das große Ganze gehen. Um den Mehrwert, aber auch die Herausforderungen ethnografischer Feldforschung im Gesundheitswesen exemplarisch darzustellen, würden wir Euch bitten, Eure Beiträge eher inputorientiert zu konzipieren und einen Problemaufriss zu skizzieren oder eine Lösungsstrategie nachzuzeichnen; der Schwerpunkt soll primär auf der gemeinsamen Diskussion liegen.
Bitte schickt Euer Abstract (ca. 350 Wörter) bis zum 1. Dezember 2022 an Ann Kristin Augst (ann.kristin.augst@uni‑a.de) und Bianca Jansky (bianca.jansky@uni‑a.de).
Ecologies of Mind
Konferenz
Biennial Meeting of the Society of Psychological Anthropology at the University of San Diego, CA
Please find the following CFP for the upcoming SPA Biennial Meeting.
SPA Biennial Meeting
https://www.sandiego.edu/scheduling/venues/kroc-facilities/rooms.php
University of San Diego
San Diego, CA; April 27–30, 2023
Call for Papers: Ecologies of Mind
Psychological anthropology is rooted in recognition of the social constitution of mind, self and person. Gregory Bateson’s concept of an ecology of mind pointed to ways of thinking about mind as situated in both interpersonal and larger social systems. This ecological perspective provides a shared genealogy and bridge between the concerns of psychological anthropology and contemporary approaches in cognitive science, which see human experience as emerging from embodied, enacted, embedded and extended social processes.
The recognition that human psychology has its own ecology and dynamics that depend on local niches and networks as well as on wider social systems is urgently needed to help us address the most pressing challenges of our time: climate change and ecocide; systemic racism and structural violence; social polarization and the erosion of trust in civil society and democratic institutions; and the colonization of imagination and epistemic chaos created by commercial and political manipulation of social media.
This meeting will explore ecologies of mind in diverse domains and at multiple scales from local communities to planetary networks, from embodied realities to virtual worlds. We invite papers and presentations that engage with the enduring questions of psychological anthropology and current social, political, and existential predicaments. We especially encourage interdisciplinary work that bridges anthropology, psychology, psychiatry, and allied disciplines to explore the dynamics of healthy and pathological ecologies of mind.
The 2023 SPA meeting will include a joint conference day with the Society for the Study of Psychiatry and Culture (SSPC), an interdisciplinary group devoted to clinical issues in culture and mental health. Long awaited by both societies, this day of overlap is aimed at fostering cross-discipline engagement. This joint day will allow SPA members, researchers, and practitioners to discuss cross-cutting interests and the underpinnings and consequences of social experience for mental health, psychiatric disorders, and healing. The overall theme of the SSPC meeting will be “Practices that Harm/Practices that Heal.” For the joint day, we are especially interested in showcasing work in psychological anthropology and cultural psychiatry that addresses issues of healing and transformation.
Registration:
The registration portal will go live in the next couple of weeks. Please watch for the announcement!
Abstract Submission:
The Abstract Submission portal will open in early January and close in late January. Please watch for that announcement as well. **In light of the relatively short window for submissions, we recommend preparing your abstracts in advance!**
Rebecca Seligman, PhD
Associate Chair, Department of Anthropology
Associate Professor, Anthropology and Global Health
Faculty Fellow, Institute for Policy Research
Northwestern University
https://www.anthropology.northwestern.edu/people/faculty/seligman.html
Book: https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781137409591
With respect and gratitude I acknowledge that I live and work on the lands of the 3 Fires–Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi.
In the Frictions. Fragments of Care, Health, and Wellbeing in the Balkans
Konferenz
Conference at the University of Zadar, Croatia organized by the Department of Ethnology and Anthropology, University of Zadar, Croatia and the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade, Serbia
Care has been broadly defined as “everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair our ‚world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible” (Fisher and Tronto 1991, p. 40). Complex relations of care sustain our lives and are necessary not only for the survival of humans and nonhumans alike, but also for their flourishing. Structured through various mechanisms and institutions, from kinships to states, care produces various forms of intimacy and relatedness.
In the wake of the Covid 19 pandemic, there has been a resurgence of interest in care, health, and wellbeing across various disciplines. We are interested in how anthropology has responded to the urgent changes in the field of care and in identifying the aftermath of Covid-19 and post-Covid-19 realities in the Balkans.
