<http://casca-news.blogspot.com/2009/03/call-for-papers-sma-conference-y
ale.html>
Call for Papers: SMA Conference, Yale University, September 2009
Session Title: Logic of choice versus logic of care
Organizers: Anita Hardon (University of Amsterdam), Annemarie Mol
(University of Amsterdam)
Session Abstract:
Compared to forced interventions, coercion and paternalisms of all
kinds, choice deserves to be defended. But is that a good enough reason
to celebrate it always and everywhere? One of the disadvantages of
insisting on choice is that it shifts all the attention to a few moments
where the mind is put to work. But in dealing with health-issues, there
are many more moments when practical things have to be arranged. Ever so
many (hurting, smelling, difficult, painful) elements of ever so many
daily lives have to be attuned to one another. And once things are more
or less arranged, they crack and crumble. Start again. And again. The
ongoing tinkering (nursing, doctoring) implied in that, is not a matter
of making individual choices, but of sharing care.
Where and when do health care professionals care? And what about those
'cared for': when does it make sense to call their activities self-care?
We do not just seek empirical stories about these issues, but would also
like to calibrate our normative registers. Where does the logic of
choice fit and where does it make sense to argue for it? Where does it
reach its limits? In which sites and situations is the logic of care a
good alternative? Where does it easily work, where can it be put to work
and where is this an illusion? What other repertoires, or logics, are
there for dealing well with suffering, or for seeking to prevent it?
In this panel we would like to gather contributions from people who have
done field work in entirely different settings in the world, West, East,
North, South, so that we may learn from the contrasts and the
comparisons.
Please forward proposed titles and abstracts by April 9 to:
r.e.c.both@uva.nl
