Appel à contribution –  International Seminar : New Approaches to Urban Health and Mortality During the Health Transition

Sevilla, Spain, 14-17 December 2011

This seminar is organized by the IUSSP Scientific Panel on Historical Demography with the support of the Institute of Statistics of Andalucía and the Center for Humanities and Social Sciences of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). The organizers strongly encourage the submission of papers shedding light on a range of urban population mortality experiences and health related behaviours that make use of individual micro-level longitudinal data.

New longitudinal data sets have been recently collected in different countries across the world by several research teams. Some are even trying to link longitudinal historical databases with contemporary data, to analyse phenomena such as the intergenerational inheritance of certain demographic behaviours.This data offers new perspectives on the understanding of health and mortality transitions. The urban environment is the most difficult to study because the sources are particularly massive, individuals and families highly mobile, and confounding effects, for example the confusion between places and classes, are especially frequent.

However, during transitional periods, cities become the cradle and grave of the majority of the population. Urban populations are the most exposed to old and new diseases, which often exact a terrible cost as part of the entrance to modernity—the so-called “paradox of growth”. But urban populations also benefit from inherited institutions that have to be adapted to face terrible challenges, making cities the source of a new, more positive, modernization. Previous studies have essentially concentrated on the negative health aspects of urbanization, completely ignoring positive aspects such as better access to social services and medical resources. These studies adopted a static approach, failing to consider the processes of urban transformation.

This seminar seeks contributions from researchers using individual micro-level longitudinal data to shed light on a range of urban population mortality experiences and health related behaviours. Issues the seminar plans to address include: Which are the individual and family trajectories leading to survival or death? What are the interactions between those trajectories and institutional activities and policies? How do these interactions explain the transition from urban over-mortality to urban under-mortality?

Submissions should be made by May 1st, 2011. Submissions must include name, contact details and affiliation of the author(s), a provisional title, and a 300-word abstract.

Submission should be made by the author who will attend the seminar.

The working language at the seminar will be English. The half page summary and final papers should therefore be submitted and presented in English.

Lodging in Sevilla will be offered as well as lunches and dinners during the workshop. Participants are expected to cover their travel costs to attend the seminar. Limited travel supports will however be made available to young researchers and/or researchers from Least Developed Countries.

Applicants will be notified whether their paper has been accepted by 1 June 2011.

The completed paper must be uploaded on the IUSSP website by 20 November 2011.

For additional information, please contact one of the following Panel members:

Diego Ramiro Fariñas (diego.ramiro@cchs.csic.es)
Lucia Pozzi (lpozzi@uniss.it)
Michel Oris (Michel.Oris@unige.ch)

http://www.iussp.org/Activities/hisdem/call11.php