CFP: Veterinary anthropology: the impact of animal studies on medical sciences (Deadline: February 29, 2020)

Please consider submitting a paper for our panel at the EASST/4S conference – Locating and Timing Matters: Significance and agency of STS in emerging worlds. (Prague, 18-21 AUGUST 2020)

Veterinary anthropology: the impact of animal studies on medical sciences

Convenors: Ludek Broz (Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences) and Frédéric Keck (Laboratoire d’anthropologie sociale – CNRS)

Over the last 5 years, the sub-discipline of veterinary anthropology has emerged in the wake of ethnographic and historical studies on zoonotic diseases, such as avian influenza, swine fever, rabies and the plague. Veterinary anthropology has been partly informed by Science and technology studies, and this panel aims to promote even closer synergy between these fields by engaging two pivotal questions: How is the body of veterinary knowledge generated? How does it travel from the centres of scientific knowledge production into bodies of normative practices nested in geographical, socio-cultural and political contexts?

These questions invite panellists to explore the relations between humans, animals and techniques in the different settings where humans care for animals and anticipate cross-species disease transmissions. Biosecurity interventions (culling, vaccinating or monitoring animals) requalify borders between territories and between species, building new collectives of humans and non-humans. We encourage investigation of different kinds of agency involved in these borderlands, be they those of pathogens or animals, of animal breeders or animal activists, and most importantly the agencies of vets as necessary and often invisible intermediaries in contemporary interactions between humans and animals.

Recognizing attention to zoonoses as a productive entry-point into veterinary anthropology we simultaneously invite panellists to engage what often stays in the shadow of “one health” concept including questions such as: Can animals be considered patients? Do they consent to their treatment? Do they evaluate the interactions that take place around their health? Who is authorized to distinguish a normal animal from a pathological one?

More information here.

CFP closes on 29 February 2020. Abstracts should be submitted via the abstract submission platform.

If you have any questions please contact broz at eu.cas.cz.