The healthy self as
body capital in post-1945 Great Britain
Call for Post-doc applications
Université de Strasbourg
Societies, actors and government in Europe, SAGE UMR7363
ERC BodyCapital
The ERC Advanced Grant programme “The healthy self as
body capital: individuals, market-based societies and body politics in visual
twentieth century Europe (BodyCapital)” led by Christian Bonah (Université de
Strasbourg) and Anja Laukötter (MPIHD, Berlin) on the understanding of body
capital and its history, through the twentieth century history of visual mass
media (film, TV, Internet) and inédits (amateur, family and private visuals) is
now accepting applications for a Post-doctoral researcher position for a
project related to post-1945 Great Britain.
The application deadline is 20 May 2017.
Interviews will be scheduled on the Monday 26 June 2017
in Strasbourg (in-person interviews will be preferential, with some travel
funding provided upon request).
The contracts will begin 1 September 2017 (starting date
is negotiable).
Project Description:
Do you know how much rapid eye movement (REM) sleep you
need to work efficiently, do you look at food labels to ensure that you are
getting all the required vitamins and minerals or know someone who uses a step
counter to know if they are getting enough physical activity? These are just a
few examples of our perceptions of health and the resulting individual
practices in twentieth century Europe. In fact, this century may be
characterized by the development of products and techniques for the body and
its health. Bodily health has evolved as a new form of capital (Bourdieu 1979):
a form of symbolic capital that can be transformed into economic capital. These
are not only witnessed by, but contributed to and were affected by, a flood of
visual media that circulated transnationally in the advent of a media
society. Thus at the center of the
research group investigations are moving images that are oriented towards the
idea of informing, improving or educating on life and health.
The timeframe of the project (1895-2005) starts with the
invention of public health, the rapid emergence and diffusion of mechanically
produced images and moving pictures and the conception of liberal economic
theory and practices at the beginning of the twentieth century and extends to
the reinvention of new public health, the Internet revolution and the economic
crisis nurturing economic neo-liberalism in the 1990s. It stops before the
emergence of YouTube (2005) transforming visual Internet practices and the
financial crisis in 2007/08. At the center of the period lie the industry-based
therapeutic revolution and the invention of television coupled with the
epidemiological transition (increasing life expectancy and chronic disease
emergence) and the golden age of the welfare state.
The research group aims to provide a socio-historical
understanding of how an autonomous, self–optimizing, health-managing individual
has emerged as a dominating self-identity in light of sanitary knowledge and
practices in European societies at the end of the twentieth century. To achieve
this, we compare developments in three European countries that are central to
the economy and to visual production, but which differ in their visual culture
and their embrace of neo-liberal market policies during the twentieth century:
France, Germany and Great Britain.
The research group has identified four central subject
entries that the post-doctoral research projects should address in one way or
another (at least one):
- history
of food/ nutrition;
- history
of movement/exercise/sports;
- history
of sexuality/reproduction/infant;
- history
of dependency/addiction/overconsumption
These themes are simultaneously physiological bodily
functions and traditional public health objectives. They are fundamental human
needs and correspond to particular economic sectors. As such, all four subjects
combine concepts and practices spanning across health and life sciences,
individual and public health, body history and economic history and are
therefore ideally suited to study historical transformations leading to
market-based societies and body politics in visual twentieth century Europe.
At the core of the BodyCapital programme three analytical
issues are being addressed: a) How can the internalization of body capital and
health demand be better understood from a visual perspective? b) How can we
historically understand the production of body capital as a general trend,
which at the same time acts as a marker of social difference and
class-boundedness in an age of global and freely circulating information,
mobility and education? Are the social determinations of relationships with the
body and health stable or do they undergo historical changes? c) How do
technical transformations and the diversification of visuals in television and
digital media participate in body capital internalization? These questions are to be considered through
case studies conducted with a double comparative/entangled history approach in
order to establish similarities, differences and transfers between the three
countries (France, Germany, Great Britain) and three major time periods (film,
TV, Internet).
The post-doctoral research project will be a case study
focusing on topics related to one or more of the project’s four subject entries
(history of food/nutrition; movement/exercise/sports;
sexuality/reproduction/infant; dependency/addiction/overconsumption) in the
frame of the project’s three national contexts (France, Germany, Great Britain)
and three major media ages (film, TV, internet). The post-doctoral research project should be
centrally focused on Great Britain in the post-1945 era. Project proposals may
take a comparative approach with respect to and beyond the above topics.
Context and working conditions:
The post-doctoral researcher will be employed for the
duration of 24 months (plus a possible extension of 12 months).
The researchers will be associated members of the UMR
research group SAGE (Societies, actors and government in Europe) at the
Université de Strasbourg.
Requirements and research skills:
The candidate must be a holder of a doctoral degree from
a highly recognized university in the history of medicine, history, media
history, sociology/history of science, media or communication studies, economic
history, or related discipline.
The candidate must demonstrate a mastery of research
techniques in social sciences: archival work and sound analysis of textual and
audiovisual sources and good knowledge of the literature related to their field
of study.
The candidate must be able to work and write in English
(writing skills in French or German are also highly welcome).
Candidates for the position are asked to send:
- a
motivation letter,
- a
detailed CV
- a 3-4
page thesis project outline
- a
chapter of their PhD thesis or a major article publication
- a letter
of recommendation and two complementary reference names
by email to Christian Bonah (bonah@unistra.fr), Anja Laukötter (laukoetter@mpib-berlin.mpg.de)
and Tricia Close-Koenig (tkoenig@unistra.fr).
For further information or details on salary, please
contact Tricia Close-Koenig.
** Note that, in addition, we are also accepting
applications for up to three PhD positions.
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