CfP: Health and Materiality: Histories of Health, Medicine and Trade across Cultures, 1600-2000
Url: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/people/staff_index/agerritsen/wellcome/jnu
8-10 November, 2018
Venue: Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi co-hosted by Global History and Culture Centre (University of Warwick, UK) & Centre for Historical Studies (JNU, New Delhi)
Keynote Speakers: Prof. Pratik Chakrabarty (University of Manchester); Prof. David Arnold (University of Warwick)
Background information:
Scholarly histories of trade, health and
medicine tend to fit into two major narratives. Some see networks of
commodity exchange as drivers for innovation and development, while
others focus on the often-negative impact that new trade networks had on
the health of (indigenous) populations. This research network,
generously funded by the Wellcome Trust, seeks to probe the limits of
these narratives by exploring the social, political and economic lives
of medical commodities across time and space. Transnational history
forms the framework, within which these enquiries on the intersections
between medicinal, pharmaceutical and therapeutic commodities and trade
are explored.
This workshop, co-organised by the Global
History and Culture Centre at the University of Warwick and the Centre
for Historical Studies, JNU, aims to bring together scholars and
students of transnational history, whose work has intersections with
fields such as medicine, trade, knowledge and materiality. We invite
advanced doctoral students and early career researchers working in these
areas. We welcome papers that engage with the ways in which
medical/therapeutic objects, goods and practices as well as technologies
of production move and thereby shape the circuits through which they
travel. We seek to conceptualise and historicise the transnational and
global circulation of such goods and the material cultural practices
associated with them. The workshop would be an ideal opportunity to
facilitate conversation between senior scholars and advanced doctoral
students/early career scholars to engage on these themes.
Possible themes for exploration include the following, but are not limited to these:
1. Therapeutic commodities and health. To
what extent is the trade in therapeutic commodities a driver for health
and discourses on health? How can we map histories of therapeutic
commodities to larger social/cultural/eco histories? What are the
limitations of this approach, and what alternative models can we
identify for understanding the histories of therapeutic commodities?
2. Chronologies and Periodisation.
Therapeutic commodities have been traded before and after the appearance
of industrially manufactured pharmaceuticals. How significant is this
transition? What kind of change has industrial modernity wrought on
specific therapeutic/medical practices and regimes?
3. Mapping spaces. The trade in therapeutic
commodities occurred across cultural zones and continents. Who were its
major actors? What kind of associations, networks, and hierarchies
emerged in these interactions? Can we map these historical transitions?
4. Research and the use of knowledge. How
have networks of power intersected with the circulation of knowledge?
How does power impact the agents and locations caught in this
circulation? How do we move beyond the imperial power-knowledge nexus to
rehabilitate the shifts and loci associated with this traffic? How
important are transnational approaches to frame this topic?
Application details
Interested doctoral students and scholars are invited to submit a 300-word abstract and short academic CV to healthandmateriality@gmail.com
no later than 20 April 2018. For selected presenters with little/no
institutional funding, small bursaries for travel and accommodation will
be available.