Collaboration as method in Medical Anthropology. Feminist and decolonial perspectives
Panel
CfP for EASA’s Panel “Collaboration as method in Medical Anthropology. Feminist and decolonial perspectives”.
„Collaboration as method in Medical Anthropology. Feminist and decolonial perspectives”
EASA, Barcelona, 23–26 July 2024)
CfP Deadline:22 January 2024
More Info here
Short Abstract:
What is collaborative research in Medical Anthropology? How to have trusting and symmetrical relationships when addressing health-related inequalities and power relations? From a feminist and decolonial approach, we discuss the (im)possibilities of collaboration in Medical Anthropology research.
Long Abstract:
Over the past decades, Medical Anthropology has been reflecting on its methodological approaches, especially in contexts of marked inequality and power imbalance; as well as in contexts where our interlocutors’ survival and existence are at stake, and where they face suffering and devastation. How to do ethnographic research on conditions of suffering and inequality when addressing health-related issues without reproducing these conditions?
From a feminist and decolonial approach to research and knowledge practices, collaborative research figures as one possible way to counteract extractivist modes of fieldwork that feed into and perpetuate the long-lasting matrix of power. However, if we are to engage in ‘true’ collaboration, questions arise about the varied forms it may (and should) take. For instance, when does collaboration begin, and when and how does it end? How do different forms of knowledge enter into dialogue during fieldwork and become an integral part of the research findings? What can collaboration look like in the context of academic hierarchies, especially when it involves early-career researchers (including students)? How can ECRs with often low paid and short-term jobs engage in time- and resource-consuming collaboration without increasing their precarious status?
In this round-table, we plan to critically engage with collaborative methodologies which are ideally based on concrete ethnographic case studies. We aim to discuss and learn from the challenges of such methodologies that have the potential of decentering academic knowledge practices by giving equal room to diverse forms of knowledge production in matters of health, care, hope, body, life, and death.
Convenors:
Hansjörg Dilger (Freie Universität Berlin)
Lucia Mair (University of Vienna)
Chair:
Maria Fernanda Olarte-Sierra (University of Vienna)
Feel free to email if you have any questions!
Warm wishes on behalf of all convenors,
lucia.mair[at]univie.ac.at
MedAnthro Panels & Roundtables EASA conference (Barcelona, 23–26 July 2024)
Panel
Invitation to MedAnthro Panels & Roundtables EASA conference (Barcelona, 23–26 July 2024)
Conference theme: Doing and Undoing with Anthropology
EASA conference, Barcelona, 23–26 July 2024
Deadline: 22.01
MAE Panel: Towards Healthcare 3.0? Undoing the past and doing the future of curing and healing
Other MedAnthro panels:
Un/doing foetal „viability”: Negotiating and governing the boundaries of life and death
Ambivalent substances: Chemosocialities in life-death worlds
Feminist perspectives on mobile essential workers: the pandemic as turning point?
Challenging global health through a socio-anthropological lens
The intersectionality of anthropology, ageing, and disability studies.
Doing and undoing reproduction
MedAnthro roundtables:
(Un)doing the anthropology of health care crisis: structural competency and health care professionals
Collaboration as a method in medical anthropology. Feminist and decolonial perspectives
Other topical panels:
Oh my gut: anthropological pathways to the cultural, affective, medical and multispecies entanglements of the gut
Care Models in Transition: Public Policy Challenges in Response to the Pandemic Crisis
Un/Doing reproduction: transnational reproductive justice in times of (post-)pandemics and anti-gender campaigns
Pathologies of Imitation
Panel
CfP for in person Panel “Pathologies of Imitation” at EASA’s Biennial Conference (23–26 July, Barcelona)
Panel “Pathologies of Imitation”
EASA Biennial Conference
23–26 July, Barcelona
CfP deadline: 23:59 CET on January 22nd 2024
Panel Concept:
Imitation is fundamental to human social life, underpinning everything from entrainment in cultural practices to interactional rapport and the emulation of ethical exemplars. Yet at times, the urge to imitate is considered medically and/or morally pathological: when echopraxia (‘compulsive imitation’) is flagged as a medical symptom; in anxieties around ‘copycat’ crimes and suicides, and in moral panics around plagiarism, online impersonation, and ‘Westoxification’ – to name but a few. Taking such ‘pathologies of imitation’ as a starting point, this panel seeks to develop existing anthropological literatures on mimesis and related phenomena by highlighting the affective and moral complexities of being an imitative subject.
