Medical anthropology, health care systems and the client society -investigating interactions of practice, power and science

Place of venue: Denmark, The Sandbjerg Estate - Aarhus University Conference Centre, Sandbjergvej 102, 6400 Sønderborg (southern Denmark), http://www.sandbjerg.dk/en/index.php

Date: 8th of May to 11th of May 2008

Introduction:
We would like to point to medical anthropology*s growing engagement and cooperation with local medical institutions and medical research units as not only isolated approaches to research of health and illness, but as one leg of a triangle of interconnected social and scientific processes with certain consequences. The triangle consists of medical anthropology, the health care system and the client society. This triangle is made up by three powerful but also interdependent actors that influence each other and presumably exhibit a shift of balances compared with former years of medical anthropological research.

Invited key note speakers:

- Susan Reynolds Whyte, professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen University, Denmark

- Nikolas Rose, professor, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK

- Annemiek Richters, professor, Department of Public Health and Primary Care, Leiden University Medical Center, the Netherlands

- Giovanni Pizza, senior researcher, lecturer, Dipartimento Uomo & Territorio, University of Perugia, Italy.

- Cheryl Mattingly, professor, Department of Anthropology, USC College, USA

Price: Preliminary price per person for the whole conference (3 nights with full board): 400 EURO. The conference organizers will try to raise funds for the conference and the price might be reduced.

Any questions regarding the conference are welcome and should be sent to Mette Bech Risør, mbris (AT) as.aaa.dk, Research Clinic for Functional Disorders, Aarhus University Hospital or Bjarke Paarup, etnobpl (AT) hum.au.dk, Department of Ethnography and Anthropology, Aarhus University.

The organizers are preparing a homepage for the conference and all further information will be conveyed via this homepage.