 |
 |
CALL FOR PAPERS "The Normal and the Abnormal: historical and cultural perspectives on norms and deviations" Two-day Research Symposium, Manchester, 10-11 July 2002 ================================================== How are norms established and defined? To what extent do historical and cultural contexts play a part in the construction of norms and deviance? This conference will address questions about the definition and the demarkation of norms and deviance in relation to social, historical and cultural factors. Core issues will include: * Normal medicine - statistical, biological, cultural and moral norms; orthodox and heterodox medicine * The normal body - the perfect body and disability; the healthy and the diseased body; degeneration; the normal body and fascism; normalizing the devinat body (sexual surgery, plastic surgery) * The normal mind - rationality and madness; other minds and other rationalities; normal personality and personality 'disorders' * The racialised body and mind - normal and pathological races; whiteness as norm and whiteness as race * The gendered body and mind - the normal male/female * Normal sexuality - heterosexuality as norm, homosexuality as gender deviation, 'bad' sex, 'unnatural' sex * Middle-class norms * Liberal democracy and 'the evil' (Holocaust, ethnic cleansing) * Normative religion - religion and belief; Christianity and Islam * Cultural norms and deviations - globalisation ; Western norms and local traditions; the decline of the West; Western development/modernization as norm and goal * Scientific norms - normal science, bad science, heterodox science; paradigm shifts If you would like to present a paper on any of the above issues and/or if you would like to receive further details, please contact: Dr Chandak Sengoopta Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine/Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of Manchester, Mathematics Tower, Manchester M13 9PL, UK, E-mail: [log in to unmask] or Dr Waltraud Ernst, Department of History, University of Southampton, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK E-mail: [log in to unmask]