We recognize, however, that the pandemic has been only one of the most recent disruptions in relations of care and acknowledge that the real-world programs of neoliberal restructuring are not linear paths that converge but are forged in frictions of situated encounters with earlier social and cultural landscapes. While the term „Balkans” is fraught with ambivalent meanings and associations, this conference aims to move away from Balkanism (Todorova, 2009) and dichotomous frameworks to rethink the Balkans as a site of knowledge production that has more to offer than just “catching up” with the West. What theoretical and methodological issues do anthropologists face in their research in the Balkans? How do people in the Balkans relate to one another within caring relationships themselves? What does care look like in practice and what does it entail? How are caring relationships shaped and changed? How do these experiences and relationships inform or challenge broader theoretical concerns?
We see this conference as a step towards building a network of anthropologists working on the issues of care in SEE. Possible topics include but are not limited to:
Structural violence and care;
Gendering care;
Racializing care;
Solidarity and care;
Narratives of (health)care;
Spirituality and care;
Public and private health/care;
Humanitarianism and care;
Care and the commons;
Ecology, ecofeminist care;
Care and social class
Care and mobility
Care and the economy
Care and the state
We invite submissions for presentations of up to 15 minutes. Please send proposals of no more than 300 words and a brief biographical note (100 words) tointhefrictions@gmail.com by October 15th, 2022. All applicants will be notified of their submission status within four weeks of the application deadline.
Applications should be sent in a single Word document. The file name should include the author’s name. The application should include:
* an abstract (max. 300 words)
* a short biographical note including your institutional affiliation, contact information, and major publications (100 words)
The conference will be held at the University of Zadar, Croatia between the 27and30 April 2023.
For additional information, please contact Jelena Kupsjak at jelena.kupsjak@gmail.com or Ljiljana Pantović at ljiljana.pantovic@gmail.com.
Conference fees (which will cover a conference package, coffee breaks and a welcome reception) are:
70 Euros for post-doctorate scholars who are attached to institutions outside of the Balkans
60 Euros for post-doctorate scholars who are attached to institutions in the Balkans
50 Euros for PhD students who are attached to institutions outside of Balkans
40 Euros for PhD students who are attached to institutions from the Balkans
*We have applied for funding to cover expenses of travel and accommodation for young scholars participating in the conference. Should we receive the funding these participants will be able to apply for a travel and accommodation grant.
**Decisions about travel grant allocation will be made based on self-reported institutional status and income. Upon selection of participants, we will issue an instruction on how to apply for the grant.
Global fat resources: Connecting themes, approaches and narratives, ca. 1850–2022
Konferenz
Conference at the University of Bergen
Deadline for proposals: 8 January 2023
Global resources have become a hot topic in many historical disciplines. Societies and economies around the globe have become increasingly dependent on the import and export of energy resources, metals, agricultural products and other commodities. The exploitation of global resources created wealth, triggered innovation and, on the other, side led to tremendous social and environmental costs. In addition, resource exploitation and trade meant new dependencies and vulnerabilities across the globe, increasing competition for global resources and volatile commodity prices. Global resources represent a subject connecting major societal challenges such as resource security, global justice and environmental and climate change.
This workshop aims at facilitating and building connections between different historical themes, approaches, narratives and disciplines in the investigation of global resources since the mid-19th century until today, with a particular focus on fat resources. Building connections comprises the challenge of connecting themes and subjects such as spaces in the Global South and in the Global North, power relations across large distances, colonial violence and indigenous agency, resource exploitation and social and environmental transformation, resource security and sustainability, etc. Such thematic connections suffer from enormous imbalances and bias, e.g. through the overwhelming predominance of historians and sources from the Global North and the challenging dearth of indigenous and environmental sources and perspectives.
Building connections likewise means crossing disciplinary boundaries and linking concepts and approaches for the investigation of global resources that have been developed in historical disciplines such as global history, environmental history, colonial history, commodity history, history of science and technology and economic history. The workshop encourages discussion, which (different) questions researchers ask, which concepts and approaches they use, which literatures and sources they consider, which interpretations and narratives they construct and with which problems they struggle. It is a major goal to fertilize connections and future cross-disciplinary research perspectives and approaches for the development of future research projects on global resources.
