Apologies for cross-posting
Dear Colleagues,
We would like to invite you to submit proposals to our panel “’Awkward
collaborations’ in studying people with chronic and rare diseases” (P12)
to be organized at the Mobilising Methods in Medical Anthropology
conference will be held 3 to 4 September 2020 at the London School of
Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
Abstract
Among scientists and the general public, research on chronic and/or rare
diseases has been regarded a domain of the biological and medical
sciences. Genes, tissues, and blood samples seem to belong to
laboratories rather than constituting socio-political and economic
realities. The bodies of participants in clinical trials, babies
undergoing newborn screening or blood donors among others, are
foregrounded and scrutinized in order to obtain measurable, comparable,
and quantifiable data. Subjected to medicalizing concepts and practices,
patients and their families, members of patient advocacy groups, and
policy makers often appropriate the language rooted in biological and
medical sciences.
In this panel, we want to ask what happens when medical anthropologists
and other social scientists enter this picture of concept and data
creation and perpetuation as collaborators and researchers. Drawing on
the idea of “awkward collaboration” (Yates-Doerr 2019), this panel
invites papers that address ethical, conceptual, and methodological
efforts to work with and/or around differences arising in collaborative
research on chronic and rare diseases.
The Call for Papers closes on 12 April 2020.
Proposals should consist of a paper title, a (very) short abstract of
