Workshop 13

Appropriation of Medical Technologies: Local Moral Worlds and Socio-technical Change within Biomedicine

AG Medical Anthropology

New medical technologies – whether genuinely new, new combinations of already existing technologies, or applications of existing technologies in new constellations – are considered as central (f)actors for transformations in managing health and disease worldwide. Recent approaches of Medical Anthropology and other disciplines such as Science, Society and Technology Studies have shown that medical technologies, understood as a bundle of artifacts, know-how as well as human and non-human activities, can only be understood in their specific contexts of application. In order to study the movements provoked by and acting on medical technologies, processes of transfer, re-combination and innovation are as important to take into account as the moral, social, cultural and political-legal contexts, in which medical technologies have to be integrated – that is, a world characterized by mobility, migration and interconnectedness.

This panel looks for papers which follow up questions concerning medical technologies on an empirical, conceptual and/or theoretical level such as: What are the processes that establish and/or stabilize new medical technologies and their specific practices of applications in varying socio-cultural contexts? Which values, regimes of knowledge and parameters of actions do medical technologies come to be interrelated with, and which ideological (secular and/or religious), social, economic and political factors are decisive for transfer and appropriation of medical technologies? How are medico-technological innovations and their local practices of application impacting on societal contexts in which they (should) become integrated and which repercussive influences may they have on the contexts in which (and for which) they were originally conceptualized and put to use? And finally, what are the effects of these dynamic processes of appropriation and repercussions on the respective technologies themselves?

Bernhard Hadolt, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna: Bernhard.Hadolt@univie.ac.at
Viola Hörbst, Center for African Studies / Instituto Superior de Trabalho e Empresa Lissabon: hoerbst@lrz.uni-muenchen.de
Babette Müller-Rockstroh, Max-Planck-Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle: binghana@yahoo.de

Termin / Raum

Freitag, 02.10.2009, 15.00 bis 16.45 Uhr und 17.15 bis 19.00 Uhr / Raum 0.251 (Hauptgebäude)

Vorträge inkl. Abstracts als pdf

Marcia C. Inhorn, Yale University, (keynote lecture): Globalization and Gametes: Reproductive Tourism, Islamic Bioethics, and Middle Eastern Modernity

Josiane Carine Tantchou Yakam, Marc-Eric Gruénais, Observatoire Régional de la Santé (PACA), Marseille: Blurring boundaries: the appropriation of the operating theatre and surgical equipment in the context of a health system crisis

Hanna Kienzler, McGill University: War trauma and psychiatric intervention in the Kosovar context

Claudia Lang, Eva Jansen, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, LMU Munich: Glocalizing depression in an ayurvedic mental hospital in Kerala, India

Stefan Ecks, Social Anthropology, University of Edinburgh: Unseen dissemination: Antidepressants in India

Payam Abrishami, Medical Anthropology Unit, Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of Amsterdam: Contribution, Challenge, or Threat? Dutch Psychiatrists’ Attitudes towards Pharmaceutical Promotion