Call for Papers for the panel: "Microbial living in the time of antimicrobial resistance“
at the 17th Annual STS conference, 7-8 May 2018, Graz, Austria, Hotel Weitzer
Salla SARIOLA (University of Turku) Finland; Matthäus REST (Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History), Germany; Charlotte BRIVES (Centre Emile Durkheim, Université de Bordeaux), France
This panel explores new social forms generated by the global increase of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). While antibiotics are increasingly becoming redundant due to drug resistance, modern medicine is at the risk of being turned back by a century. As a response of this threat, various new social forms are emerging. These include new biotechnological solutions: super-antibiotics, vaccines and bacteriophages against drug resistant microbes; regulatory structures that enable their research; ensembles of funding structures between start-ups and universities; as well as social groups working towards living with bacteria, rather than against them. The panel conceptualises the new social forms to include post-human assemblages and their more-than-human agency. In this era, we argue, it is vital to gain a more granular view of the various practices of relation-making between humans, animals and microbes, and how they are affected by the threat and reality of antibiotics and AMR. Taking cue from Foucault’s notion of biopolitics (1978), Paxson (2008) has conceptualised the encounters of microbes, humans and politics as ‘micro-biopolitical’, keeping domains of microbes, power and governance squarely in view. While empirical and ethnographic examples of such co-existence are sparse, the possibility of studying pathogens in social sciences has encouraged Lorimer to argue that our disciplines are undergoing a ‘probiotic turn’ (Lorimer, 2017). What does micro-biopolitics look like in the context of increasing antimicrobial resistance? This panel is interested in post-human assemblages of microbial living, in the context of AMR. Topics could include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Studies of novel biotechnologies to seek alternatives to antibiotics
- Biographies of antibiotics and diagnostics and the pharmaceutical industry and other R&D endeavours
- How particular subjects and nations are constructed as global health targets of AMR related activities, policies and research
- How are resistomes and microbiotas explored and compared?
- Use of antibiotics in food production and managing life-stock, and the so-called one-health approach to the study of AMR
- How are antibiotics and antimicrobial resistance affecting the human-microbe relations in fields like fermentation?
- How boundaries of bodies are made
To submit an abstract please go to https://conference.aau.at/event/143/call-for-abstracts/ <https://conference.aau.at/event/143/call-for-abstracts/>
*************************************************************
* Anthropology-Matters Mailing List
* http://www.anthropologymatters.com *
* A postgraduate project comprising online journal, *
* online discussions, teaching and research resources *
* and international contacts directory. *
* To join this list or to look at the archived previous *
* messages visit: *
* http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/Anthropology-Matters.HTML *
* If you have ALREADY subscribed: to send a message to all *
* those currently subscribed to the list,just send mail to: *
* [log in to unmask] *
* *
* Enjoyed the mailing list? Why not join the new *
* CONTACTS SECTION @ www.anthropologymatters.com *
* an international directory of anthropology researchers
*
* To unsubscribe: please log on to jiscmail.ac.uk, and *
* go to the 'Subscriber's corner' page. *
*
***************************************************************
|