Panel

Camelia Dewan (Uni­ver­si­ty of Oslo)

Rebec­ca Pren­tice (Uni­ver­si­ty of Sussex)

This pan­el explores the rela­tion­ship between labour and health in indus­tries where the lin­ger­ing effects of ill-health – invis­i­ble haz­ardous expo­sure or the sus­tained impact of toil on work­ers’ men­tal and phys­i­cal well­be­ing – extend far beyond place-based bound­aries of employ­ment and their bureau­crat­ic imag­i­nar­ies. We call for papers that exam­ine the embod­i­ment of labour – focus­ing on affec­tive and phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal accounts of the work­ing body-as-lived – and the­o­rise being ‘unwell’ in rela­tion to the spa­tial and tem­po­ral pol­i­tics of labour. In much of the world, the expe­ri­ence of labour today involves the cross­ing or dis­so­lu­tion of bound­aries: pre­car­i­ous and infor­mal labour arrange­ments, work­ing from home and cross­ing of public/private bound­aries as well as work­ing in con­di­tions where haz­ardous mate­ri­als and invis­i­ble pathogens pol­lute the very air we inhale. Work­ing bod­ies car­ry with them the ill-effects of adverse labour con­di­tions long after the work day, as these seep as well into com­mu­ni­ties. The effects of these are uneven­ly dis­trib­uted, as are the care bur­dens and labour of repair required in com­mu­ni­ties that are often shaped by state- and cap­i­tal-led crises of social repro­duc­tion. Our focus on the bound­ary-cross­ing nature of work­ing con­di­tions today invites new reflec­tions on per­me­abil­i­ty as a gen­er­a­tive site for con­sid­er­ing new pos­si­bil­i­ties for labour pol­i­tics. How can attend­ing to the bound­ary cross­ings of unwell­ness help us the­o­rise alter­nate pos­si­bil­i­ties root­ed in resis­tance, care, and worldmaking?

We invite papers that explore labour and health in indus­tries where ill-health extends far beyond place-based bound­aries of employ­ment and their bureau­crat­ic imag­i­nar­ies. How can bound­ary cross­ings of unwell­ness help us the­o­rise alter­nate pos­si­bil­i­ties root­ed in resis­tance and worldmaking?

To pro­pose a paper:

Pro­pos­als can be made via the ASA web­site until Jan­u­ary 3rd 2023. Pro­pos­als should include a paper title, the name and address­es of author(s), a long abstract of 250 words, and a short abstract of 300 char­ac­ters. On sub­mis­sion of the pro­pos­al, the author(s) will receive an auto­mat­ed email con­firm­ing receipt (make sure this is received to con­firm sub­mis­sion), and a deci­sion from the pan­el organ­is­ers will be made soon after Jan­u­ary 3rd.

Though pro­pos­als must be made through the ASA sys­tem, the pan­el organ­is­ers are hap­py to answer ques­tions via email: camelia.dewan@sai.uio.no or r.j.prentice@sussex.ac.uk

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Short Abstract:

This pan­el con­sid­ers how “all is not well with birth” (Chad­wick, 2018), wel­com­ing insights from across repro­duc­tive and mater­nal health. We invite pan­el­lists to re-envi­sion care worlds and spec­u­late how anthro­pol­o­gy can con­tribute to the pro­vi­sion of equi­table and respect­ful health systems.

Long Abstract:

“All is not well with birth” (Chad­wick, 2018). Despite the wide­spread improve­ments in mater­ni­ty ser­vices, glob­al and local inequal­i­ties in care and out­comes per­sist, and dis­pro­por­tion­ate rates of mater­nal and infant mor­tal­i­ty cut along racial, eco­nom­ic and geo­graph­i­cal lines. The WHO named 2020 ‘Year of the Nurse and Mid­wife,’ recog­nis­ing mid­wives’ piv­otal role in pub­lic health, yet the same year the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic upend­ed repro­duc­tive and mater­ni­ty ser­vices, leav­ing many women and birthing peo­ple with­out essen­tial ante­na­tal, birth and post­na­tal care. Repro­duc­tive rights, obstet­ric vio­lence and birth trau­ma are press­ing issues, while rates of cae­sare­an sec­tions and obstet­ric inter­ven­tions con­tin­ue to rise around the world. The chal­lenges and strug­gles relat­ed to ‘pol­i­tics of repro­duc­tion’ (Gins­burg and Rapp, 1991) have nev­er been more fraught and urgent.

