INSPIRING BIOSOCIAL INQUIRIES
In recent decades, academia has grappled with questions that challenge the borders traditionally drawn between the humanities and biology. Fundamental assumptions are no longer stable in the face of global changes, including climate change and reduction of biodiversity.
INSPIRING BIOSOCIAL INQUIRIES
Opening seminar
Centre for Biosocial Inquiries
Date: 7 October 2020
Time: 09.30 - 16.30
Venue: Zoom
In recent decades, academia has grappled with questions that challenge the borders traditionally drawn between the humanities and biology. Fundamental assumptions are no longer stable in the face of global changes, including climate change and reduction of biodiversity. Scientific and technological projects such as the mapping of the human genome and human microbiome, as well as new regimes of big data require novel onto-epistemological and philosophical reflections regarding what it means to be human, what an organism is, and how we can understand the social.
Rethinking and further pushing the concept of ’the biosocial’, inspired by important academic interventions made by scholars such as Anna Tsing, Donna Haraway, Margaret Lock and Tim Ingold, is at the core of the new Centre for Biosocial Inquiry (BIOSINQ) at Aarhus University. The Centre will explore what it may mean to academic research within the humanities to dissolve disciplinary boundaries between the biological and the social, based on the assumption that all biological life practices some form of sociality, however in very different ways and with different degrees of complexity, no matter how we understand this concept.
We envision an academically generous ’open access’ forum for interdisciplinary debate, where different researchers and research projects can meet and exchange ideas for mutual inspiration. The opening seminar is designed to kick-start this engagement.
The seminar ends with a book launch of the edited volume “Biosocial Worlds. Anthropology of health environments beyond determinism”, edited by Jens Seeberg, Andreas Roepstorff, and Lotte Meinert, UCL Press. The E-book version will be open access and has contributions by Margaret Lock, Jörg Niewöhner, Mette N. Svendsen, A. David Napier, Allan Young, Julie Livingston, Susan Reynolds Whyte, Adriana Petryna and the editors, with an Afterword by Anna Tsing.
Presentations by the following eminent scholars will frame discussions of interdisciplinary research perspectives into ‘the biosocial’:
- David Napier, Dept. of Anthropology, University College London
- Jörg Niewöhner, Institut für Europäische Ethnologie Humboldt Universität, Berlin (TBC)
- Anne Kveim Lie, Dept. of Community Medicine and Global Health, Universitetet i Oslo (TBC)
- Ayo Wahlberg, Dept. of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen
- Mette Vaarst, Department of Animal Science, Aarhus University (TBC)
- Thomas Vorup-Jensen, Department of Biomedicine, Aarhus University (TBC)
- Andreas Roepstorff, Interacting Minds Centre, Aarhus University
- Heather Swanson, Dept. of Anthropology, Aarhus University
- Niels Brimnes, Dept. of History, Aarhus University
- Thomas Schwarz-Wentzer, Dept. of Philosophy, Aarhus University
- Janne Flora, Dept. of Anthropology, Aarhus University
- Lotte Meinert, Dept. of Anthropology, Aarhus University
- Jens Seeberg, Dept. of Anthropology, Aarhus University
Full programme:
09:30-09:45 Welcome / Jens Seeberg, Anthropology, AU
09:45-10:00 Heather Swanson, Anthropology, AU: Beyond Research: Expanding spaces for biosocial scholarship
10:00-10:15 Mette Vaarst, Animal Science, AU: Biosocial Bordering
10:15-10:30 Janne Flora, Anthropology, AU: Sustaining Narwhals in Ittoqqortoormiit, Northeast Greenland
10:30-10:50 Discussion (Chair: Andreas Roepstorff)
10:50-11:00 BREAK
11:00-11:15 Anne Kveim Lie, Community Medicine and Global Health, UiO: Antimicrobial resistance: a biosocial history
11:15-11:30 Niels Brimnes, History & Global Studies, AU: A catastrophe foretold? – Approaches to drug resistant tuberculosis in India and beyond 1955-1992
11:30-12:00 Discussion (Chair: Thomas Schwarz-Wentzer)
12:00-12:45 LUNCH BREAK
12:45-13:00 Thomas Vorup-Jensen, Biomedicine, AU: Drug repurposing in fighting antimicrobial resistance: overlooked opportunities or the last stance?
13:00-13:15 Andreas Roepstorff, Interacting Minds Centre, AU: Biosocial COVID-19 and ethnographic HOPE
13:15-13:30 Jörg Niewöhner, Europäische Ethnologie Humboldt Universität, Berlin: Anthropogenic Biologies
13:30-13:45 Ayo Wahlberg, Anthropology, UCPH: From multi-species to bio-ethnography – do biosocial inquiries call for new methods?
13:45-14:00 Discussion (Chair: Janne Flora)
14:00-14:15 BREAK
14:15-14:30 David Napier, Anthropology, UCL: Biosocial selves and others
14:30-14:45 Lotte Meinert, Anthropology, AU: Biosocial temporalities
14:45-15:00 Thomas Schwarz-Wentzer, Philosophy and Hist. of Ideas, AU: What is the ’Social’ in ’Biosociality’
15:00-15:20 Discussion (Chair: Niels Brimnes)
15:20-15:30 Jens Seeberg, Anthropology, AU: Biosocial Reflections
15:30-15:45 BREAK
15:45-16:30 Book launch:
BIOSOCIAL WORLDS - Anthropology of health environments beyond determinism
Anna Volkman – David Napier – Jens Seeberg – Andreas Roepstorff – Lotte Meinert
Registration (online): https://events.au.dk/inspiringbiosocialinquiries/conference.html