Biennial Conference of the Edinburgh Centre for Medical Anthropology Abstract submission and selection Send your abstracts (250-300 words) to stefan.ecks@ed.ac.uk by 9 March 2018. Proposed papers will be selected by the end of March 2018. Staying healthy and recovering from sickness comes at a price. Staying ill means losing time, losing money, losing productivity. Seeing doctors, buying drugs, investing in future health, all cost money. People's willingness to pay can be elicited, benefits need to be maximized while costs need to be minimized. Return of investments in health are measured for individuals and whole populations. Disability-adjusted life years, efficiency savings, the marginal utility of life are all calculated with as much accuracy as possible. Good health is taken as an incalculable value, while the means to achieve it are presented as calculable values. Mathematics, statistics, and economic formulas set the terms for how international, national institutions and private corporations are approaching the health of human beings, of nonhuman beings, and of the environment. Medical anthropologists have long been aware of how health is approached economically and metrically, without usually looking at the details of how numbers are collected and put to use. Many engagements stop at invoking neoliberalism or late capitalism. At the same time, anthropology's toolkit exceeds a narrow focus on economics and can open up rich discussions on value beyond money. The Edinburgh Medical Anthropology Centre's biennial conference will assemble new anthropological research how health is valued today. We invite scholars working on the health of humans, of animals, and of habitats are invited to rethink what it means to make value measurable in economic terms. Who is producing numbers, and to what end? What evidence counts, which evidence does not count? What forms of knowledge, belief, or perhaps strategic ignorance, are revealed and hidden by the values put on health? Does the value of health change when kinship and social relations, ritual and religion, affect and emotions, belonging and exclusion, are made to count? Key conference themes and questions Valuing health and sickness: who, where, how? Unhealthy markets, markets of health Valuing kinship and wellbeing The worth of a person Valuing labour and work values Relations between local values and global value Negotiating value in cross-disciplinary collaborations How metrics, data, evidence transform value Keynote speakers (confirmed): Anita Hardon, University of Amsterdam Julie Livingston, New York University Programme Two full days of individual papers, keynotes, and roundtable discussions. Conference Fee (includes lunches & tea/coffee) Full/professional: GBP 75 Reduced/student: GBP 55 Conference committee Stefan Ecks, Maya Unnithan, Karina Kielmann, Alice Street, Lilian Kennedy, Michaela McCaffrey (secretary) Sep 04 2018 00.00 - Sep 05 2018 23.59 Biennial Conference of the Edinburgh Centre for Medical Anthropology The Biennial Conference of the Edinburgh Centre for Medical Anthropology will be held on 4 and 5 September 2018. Abstract deadline 9 March 2018. Edinburgh Details TBC
Biennial Conference of the Edinburgh Centre for Medical Anthropology Abstract submission and selection Send your abstracts (250-300 words) to stefan.ecks@ed.ac.uk by 9 March 2018. Proposed papers will be selected by the end of March 2018. Staying healthy and recovering from sickness comes at a price. Staying ill means losing time, losing money, losing productivity. Seeing doctors, buying drugs, investing in future health, all cost money. People's willingness to pay can be elicited, benefits need to be maximized while costs need to be minimized. Return of investments in health are measured for individuals and whole populations. Disability-adjusted life years, efficiency savings, the marginal utility of life are all calculated with as much accuracy as possible. Good health is taken as an incalculable value, while the means to achieve it are presented as calculable values. Mathematics, statistics, and economic formulas set the terms for how international, national institutions and private corporations are approaching the health of human beings, of nonhuman beings, and of the environment. Medical anthropologists have long been aware of how health is approached economically and metrically, without usually looking at the details of how numbers are collected and put to use. Many engagements stop at invoking neoliberalism or late capitalism. At the same time, anthropology's toolkit exceeds a narrow focus on economics and can open up rich discussions on value beyond money. The Edinburgh Medical Anthropology Centre's biennial conference will assemble new anthropological research how health is valued today. We invite scholars working on the health of humans, of animals, and of habitats are invited to rethink what it means to make value measurable in economic terms. Who is producing numbers, and to what end? What evidence counts, which evidence does not count? What forms of knowledge, belief, or perhaps strategic ignorance, are revealed and hidden by the values put on health? Does the value of health change when kinship and social relations, ritual and religion, affect and emotions, belonging and exclusion, are made to count? Key conference themes and questions Valuing health and sickness: who, where, how? Unhealthy markets, markets of health Valuing kinship and wellbeing The worth of a person Valuing labour and work values Relations between local values and global value Negotiating value in cross-disciplinary collaborations How metrics, data, evidence transform value Keynote speakers (confirmed): Anita Hardon, University of Amsterdam Julie Livingston, New York University Programme Two full days of individual papers, keynotes, and roundtable discussions. Conference Fee (includes lunches & tea/coffee) Full/professional: GBP 75 Reduced/student: GBP 55 Conference committee Stefan Ecks, Maya Unnithan, Karina Kielmann, Alice Street, Lilian Kennedy, Michaela McCaffrey (secretary) Sep 04 2018 00.00 - Sep 05 2018 23.59 Biennial Conference of the Edinburgh Centre for Medical Anthropology The Biennial Conference of the Edinburgh Centre for Medical Anthropology will be held on 4 and 5 September 2018. Abstract deadline 9 March 2018. Edinburgh Details TBC
Sep 04 2018 00.00 - Sep 05 2018 23.59 Biennial Conference of the Edinburgh Centre for Medical Anthropology The Biennial Conference of the Edinburgh Centre for Medical Anthropology will be held on 4 and 5 September 2018. Abstract deadline 9 March 2018.
