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Final CFP: Health and Discourse Across Scales
The philosopher Ian Hacking has criticized what he calls “the metaphor of ‘discourse’” for failing to attend to “what people do, how they live, [and] the larger world of the material existence that they inhabit” (Hacking 1998, p. 86). However, discourse is more than the simple analysis of language, texts, and representations. Instead, studies of discourse unpack the ways in which representations and practices are mutually constructed and reinforced on a daily basis. Within health geography, both the areas of medical humanities/narrative medicine and critical global health are engaging with this more inclusive understanding of discourse, unpacking the ways in which discourses of illness and health are produced and enacted, and the effects that such discourses have on the lives of individuals, the development of policy, and the practice of medicine. Attention within medical humanities/narrative medicine and critical global health, however, has largely been directed at different scales, with medical humanities/narrative medicine largely concerned with individuals and critical global health particularly directed toward projects at community and national scales.
In this session we seek to foster a conversation across scales, drawing on both traditions to explore the ways in which health is itself imbued with discourse at all scales. Possible themes may include: health communication between expert and lay populations, political ecology of health discourses, postcolonial health/medicine, caring across scale, multiscalar methods in health geography, structural determinants of health, discursive constructions of health and disease, community health narratives, discourses of disability, etc. While discourse is a main topical focus of the session, we welcome papers that employ methods extending beyond discourse analysis narrowly construed.
Please send titles and abstracts (up to 250 words) to Skye Naslund ([log in to unmask]) and Maggie Wilson ([log in to unmask]) by Sunday, November 6th for consideration.
This session is sponsored by the Health and Medical Geography Specialty Group.