This pan­el con­sid­ers the state of birth but also wel­comes insights from schol­ars work­ing across repro­duc­tive and mater­nal health. We recog­nise that expe­ri­ences and pro­vi­sion of ser­vices often hang togeth­er on a ‘con­tin­u­um of care’, involv­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion with “all rel­e­vant health care edu­ca­tions, providers, insti­tu­tions and orga­ni­za­tions” includ­ing tra­di­tion­al care­givers, birth atten­dants and mid­wives (Davis-Floyd, 2022). Anthro­pol­o­gists have held a promi­nent role in cri­tiquing bio­med­ical ways of know­ing and doing birth, and recent work sug­gests more hope­ful visions of care, sit­u­at­ed in life-affirm­ing prac­tices pri­ori­tis­ing cul­tur­al safe­ty and well-being. In look­ing for solu­tions, we invite pan­el­lists to re-envi­sion care worlds and spec­u­late on how anthro­pol­o­gy can be a source con­tribut­ing to the pro­vi­sion equi­table, respect­ful and sus­tain­able repro­duc­tive and mater­ni­ty care for all.

Call for papers clos­es on 7 Jan­u­ary 2023. 

https://nomadit.co.uk/conference/asa2023/p/12870

Best wish­es, 

Cas­san­dra and Chiara

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Please note that this call for papers clos­es on 3^rd Jan­u­ary 2023.

Con­venors: Liana Chase (Durham Uni­ver­si­ty) and David Mosse (SOAS)

Short abstract

This pan­el explores some of the ten­sions inher­ent in efforts to har­ness the ther­a­peu­tic ben­e­fits of human social­i­ty with­in men­tal health­care sys­tems. It invites ethno­graph­ic work on mod­els of care that empha­size human con­nec­tion over psy­chi­atric exper­tise (e.g., lay coun­selling, peer support).

Long abstract

Uncer­tain­ty over the med­ical mod­el of men­tal ill­ness con­tin­ues to grow, includ­ing scep­ti­cism that dis­tress is best han­dled by med­ical experts through the treat­ment of dis­crete diag­nos­able dis­or­ders. The impor­tance of the qual­i­ty of ther­a­peu­tic rela­tion­ships in explain­ing out­comes is increas­ing­ly well estab­lished, sup­port­ing mod­els of care that give pri­ma­cy to fos­ter­ing human con­nec­tion with­in – and beyond – the clin­i­cal set­ting. In recent years, this recog­ni­tion of rela­tion­ships as an ‘active ingre­di­ent’ in men­tal health treat­ment has inter­sect­ed with glob­al short­ages of trained clin­i­cians to open up more space for ’non-med­ical’ and ’non-pro­fes­sion­al’ inter­ac­tions with­in care deliv­ery. In the Glob­al North, this has involved the intro­duc­tion of peer and lay roles as well as (re)training clin­i­cians to cul­ti­vate more mind­ful, empa­thet­ic, and ‘human’ rela­tion­ships with clients. The Glob­al South has seen a pro­lif­er­a­tion of inter­ven­tions rely­ing on lay coun­sel­lors and com­mu­ni­ty work­ers, whose social embed­ded­ness with­in the neigh­bour­hoods they serve is rec­og­nized as a ther­a­peu­tic asset.

