Body, Public Health, and Social Theory Conference 2013

Conference on Body, Public Health & Social Theory

We are today witnessing a growing interest on body issues in Western societies. This focus includes how individuals’ bodies are shaped in alignments with dominating neoliberal ideas in society. This focus also includes how governments shape population health, and also outside of government offices public health, health promotion and disease prevention have become organizing tropes for ongoing reconfigurations of human life and the body.

This conference wishes to analyze how individuals, public health interventions, media and politicians attempt to regulate, govern, and transform human bodies, behaviors, and practices in a wide range of fields. The conference wishes to help stimulate a fruitful engagement between sociological/anthropological analysis of the body, public health research and research conducted within social and human sciences that focuses on public health and social theory.

The conference will involve a combination of plenary lectures from seven keynote speakers, and the presentation of papers by conference participants in smaller, themed groups.