We invite papers that examine how, why, and to what effect certain forms of imitation are construed and experienced as pathological in diverse contemporary settings. Whose interests are best served by imitation’s pathologisation – and is this kind of political analysis sufficient for understanding the distressing or conflicted ways that people sometimes experience their own imitative urges and practices? How and why do ethical traditions accord imitations different degrees of moral valence? Is that changing as new technologies transform the labour involved in imitation? What causal logics are used to account for, resolve, and prevent ‘inappropriate imitation’, to what social worlds do they give rise, and how seriously should anthropologists take them? Indeed, what can anthropology ‘do’ to support those suffering in their relationships to imitation – and which aspects of the anthropological canon might a study of imitation’s pathologies suggest need to be ‘undone’?
Submission details:
Paper proposals should be submitted online via the conference portal (here)
Any queries/Questions?
Please feel free to get in touch with us on N.J.Long[at]lse.ac.uk (Nick) and jacob.copeman[at]usc.es (Jacob)
Unpacking temporal, spatial and relational dimensions of care trajectories in life-limiting illness
Panel
Invitation to contributions to the panel „Unpacking temporal, spatial and relational dimensions of care trajectories in life-limiting illness” at the upcoming EASA conference in Barcelona (23–26 July 2024)
Panel „Unpacking temporal, spatial and relational dimensions of care trajectories in life-limiting illness”
EASA conference
Barcelona July 23–26, 2024
Abstract:
short abstract max 300 characters + long abstract of max 250 words
Deadline: January 22, 2024.
Natashe Lemos Dekker (Leiden University)
Annemarie Samuels (Leiden University)
Rikke Sand Andersen (Aarhus University and University of Southern Denmark)
Short Abstract:
This panel brings together anthropologists studying temporal, spatial and relational dimensions of care trajectories. It invites empirical and conceptual explorations that are based on ethnographic research on care for people experiencing life-limiting illness.
Long Abstract:
This panel aims to bring together anthropologists studying temporal, spatial and relational dimensions of care trajectories of people experiencing life-limiting illness. The burgeoning anthropological literature on care conceptualizes caregiving across institutional and non-institutional boundaries and as both a form of labour and an affective force (e.g. Buch 2018, Strong 2020, McKearney and Amrith 2021) and highlights the embodiment of care (Aulino 2016; Jackson 2021) as well as a resistance against totalizing conceptualizations (Cubellis 2020; Stevenson 2020). Inviting empirical and conceptual explorations of care trajectories, we seek to highlight temporal, spatial and relational movements of care practices (cf. Solomon 2022), particularly for and by people affected by life-limiting illness.
In a context of changing welfare states and increasing global implementations of forms of Universal Health Coverage, we ask: How do care relations and care needs change during illness trajectories? How do caregivers and patients move across borders and institutions to provide and access care? What expectations do they have of care trajectories and what alternative trajectories do they envision? And how may ethnographic research on care trajectories lay bare the intersectional inequalities that shape people’s possibilities to give and access care over time? We invite panel contributors to unpack the concept of care trajectories based on ethnographic research, and to contribute to ongoing discussions on the conceptualization of care.
2nd International Conference on Caring for Elderly and Dependent People
Panel
Panel at Rovira i Virgili University, Tarragona (Spain) on Caring for Elderly and Dependent People
2nd International Conference on Caring for Elderly and Dependent People
5–6 September 2024
Rovira i Virgili University, Tarragona (Spain)
We would like to inform you that we have extended the deadline for submitting proposals for papers for the 2nd International Congress on Care for the Elderly and Dependents until 20 May.
