cultures de la prévention et biomédecine

Translating health

Cultures of Prevention and (Bio)Medicine in Europe after 1945

International Conference

23rd-25th of May 2013

Mainz, Germany

The central aim of this conference lies in its focus on translation and transfer of knowledge in (bio)medical cultures of prevention. Underlying such approach are proposals stemming from cultural analysis and history of science approaches, which have shifted the view from understanding a one-way dissemination of knowledge production (or of preventive concepts) to one that rather allows for an “integrated” history by stressing the travelling character of knowledge dissemination. Thus, while we are in need of research into comparative studies on cultures of prevention on a national or medical disciplinary level in the second half of the century, the conference specifically calls for considering the transfer and translation of knowledge as a base from which to rethink knowledge dissemination on health and cultures of prevention after WWII. Drawing upon pertinent suggestions to take stock of how we employ analysis of concepts of dissemination and translation to medical history, the conference offers a venue for disconcerting preventive health stories.The conference offers a venue to critically reflect upon research that is producing "readings from the center" which make universalizing claims and do not reflect enough on their own geopolitical and historical specificity, with major shifts taking place in the political, environmental, economic and socio-cultural settings in Europe after WWII. We are thus interested in scholarship that investigates the limitations, ruptures, fault lines or expansion of cultures of prevention when concepts of health have travelled in Europe after 1945. We explicitly ask these considerations to be conducted with sensitivity to the notions of gender, class, race, and age. Considering recent stress on the relevance of these categories with regard to social determinants of health, we think it is timely to return to the advocacy and impact of these categories on the meanings of bodies and prevention. Understanding health and prevention as travelling concepts at the crossroads (entangled histories of) of the history of knowledge, medical history and public health, the conference focuses on the perspective of translation from several interrogating angles.

Programm : http://www.unimedizin-mainz.de/translating-health/programm.html