Call for Papers: 115th AAA Annual Meeting 'Evidence, Accident, Discovery'
16th-20th Nov. 2016, Minneapolis


"Evidence or experience based? Biomedicine as localized practices"


Organisers: Mustafa Abdalla (PhD, Freie Universität Berlin), Judith
Schühle (PhD Candidate, Freie Universität Berlin)

Biomedicine has always been an inherently transnational practice,
especially in the ‘global South’ with professionals from different
localities moving to study, to teach or to practice in other countries.
However, it has also taken root in local contexts and developed as
historically grown localized practices in different regions worldwide.
Countering the “technological imperative” (Adams and Kaufman 2011) from
the ‘global North’, many physicians trained in and/or practicing in the
‘global South’ understand experience-based hands-on medicine as the core
of biomedicine.
Mastery in this art of medicine rather than merely in the science of
medicine is viewed as one characteristic of local biomedical practice that
distinguishes doctors in the ‘global South’. Thus, the global biomedical
landscape today is characterized by both a highly technologized
evidence-based medical practice, where magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
and computerized axial tomography scans (CAT) become standard
investigative tools as well as a hands-on approach where diagnoses are
made with little technological intervention by relying on conventional
tools such as the stethoscope and are based on experience (c.f. Livingston
2012, Street 2014).

In this panel, we seek to focus on local variations of practicing
biomedicine: What characterizes good medical practice in different
biomedical contexts (e.g. in the ‘global South’ and in the ‘global North’,
in public and private healthcare systems)? How do doctors arrive at a
diagnosis in highly technologized environments and in less technologized
contexts? What ideas on care go with one and the other? Which local
variations exist of history-taking and physical examination? What
generational differences exist in practicing medicine within one context?
How is medical practice taught in evidence and experienced based
environments? What does evidence mean in different contexts? How is
evidence perceived by patients and professionals? How is it communicated
in different localized biomedical languages? Which factors (e.g.
availability of technology, litigation, patient-demand) contribute to a
favoring of evidence-based medicine? What do narratives on special
hands-on skills say about a positioning of doctors on a global biomedical
landscape? What happens to perceptions of best local practices when
doctors practice in other localities (e.g. after migrating or during
medical missions)? How do biomedical practices shape the relationship
between patients, physicians and also medical students in different
contexts?

We invite papers that focus on local biomedical practices worldwide, that
examine how they are shaped by local conditions as well as flows of global
biomedical knowledge and technologies embedded in historically grown power
regimes and consider how agency is created by narratives of best local
practice.

Please email your abstract of no more than 250 words to Judith Schühle
([log in to unmask]) before 31st March 2016. Abstracts will then be
reviewed and emails of acceptance will be sent out on 4th April 2016.

Please note that if your abstract will be chosen, you have to register for
the AAA conference and submit your abstract online before 15th April 2016.
Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to email the panel
convenors Judith Schühle ([log in to unmask]) and Mustafa Abdalla
([log in to unmask]).


Works cited:

Adams, Vincanne and Kaufman, Sharon R. (2011): Ethnography and the Making
of Modern Health. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 35(2): 313-320.
Livingston, Julie (2012): Improvising Medicine: An African Oncology Ward
in an Emerging Cancer Epidemic. Durham: Duke University Press.
Street, Alice (2014): Biomedicine in an Unstable Place. Infrastructure and
Personhood in a Papua New Guinean Hospital. London, Durham: Duke
University Press.

Best regards

Judith Schühle and Mustafa Abdalla
-- 
Judith Schühle M.A.
Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin // research fellow
Doktorandin // PhD Candidate

Institut für Sozial- und Kulturanthropologie // Institute of Social and
Cultural Anthropology
Freie Universität Berlin
Landoltweg 9-11
14195 Berlin
[log in to unmask]
(030) 838 59284

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