‘Critical Entanglement: Histories and Cultures of Global Health’ Workshop Report
Co-Organizers: Howard Chiang and Sarah Hodges
With the generous support of the Global History and Culture Centre (£500), the
Institute of Advanced Study (£395), and the Centre for the History of Medicine (£200), the
‘Critical Entanglement: Histories and Cultures of Global Health’ workshop was held on May
8, 2013 in the Humanities Building (rooms H0.42) at the University of Warwick. The aim of
the workshop was to bring together a group of foreign and domestic scholars working on
different areas of global health and to cultivate an interdisciplinary critical dialogue that
addresses the following set of questions: To what degree does the unifying framework of
global health mask or anchor the re-packaging of earlier institutions and agendas, such as
'tropical medicine' and the subsequent 'international health'? To what extent does scholarly
engagement with 'global health' risk merely echoing our historical subjects' worldviews, and
to what extent does it garner a new analytic lens? Is it possible to recast the centres and
peripheries of contemporary biomedical science through a revisionist transnational
historicism, to the extent that we may grasp the globally dispersed conditions under which
certain objects and subjects of medical practice, research, and institutions embody emergent
or transformative cultural life from regionally-based viewpoints? How can historical
continuity and change be re-conceptualized with respect to notions of hegemony and alterity
in diachronically competing systems of healing?
All of the papers were pre-circulated to help foster more cohesive discussions on the
day of the workshop. Each presenter was given an opportunity to present his/her work in
length followed by Q&A discussions. The workshop began with an opening remark by
Howard Chiang, the co-organizer of the event. Subsequently, in the first session, Katharine
Angel (Warwick) delivered a paper on ‘A glorious revolution, a global DSM? The distorting
effects of narratives about American psychiatry’, and Howard Chinag (Warwick) gave a
paper on ‘Translating Culture and Psychiatry across the Pacific: The Case of Koro’. The
session concluded with a detailed comment by Mathew Thomson (Warwick) and general
discussions. In the second session, Mohan Rao (Jawaharlal Nehru University) gave a paper
on ‘The Globalisation of Reproduction: From Population Control to Surrogacy’; Aditya
Bharadwaj (Geneva University) delivered a paper on ‘Local Cells for Global Health?
Reimagining the Rise of Stem Cell Biotechnologies in India’; and Sarah Hodges (Warwick)
talked about ‘“The Global Menace” Revisited’. The day concluded with a general comment
by Jonathan Saha (Bristol University) and some final reflections on the issues and problems
raised throughout the workshop.
The workshop co-organizers wish to acknowledge the superb administrative
assistance of Amy Evans (Global History and Culture Centre) for making this a successful
event.
HC
September 18, 2013