Dear colleagues,
We are pleased to invite you to submit abstract proposals to our panel
*"*At the borders of biomedicine: how health and care are reconfigured
as do-able problems beyond biomedical expertise
"
(Panel n. 25 - panel description below) at the 10th STS Italia
Conference “Technoscience for Good: Designing, Caring, and
Reconfiguring", Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy, 11-13 June 2025.
Follow this link: https://stsitalia.org/submission-2025/ and submit a
title, an abstract of up to 500 words, and keywords by 3 February
2025 (this deadline will NOT be extended).
If you have any questions please email myself at .
Best wishes,
Stefano Crabu, on behalf of the co-convenors (Caragh Brosnan, Federico
Neresini and Pia Vuolanto)
Panel 25
/At the borders of biomedicine: how health and care are reconfigured as
do-able problems beyond biomedical expertise/
In contemporary societies, neoliberal economic arrangements and the rise
of consumerism have significantly reshaped cultural expectations and
representations of the body, framing health as a highly individualized
and morally charged responsibility. Individuals are expected to seek
knowledge, exercise moral judgment, participate in healthcare decisions,
and minimize health risks through personal choices. This emphasis on
personal responsibility is reflected not only in public health
discourses but also in knowledge domains that sit at the epistemic
boundaries of biomedicine. Consequently, it is important to explore how
these new public health discourses have created space for alternative
practices—such as meditation, nutritional therapies, dance therapy, and
healing methods drawn from naturopathy and homeopathy—to enter the
healthcare arena. These practices are supported by an increased emphasis
on individual choice, therapeutic pluralism, and associated funding
packages.
Approaches that encompass health and wellness practices that lie outside
and are not accepted within biomedicine, otherwise labeled as “refused
knowledge”, do not simply reflect an alleged opposition to biomedical
advice stemming from health illiteracy or distrust of medical
practitioners. Instead, they signify a demand from citizens, consumers,
and patient advocacy groups to become more informed and accountable in
their relationship with biomedicine. This trend involves “opening the
black box” of biomedicine, critically assessing its inner workings.
Further research is needed to explore how alternative knowledge systems
challenge biomedical boundaries and contribute to shaping contemporary
understandings of health and care.
This panel aims to bring together multidisciplinary STS research to
deepen our understanding of the social and epistemic conditions under
which health and care are discursively and materially enacted as
“do-able problems” at the margins of biomedical science. It seeks to
analyze the extent to which such enactment may reduce individuals’
reliance on prevailing medical practitioners by promoting activities
such as self-care, health enhancement, chronic disease management, and
the acquisition of diagnostic and therapeutic skills, thereby
increasingly shifting medical expertise and responsibility to the
individual.
We invite scholars and practitioners to submit theoretical, empirical,
and/or methodological contributions that explore how forms of health and
care emerging at the boundaries of science reshape biomedical authority
while becoming entangled in contemporary politics of life.
We especially encourage a focus on the intersection of knowledge-making
practices and individualization processes, and how these processes are
enacted in relation to bodily experiences, health, and care management,
particularly with regard to the emphasis on personal and moral
responsibility for health.
Contributors may focus on the following dimensions:
• Analyze how health and care are practiced at the boundaries of
biomedical sciences.
• Examine classification systems, technical objects, therapeutic
practices, care relationships, self-experimental techniques, evidence
production, and public communication strategies that either reinforce or
challenge the narratives and normative stances framing health as an
individualized moral responsibility and personal duty.
• Explore knowledge legitimization strategies employed to frame health
and care as do-able problems beyond biomedical expertise.
• Provide methodological reflections on the importance of maintaining a
non-normative, symmetrical perspective when studying health and care
practices beyond the biomedical, while also considering the researcher’s
positionality in the field.
/
/
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