Appel à contribution – The reproductive body in (un)familiar places : health inequalities in European spaces

SIEF Conference, Lisbon, April 2010

Deadline to propose a paper is October 15.

The abstract is below, and more information on the conference, and the electronic submission procedures can all be found here:

http://www.nomadit.co.uk/sief/sief2011/panels.php5?PanelID=777

The contemporary European sphere is a sum of complex spaces, where different places are continuously reunited by the existence of a wide range of mobilities of individuals and groups across regional and (or) national borders. Recently, one of its main characteristics has been the so-called ‘feminization’, especially in regard to its post-1989 trend, i.e. migration from the East to the West. This trend, historically related to the end of communist regimes, determines important rearrangements in gender relations and gender stereotypes, including reproductive health behaviour.In taking as the main object of inquiries the reproductive body in different European spaces and its government, our panel will focus on ethnographies of the intersubjectivities developed between places, circulations (understood broadly, from roads taken from one place to another at a local level to permanent or occasional migration) and reproductive practices, both of people as reproductive selves and of health professionals (medical body, health associations, etc). How are the lives of the reproductive selves shaped when people find themselves in motion from one place to another? Can a certain place determine different reproductive health practices and different relations to the health-care system? What are the memories of a certain place or of circulations from one place to another, and are those memories ‘inscribed’ in the reproductive-body? We invite applications in relation, but not limited, to the above research questions.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact : lorena.anton@g.unibuc.ro .