*http://www.casca2008.anthropologica.ca/*
*Authority, agency and bodies: sites of encounter in the anthropology of
regulation__*
Regulatory agencies are responsible for the protection and management of
risks, and for the safety, efficacy and quality of the products that
come under their mandate. The texture of the work-a-day world of
regulatory cultures and the types of transactions, communications, and
negotiations that make up regulatory practices are largely beyond the
purview of the citizens whose well-being is balanced. Trade-offs of
harms and benefits happen behind closed doors; they get determined by
the panoply of evidences. In this panel, we suggest that understanding
the way in which regulation takes place requires situated ethnographic
accounts that are capable of rupturing taken-for-granted assumptions:
evidence, and the instruments of measurement that determine scientific
evidence are cross-examined along with their entangled human regulatory
actors. Narratives of efficacy, safety and precaution weave through
regulatory practices, but are mirrored back in altered forms by those
impacted by regulation, including patients, industry and the regulators
themselves.
This panel calls for papers that deal with this intersection between
regulation, the evidence used to create it, and those whom it affects.
Please send abstracts of 100 words (max.) to *cpholmes@dal.ca
<mailto:cpholmes@dal.ca>* by February 13, 2008.
Session organizers: Dr. Janice Graham and Christina Holmes