Global fat comprises all kinds of edible fat and (non-fossil) oil resources ranging from oil seeds such as soybeans, palm fruits, coconuts and others to various types of animal fats ranging from whale oil to cattle feed oils. Industries in the Global North became dependent on fat resources from the Global South during the late 19th and 20th centuries. While colonial ventures, trade imperialism and the accelerating globalization of postcolonial fat trade generated tremendous profits primarily in the Global North, it made tropical countries fatefully dependent on the exploitation of their natural resources and became a driving force of accelerating deforestation and social and environmental disruption and change.
We invite proposals on global resource connections, particularly on global fat, including a short abstract (ca. 300 words) and a one page CV until 8 January 2023. Please send your proposal to the following address: matthias.heymann@css.au.dk. The workshop is open to all researchers of relevant disciplines. Travel support will be available for participants without own funding. If you need travel support, please note so on your proposal and give an approximate estimate of the expected travel expenses. This workshop is part of the Tensions of Europe Research Group Technology, Environment and Resources, funded by the research network “Challenging Europe: Technology, Environment and the Quest for Resource Security” (EurReS) and will be organized by Ines Predöhl and Elena Kochetkova (University of Bergen) and Matthias Heymann (Aarhus University).
——————————————————–
Matthias Heymann
Centre for Science Studies
Aarhus University
Ny Munkegade 118, Building 1530
8000 Aarhus C
Denmark
Phone: +45 87155646
Psychology and Anthropology in a Changing World
Konferenz
Hybrid Conference of the European Network for Psychological Anthropology at the University of Oslo
The conference is meant as an inclusive forum for scholars from a wide range of disciplinary and thematic orientations. Critical perspectives on the concepts of mainstream psychology are encouraged; productive engagements across the disciplinary boundaries of anthropology and cognitive science, psychiatry, philosophy, evolutionary biology, and others will also be welcome.
The conference will be preceded by the Writing Workshop for Graduate Students and Early Career Scholars. The organizers will be able to offer several needs-based travel support stipends to students and early career scholars covering the extra night of the pre-conference.
Further information and updates can be found at: https://enpanthro.net/enpa2023- conference/. If you have any further questions regarding the conference and the workshop, please do not hesitate to contact the organizers at conference@enpanthro.net
Beyond Binaries: Gender, Sexuality and Medicine in Post-War Europe
Konferenz
A conference organized by the Centre for the Study of Health, Ethics and Society, University of Hamburg at the Warburg-Haus, Hamburg
Submission Deadline: 6th March 2023
How can gender and sexuality – broadly conceived both methodologically and thematically – help to inform historical understanding of the role of medicine in post-war Europe? This conference will bring together scholars working in different disciplines to examine how theoretical approaches incorporating gender and sexuality can shed light on medical ethics, scientific practices, and policymaking associated with health across the ideological divide. How can histories of gender and sexuality illuminate individual medical experiences and the complex relations between patients, doctors, policymakers, pharmaceutical companies, and medical ethicists during the Cold War period?
We are particularly interested in papers which examine gender, sexuality, and medicine in Central and Eastern Europe in order to gain greater insight into how medicine was imagined, managed, sold and experienced across Europe. Exploring gender and sexuality in the context of post-war medicine can help us to discern potential similarities in medical practices, policies, and experiences across Europe, which moves beyond the security context and ideological differences of the Cold War to highlight the exchange of scientific ideas across the “Iron Curtain”. Examining gender, sexuality and medicine in the post-war period can bring about a new scholarly perspective on Europe as a continent that was to some extent united by shared experiences, policies, and beliefs.
Please send a 250-word abstract and title, together with your institutional affiliation and a brief bio, to Dr Kate Docking and Dr David Peace by 6 March 2023. Accommodation and meals for accepted speakers will be provided by the conference organisers. The conference proceedings will be published in an edited volume.