This pan­el explores some of the ten­sions inher­ent in efforts to har­ness the ther­a­peu­tic ben­e­fits of human social­i­ty with­in men­tal health­care sys­tems, con­sid­er­ing the ways the ‚human’ and the ‚clin­i­cal’ come to be defined in rela­tion and jux­ta­po­si­tion to one anoth­er. How does the oper­a­tional­iza­tion of rela­tion­ships as ther­a­peu­tic tools with mea­sur­able out­comes alter the terms and qual­i­ties of relat­ed­ness? What cod­i­fied rules come to bear on such rela­tion­ships, and how do these inter­act with every­day social norms? What rela­tion­al ethics is implied, and what kinds of moral lab­o­ra­to­ries are brought into being?

https://nomadit.co.uk/conference/asa2023/p/12694

–

Dr Liana E. Chase (she/her)

Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor, Depart­ment of Anthro­pol­o­gy, Durham University

Co-Inves­ti­ga­tor, Trans­for­ma­tion in Men­tal Health­care: An Anthro­po­log­i­cal Study of Sup­port­ed Open Dia­logue (http://anthropology-opendialogue.org/)

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Short Abstract:

For­mal and infor­mal care net­works are increas­ing­ly emerg­ing in African coun­tries as a way of cre­at­ing sol­i­dar­i­ties and mak­ing futures. We ask what/who con­sti­tutes this future and for whom, how social net­works come to be imag­ined, con­sti­tut­ed, engaged, nego­ti­at­ed, and contested.

Long Abstract:

Social net­works are cru­cial in con­fronting cri­sis and secur­ing African futures. African coun­tries are wit­ness­ing a pro­lif­er­a­tion of dif­fer­ent forms of for­mal and infor­mal care net­works emerg­ing in the con­text of grow­ing health, eco­log­i­cal and envi­ron­men­tal crises. Rang­ing from reli­gious and neigh­bor­hood net­works to self-help groups and pro­fes­sion­al sol­i­dar­i­ties, these col­lec­tives are increas­ing­ly tak­ing a cen­ter stage as forms of dis­tri­b­u­tion and shar­ing in the cur­rent era of the chang­ing dynam­ics of the rela­tion­ship between cit­i­zens, the state and the mar­ket, health and socio-eco­nom­ic crises, and glob­al finan­cial­iza­tion. A grow­ing mid­dle-class pop­u­la­tion and new dig­i­tal and mobile tech­nolo­gies are inter­act­ing with­in reg­is­ters of a long his­to­ry of mutu­al aid soci­eties in African con­texts shap­ing social net­works in dif­fer­ent ways. Mean­while, the state is seem­ing­ly tak­ing a cen­tral role in experimenting/expanding social and finan­cial pro­tec­tion through dif­fer­ent mech­a­nisms such nation­al health insur­ance schemes and cash trans­fer inter­ven­tions, which, in turn are open­ing up ways of bring­ing peo­ple togeth­er in var­ied forms. Along­side these, social and eco­nom­ic hav­oc, pre­car­i­ty, and grow­ing inequal­i­ties (health, eco­nom­ic, social), increas­ing mar­ke­ti­za­tion and access to cred­it con­tin­ue to shape and chal­lenge sol­i­dar­i­ty, while tak­ing new mean­ings across dif­fer­ent gen­er­a­tions, class­es, and gen­ders in dif­fer­ent con­texts. Peo­ple increas­ing­ly become part of net­works as a way of cre­at­ing sol­i­dar­i­ties and mak­ing futures. We ask what/who con­sti­tutes this future and for whom, how social net­works come to be imag­ined, con­sti­tut­ed, engaged, nego­ti­at­ed, and contested.

Please sub­mit your paper pro­pos­al here.

https://ecasconference.org/2023/programme#12488

We look for­ward to your submissions!

Con­venors

Jac­in­ta Vic­to­ria Muinde (Uni­ver­si­ty of Oslo)

Edwin Ame­so (Uni­ver­si­ty of Leipzig)

Ruth Prince (Uni­ver­si­ty of Oslo)

Chair

Lena Kroek­er (Bayreuth University)

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Orga­niz­ers: Francesco Miele (1); Michela Coz­za (2)
1: Uni­ver­si­ty of Tri­este, Italy; 2: Mälardalen Uni­ver­si­ty, Sweden

Top­ics: Every­day life and design of the mun­dane; Algo­rith­mic knowl­edge, media ecolo­gies and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence; Inno­va­tion imag­i­nar­ies, prac­tices and poli­cies; The val­ue of sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, inno­va­tion and research prac­tices; Het­ero­ge­neous assem­blages in bio­med­ical research

Key­words: Anti-age­ing, bio-hack­ing, geron­tech­nolo­gies, socio-mate­r­i­al practices.