You can submit your abstract by using the following link: https://www.congressos.urv.cat/cuidado-mayores-dependientes/important-dates. The 2nd International Conference “Caring for Elderly and Dependent People: Social and Political Commitments for a Care Model in Transition” will be held on 5–6 September 2024 at Rovira i Virgili University (Tarragona, Spain).
More detailed information on the conference can be found here: https://www.congressos.urv.cat/cuidado-mayores-dependientes/home
If you have any questions, please contact caremodel@urv.cat
Inequalities in (Mental) Healthcare: Critical Perspectives in Medical Anthropology
Panel
Hybrid event in the frameworks of the World Anthropological Union Congress 2024
Inequalities in (Mental) Healthcare: Critical Perspectives in Medical Anthropology
Panel at World Antrhopological Union Congress 2024
Convenors: Sharon Gabie (Nelson Mandela University, Johannesburgburg, South Africa), Helmar Kurz (University of Muenster, Germany)
When: 11th – 15th November 2024
Cfp deadline: 13 May 2024
Panel Abstract:
(Mental) healthcare systems worldwide meet various challenges, particularly the insufficiency of resources for patients of lower economic classes and rural areas. What is more, in many places therapeutic settings remain “zones of abandonment” (Biehl 2005), particularly when affiliated with official healthcare sectors. However, some philanthropic, religious-spiritual, and private agencies provide “good examples” of (mental) healthcare (Basu et al. 2017).
Changing governments and contesting policies have impacted local, translocal, and global (mental) healthcare supplies, maintaining inconsistencies in (mental) healthcare. Further, the recent COVID-19 pandemic has clearly illustrated that structural violence (Farmer 2005) and chronicity of crisis (Vigh 2008) still shape inequalities in access to health resources in both the Global North and Global South. New challenges may be requests regarding the mental healthcare provision for Indigenous and migratory communities.
In South Africa, a recent case of negligence and maladministration of people with psychiatric disorders is that of Life Esidimeni. The tragedy witnessed 144 people die because of inappropriate care and the lack of equipped infrastructure and staff to cater to the needs of people in mental health care facilities and many more suffering trauma (Durojaye & Agaba 2018, Ferlito & Dhai 2018). South Africa is no exception for the fact, that countries across the globe neglect mental health care as an overall aspect of health and wellbeing. The results of a four-country study, which included South Africa, found that there is a lack of data to convince policymakers to prioritize mental health, a lack of implementation, and how to mobilize people to seek intervention to the problem at an early stage (Pillay 2019). In disadvantaged communities, black communities in particular, the stigma against mental health issues is compounded by cultural and social challenges that prevent many people from seeking early intervention (Gumede 2021).
Philanthropic organizations have always been essential health resources, and not only for marginalized social groups (for the example of Brazilian Spiritism, see Kurz 2024). However, they have been widely ignored in public and academic discourse, and how political institutions contest, regulate, or integrate related approaches remains a research desideratum that this panel wants to address around the following leading questions, focusing on mental health practices but integrating all health-related aspects of human well-being:
1) Strategies between actors. What are the contemporary challenges/opportunities of diverse actors within the field of (mental) health in their particular localities? In which spaces do they intervene? Where are they excluded? What trends can be identified, e.g., in the emergence of new agencies in the field or power distributions among existing actors?
2) Content of action and intervention in the field. What is currently at stake? What are perspectives and practices? How do divergent actors respond to (mental) health challenges?
3) Political regulation. How do state and official healthcare institutions relate to contesting and complementing approaches? Do forms of cooperation exist? Do obstacles exist? What are political strategies at the intersection of political, economic, and social interests?
To submit a paper/abstract, please follow these guidelines: https://waucongress.org/call-for-papers/
The convenors are available for any doubt or question in advance and throughout the CfP process:
Sharon Gabie (Nelson Mandela University, Johannesburgburg, South Africa) sharon_gabie@yahoo.ie
Helmar Kurz (University of Muenster, Germany) helmar.kurz@uni-muenster.de