Subjects of papers might include, but are certainly not limited to:
– Reproduction: abortion, contraception, reproductive rights, sexology
– Prophylaxis: vaccination, healthcare campaigns
– Clinical trials and human experimentation
– Medical experiences of trans‑, non-binary, and queer persons
– Concepts of normality, enhancement, disability, and pathology
– Gendered natures and implications of ethical codes
– Gender inequalities in access to medical care and health responsibilities
– Representations of gender and sexuality in media and the arts
– Forms of protest and resistance: patients, professional groups
– Role of data science and genetics in targeted medicine
– Psy-disciplines: psychology, psychiatry, psychodrama, psychoanalysis etc
– Theoretical reflections on the writing of gender and sexuality
kate.docking@uni-hamburg.de
Psychoanalyse und Körper: Berührung
Konferenz
13. Wiener Symposium »Psychoanalyse und Körper« an der Sigmund-Freud-Privatuniversität in Wien
Das Thema Berührung ist wohl eines der strittigsten im Spannungsfeld von Psychoanalyse und Körperpsychotherapie. In der als ›Redekur‹ konzipierten psychoanalytischen Behandlung ereignet sich körperliche Berührung in der Regel nur im konventionellen Kontext von Begrüßung und Verabschiedung. Berührung figuriert hier in einer allgemeineren Bedeutung, etwa im Sinne der emotionalen oder gestisch-mimetischen, leiblichen Einwirkung aufeinander. Im Gegensatz dazu teilen Körperpsychotherapeuten mehrheitlich die Meinung, konkrete körperliche Berührung sei ein wesentlicher Bestandteil einer therapeutischen Zugangsweise, die das körperliche Geschehen innerhalb der Psychotherapie wirklich ernst nimmt. Sie sprechen von »heilsamen Berührungen« (Günter Heisterkamp).
Die Unterschiedlichkeit der Perspektiven hat eine lange Tradition und besteht seit Freud. Sie hat jedoch an Aktualität nichts eingebüßt. So schreibt der durchaus körperbezogen denkende Psychoanalytiker Sebastian Leikert, mehrfach Vortragender am Wiener Symposium »Psychoanalyse und Körper«, in seinem 2022 erschienenen Buch »Das körperliche Unbewusste in der psychoanalytischen Behandlungstechnik«: »Die faktische taktile Berührung ist verzichtbar, denn die Stimme der Analytikerin oder des Analytikers berührt das Körperselbst, die gemeinsame Aufmerksamkeit berührt das Leibliche, das resonante Spüren der leiblichen Gegenübertragung hat eine Wirkung auf das Körperselbst der Analysandin oder des Analysanden. Abstinenz ist in der Arbeit mit leiblichen Konstellationen zentral, weil hier Verletzlichkeit und Gefahr der Retraumatisierung besonders groß sind« (S. 14).
Unschwer ist zu erkennen, wie weit die Positionen auseinanderliegen. Während sich allgemein in den Behandlungstheorien so manche Übereinstimmungen finden, zeigen sich an dieser Stelle in der Konzeption der therapeutischen Situation und des therapeutischen Rahmens Spannungslinien und Kontroversen, die gerade in ihrer Grundsätzlichkeit nach einem interkollegialen Diskurs suchen. Wie steht es also um die Bedeutsamkeit konkreter körperlicher Berührung bzw. des Verzichtes darauf? Und wie wären in diesem Kontext z.B. Ergebnisse der Säuglings- und Bindungsforschung in Betracht zu ziehen?
Auf der Tagung werden wir dieses Spannungsfeld aus vorwiegend klinischer Perspektive beleuchten. Sechs Referentinnen und Referenten werden aus ihrer jeweiligen therapeutischen Zugangsweise heraus eine Patientin / einen Patienten vorstellen, zentriert um die Frage, wie jeweils therapeutische Veränderung möglich war, wie also die Patientin / der Patient in seinem Innersten berührt werden konnte.
Der interkollegialen Diskussion wird auf dieser Tagung breiter Raum gegeben. Praxisbezogene Workshops ergänzen das Angebot.
Termin
23. bis 25. Juni 2023
Veranstaltungsort
Sigmund-Freud-Privatuniversität
Freudplatz 1
A‑1020 Wien
Anmeldung und Information per Peter Geißler peter@geissler-info.at oder 0043–699-11874690 oder über die Tagungshomepage www.psychoanalyseundkoerper.at
Interesting Worlds to Come. Science & Technology Studies facing more-than-human
Konferenz
9th STS Italia Conference hosted by the University of Bologna, Italy
The list of relevant panels:
Panel 5. ‘Outbreak’: Science, governance, and responding otherwise to challenges to come.
