Society for Medical Anthropology

A section of the American Anthropological Association

Calls For Papers & Collaboration

 

GH/Innovate 2010 Global Health & Innovation Conference
  • Presented by Unite For Sight
  • Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA
  • Saturday, April 17 - Sunday, April 18, 2010
  • Registration Now Open (Early Bird Registration Rate): http://www.ghinnovate.org/
  • Call For Abstracts: Submit an abstract online at http://www.ghinnovate.org/
  • The first deadline for abstract submission is August 15. The final abstract deadline is September 20.
CFP for special issue of Social Science & Medicine on Global Health Assistance: Qualitative Evidence on What Works and Why.
  • Please find further details and the call for papers here
CFP: Symposium ‘Care & Health Care’, 18 December 2009
University of Amsterdam
  • The annual symposium of the journal Medische Antropologie (18 December 2009) will have as its theme ‘Care & Health Care’. The editors invite you to contribute a paper on this theme. An invitational article by Arthur Kleinman and Sjaak van der Geest ‘Care in health care: Remaking the moral world of medicine’ appears in the June issue of the journal (downloadable at: http://www.medical-anthropology.nl/tma/21_1/kleinman.pdf ). The article that intends to motivate and encourage participation and writing of papers can be sent to paper writers on their request. At the end of this call you will find a brief sketch of the theme.
  • The symposium will take place at the University of Amsterdam. Venue is Het Spinhuis, Oudezijds Achterwal 185, Amsterdam. The symposium will consist of thematic discussions based on submitted papers of the participants. During the symposium there will be no formal presentation of papers, but only a short introduction to be followed by a discussion.
  • A selection of the symposium papers will be published in the summer 2010 issue of Medische Antropologie. Registration for the symposium is possible until 30 November via the website of Medical Anthropology & Sociology Unit www.medical-anthropology.nl under Agenda: ‘Symposium Care & Health Care’; click: Register, fill the form and submit. Participation is limited to 35 people, and registration will be processed in order of arrival. The symposium fee is €25 to be paid at the symposium. Participants will be given access to all papers no later than a week in advance of the symposium. They are expected to read all the papers in preparation of the symposium.
  • Those who are interested in submitting a paper should provide a title plus brief abstract together with their registration, before 1 November 2009. The complete paper should be sent as an attachment per email to: Janus Oomen, h.a.p.c.oomen@uva.nl before November 27, 2008. Papers should be in English. Drafts and work in progress are welcome.

Authors are invited to consider the following questions:

  • What constitutes ‘good care’ in a given social or cultural situation? Are medicine and care compatible?
  • Is there enough ‘time’ for care in today’s health care system?
  • To what extent does the concept of care vary in different cultural contexts?
  • How can we understand the gender-based differences in care perception and practice?
  • Is care related to reciprocity? Which conditions call for care and which ones do not?
  • How does the concept of care evolve in relation to the development of medical technology?
  • How does care evolve in conditions of radical cultural change and acculturation, e.g. in the life of migrants? What is the economic basis for caregiving? What explains the low social status of caregiving as a profession? What policy could enhance the quality of care?
CFP: SAR Research Team Seminars
  • The School for Advanced Research announces a new research team short seminar program to advance collaborative and interdisciplinary research in anthropology. With funding from the National Science Foundation, the program supports research teams that need focused time together to synthesize, analyze, and discuss the results of their work and to develop plans for successful completion of their projects.
  • For more information, visit http://www.sarweb.org/
CFP: Knowledge and Pain
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel May 24 - 26, 2010
  • Pain, physical or emotional, as a field of knowledge about suffering, is a subject of scholarly attention in the humanities and social sciences, in parallel with the scientific study of pain mechanisms and controls. The conference Knowledge and Pain will be devoted to the voices of the sufferers (rather than to those of inflictors, healers, or managers of pain). Bypassing, as much as possible, the messages of professional mediators, it will focus on the light that sufferers themselves shed upon their condition through verbal or visual expression.

The organizers of the conference welcome proposals that deal with the following questions:

  • How does discourse function as an intermediary between sufferer and listeners? Is pain destructive of language or does it merely challenge it?
  • How and in what contexts does body language communicate suffering in different cultures and inter-culturally?
  • What social capital (if any) do sufferers gain from communicating their pain?
  • Is pain exclusively destructive of the subject's world or can it yield cognitive or spiritual gain?
  • Is it ethically problematic to ascribe meaning to pain beyond its function as a symptom?
  • What are the relationships between physical and emotional pain?
  • How are the media used to represent pain, and with what side effects?
  • Do artistic representations of suffering improve our understanding of the pain of another?
  • How does the voice of pain implicate the hearer?

A selection of papers based on the work of the conference will be published by an academic press. Paper proposals of 300 to 500 words should be sent to msecohen@mscc.huji.ac.il by September 8, 2009.

May 2, 2009