Over the last decades, the nexus between bio­log­i­cal age­ing and func­tion­al decline has been more and more ‘con­test­ed’ (Vin­cent, 2006), espe­cial­ly by crit­i­cal schol­ars – among them, also STS schol­ars – com­mit­ted to eman­ci­pat­ing from bio­log­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal nat­u­ral­i­sa­tions of age cat­e­gories. The rela­tion­ship between age­ing and techno­sci­en­tif­ic inno­va­tion can be analysed by focus­ing on the con­stel­la­tions of socio-mate­r­i­al prac­tices through which the rela­tion­ship itself is per­formed. Our pan­el aims at explor­ing mate­r­i­al-dis­cur­sive tex­tures asso­ci­at­ed with age­ing, by focus­ing on two inter­re­lat­ed macro-topics.

The first top­ic refers to the so-called bio-hack­ing, defined as the use of “sci­ence-based tools and short­cuts for opti­miz­ing your own bio­log­i­cal poten­tial” (Lee, 2015: 8) and for max­imis­ing longevi­ty. In line with process­es of bio­med­ical­i­sa­tion of the body (Coz­za et al., 2022), dis­cours­es and ini­tia­tives relat­ed to bio-hack­ing pop­u­late online com­mu­ni­ties and social move­ments, which gen­er­ate, share, and repro­duce techno­sci­en­tif­ic prac­tices to coun­ter­act and reverse age­ing (e.g., the quan­ti­fied-self move­ment). Sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ties and mar­kets are also involved in extreme anti-age­ing prac­tices to extend lifes­pan (e.g., gene edit­ing). The phe­nom­e­non of bio-hack­ing relies on neolib­er­al prin­ci­ples which, in turn, dic­tate the ulti­mate goal of enhanc­ing the human body through tech­nolo­gies that ‘improve’ its oth­er­wise dete­ri­o­rat­ing func­tion­al­i­ties well beyond what is actu­al­ly nec­es­sary to sus­tain or repair the body itself.

From the first top­ic descends the sec­ond focus relat­ed to a process that we would call repair­ing age­ing. In this case, we bring atten­tion to the main­te­nance of aged human bod­ies, rather than to deep manip­u­la­tive inter­ven­tions upon them. We may refer to the soft­est forms of anti-age­ing med­i­cine to cure dis­eases asso­ci­at­ed with old age and to extend life expectan­cy as much as pos­si­ble (Vin­cent, 2006). The under­ly­ing eth­ic of care induces patients, fam­i­lies, and clin­i­cians to refrain from say­ing “no” to med­ical solu­tions as embody­ing a promise of bet­ter age­ing (Kauf­man, 2004). In par­al­lel, also most of assis­tive geron­tech­nolo­gies aim at repair­ing the effects of age­ing process­es on the human body, match­ing with an imag­i­nary of old­er peo­ple as ‘in need’ of being helped, in accor­dance with the ideals of ‘inde­pen­dent liv­ing’ in lat­er life.

Hav­ing this frame­work as our start­ing point,here is a not exhaus­tive list of indica­tive top­ics that might be considered:

- Enhance­ment tech­nolo­gies for aged human bodies.

- Hack­ing age.

- Repair­ing prac­tices in lat­er life.

- Algo­rith­mic elder­ly care.

- Age­ing and self-quantification.

- Assis­tive tech­nolo­gies and emerg­ing care practices.

- Age­ing and neo-liberalism.

- Ageism in design practices.

- Clin­i­cal inter­ven­tions and life-extensions.

- Eth­i­cal dilem­mas relat­ed to bio-med­ical anti-age­ing interventions.

Ref­er­ences

Coz­za, M., Kirsten L. E., and Katz S. (2022). Hack­ing age. Soci­ol­o­gy Com­pass, 16(10), e13034.

Kauf­man, S. R., Shim, J. K., and Russ, A. J. (2004). Revis­it­ing the bio­med­ical­iza­tion of aging: Clin­i­cal trends and eth­i­cal chal­lenges. The Geron­tol­o­gist, 44(6), 731–738.