Panel 29. Materiality and research in museums of science, technology, and medicine.
Panel 36. Diagnosis, prognosis, treatment – Towards fair and sustainable care provisions in health systems and pharmaceutical innovation.
Panel 41. More-than-human medicine? Unpacking the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies in healthcare settings.
Panel 44. Exploring Promising Technology in Neuroscience.
The Psychology of Religion in an Entangled World
Konferenz
IAPR conference in Groningen
Scholars in the Psychology of Religion (PoR) employ different disciplinary and methodological perspectives to study diverse topics, such as lived spirituality, religious diversity and health and wellbeing. Challenges such as globalization, climate change and shifting power structures make many of these topics increasingly complex. The PoR requires new horizons to tackle them: novel methodological tools, theoretical insights, collaborations and a critical reinterpretation and decolonization. This conference aims to bring together experts who can offer fresh perspectives to the PoR because of their unique methodological approach or (inter)disciplinary background and who will inspire the field to address today’s challenges in new ways.
To explore new horizons for the PoR, we have invited keynote speakers from different disciplinary backgrounds who, in their research, all focus on current societal and scientific challenges. Their keynotes will engage in dialogue with the PoR and offer new perspectives on religion, mental health and stress resilience; extremism, terrorism, and conflict; climate change and environmentalism; and religion, gender and diversity.
https://www.netherlands.iaprweb.org/
Reproductive technologies and the Remaking of Life and Death
Konferenz
International conference by TechnoDeath at Aalborg University in Copenhagen
The increasing global development and use of reproductive technologies have prompted reproductive scholars within the social sciences and humanities to raise questions regarding how family, kinship, race, gender, sexuality, and disabilities intersect. Such studies have focused not least on how the selection of gametes, children, and parents takes place during medical treatment. Overall, these studies have illustrated how reproductive technologies are always technologies of biopolitics, as they potentially reflect on the governing of both life and death. Meanwhile, compared to how reproductive technologies are seen to remake life, the technological remaking of death has yet to be granted the same amount of scholarly attention.
At this international conference, we want to recenter the focus of reproductive studies to explore how technologies remake death as it intersects with life. We hope to engage in a range of different cases regarding how life and death emerge and are understood, such as during the cryopreservation and storage of gametes, in studies of family planning, in the use of prenatal screening, and in technologies involved in miscarriages, fetal reduction, abortions, still births, births, neonatal care, and infant death. We thereby hope to unpack how death emerges in relation to technologies involved, how cells, fetal tissue, and bodies that are dead become managed, and how people live with deaths after they have terminated a pregnancy or experienced infant death. We hope to bring forward embodied stories of how technological remaking’s of life and death are experienced, unpacking these stories in relation to how reproductive inequalities and current local and global forms of reproductive and population politics unfold.
We invite contributions to think about and relate to questions such as the following:
How does technology remake death and dying at the beginning of life?
How are colonial pasts, as well as racialized and gendered perceptions of bodies, entangled in the use of technologies of life and death at the beginning of life?
What bio- and necropolitical practices are involved in the population politics at stake globally regarding bodies that are enabled to either live or die?
How does the cryopreservation of gametes relate to life and death, given that the suspension of life is enabled?
How does technology shape experiences and politics regarding abortion globally?
As medical staff, what is it like to work with technologies enabling life and death?
How are abortion and fetal reduction experienced by pregnant persons?
How are technologies entangled with affect or emotions during the process of making life and death?
How do legal and medical technologies intersect as perceptions of quality of life are assessed in decisions on whether to allow someone to live or die?
How are technologies used to manage the deaths of fetuses and infants in maternity wards and neonatal intensive care units until the burial or disposal of the body, and what norms of affect and grieving are implied?
How do parents who have lost a child or terminated a pregnancy live with the remaking of death and dying through technologies?
How can technologies of life and death at the beginning of life be theoretically conceptualized?
What are the methodological challenges of studying technologies of life and death at the beginning of life?
Kind regards,
Associate Professor Stine Willum Adrian and PhD fellow Laura Louise Heinsen
https://www.kultur.aau.dk/forskning/forskningsgrupper/caf/technodeath/konference