Lee, J. (2015). The bio­hack­ing man­i­festo: The sci­en­tif­ic blue­print for a long, healthy and hap­py life using cut­ting edge anti-aging and neu­ro­science based hacks. Cre­ate­Space Inde­pen­dent Pub­lish­ing Platform.

Vin­cent, J. A. (2006). Age­ing con­test­ed: Anti-age­ing sci­ence and the cul­tur­al con­struc­tion of old age. Soci­ol­o­gy, 40(4), 681–698.

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Just a short reminder of our pan­el on work and disability/chronicity at next year’s DGSKA (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sozial- und Kul­tur­an­thro­polo­gie) con­fer­ence in Munich (25–28 July 2023). We hope to cre­ate a plat­form for schol­ars inter­est­ed in how people’s being at/in work relate to expe­ri­ences of dis­abil­i­ty and chronic­i­ty, in par­tic­u­lar in (but not restrict­ed to) con­texts of the Glob­al South. Your con­tri­bu­tions to the pan­el will hope­ful­ly lead to a spe­cial issue that taps into this (neglect­ed) field.

Sub­mis­sions (max. 200 words) should go to stefanie.mauksch@uni-leipzig.de. The Call for Paper runs until 15 Decem­ber 2022. Please con­sid­er sub­mit­ting an abstract and cir­cu­late widely.

Being in/ at Work: Repo­si­tion­ing Knowl­edge about Work, Dis­abil­i­ty, Chronic­i­ty (Work­shop)

Dis­abil­i­ty and chronic­i­ty are terms that seek to cap­ture bioso­cial expe­ri­ences that inter­sect with, and affect, how peo­ple engage in work, labor or employ­ment. This pan­el is focused on how peo­ple nav­i­gate dis­abling, debil­i­tat­ing and/or are enabling expe­ri­ences in and through work, and how these expe­ri­ences are shaped by the social local­i­ties from which they emerge. We place empha­sis on how work becomes sig­nif­i­cant for peo­ple whose bod­i­ly con­di­tions or appear­ances are pro­duced as ‘oth­er’ in respec­tive soci­eties, or who expe­ri­ence pain or chron­ic ill­ness that delim­it (but maybe also reshape or expand) their pos­si­bil­i­ties to con­tribute to com­mu­ni­ties and oth­er social arrange­ments. Depart­ing from the focus on work-relat­ed exclu­sion put for­ward in pre­vi­ous inquiries in anthro­pol­o­gy and relat­ed dis­ci­plines, we attend to pos­i­tive rela­tions between occu­pa­tion­al iden­ti­ties and work embod­i­ments on the one hand, and expe­ri­ences of dis­abil­i­ty and chronic­i­ty on the oth­er. Explor­ing new angles on the inter­play between ‘being dis­abled’ and ‘being in/at work’, we ask whether and how work ‘works’ as a form to aban­don or to prob­lema­tize con­struc­tions of dis­abil­i­ty. The work­shop will bring togeth­er schol­ars who address one or more of the fol­low­ing concerns:

Co-Con­sti­tu­tion: How are forms of dis­abil­i­ty and/or chronic­i­ty defined in con­nec­tion to notions and ideas of work? And vice ver­sa, how do dis­abil­i­ty and chronic­i­ty shape extant forms of labor?

Mean­ing-Mak­ing: How do peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ty and/or chron­ic con­di­tions in dif­fer­ent local­i­ties around the globe per­form and talk about their work?

Cri­tique: How can embed­ded under­stand­ings of dis­abil­i­ty, chronic­i­ty and work be brought to estrange the work­ings of admin­is­tra­tive pro­ce­dures, ide­olo­gies and polit­i­cal arrangements?

Reflec­tion and Auto-Ethnog­ra­phy: To what degree is the labor of anthro­pol­o­gists shaped by ableist con­cep­tions? Which poten­tial does dis­abil­i­ty hold to explore exclu­sion­ary dimen­sions of anthro­po­log­i­cal work?

Best, Ste­fanie Mauksch
Insti­tut für Ethnologie
Fakultät für Geschichte, Kun­st und Regionalwissenschaften
Uni­ver­sität Leipzig
+49 341 97 37 227
stefanie.mauksch@uni-leipzig.de

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