Wednesday 15 January 2014

CFP: Care As Labor?

SCA Biennial Meeting, 2014: The Ends of Work
Detroit, Michigan, May 9-10, 2014

PANEL TITLE: *Care As Labor?*

This panel is aimed at contributing to the recent anthropological interest in care by interrogating the relationship between care and labor. Earlier social science research on care, such as that by Arlie Hochschild, tended to examine care as affective labor that was conditioned by, and in turn shaped, a certain political economic order. In recent years, anthropologists have increasingly tasked themselves with finding care as affective overflow that can bring about ethical and ontological transformations beyond market, medical, or other putatively neoliberal forms of personhood or sociality. While we appreciate this attention to care in anthropology, we are concerned that an easy designation of care over against politics and political economy might run the risk of romanticizing the everyday, glossing over what exactly people do when they argue in terms of care, and reproducing the problematic distinctions of public vs. private, personal vs. political, etc. Therefore, in this panel we seek to bring the diverse concerns with care together, re-examine the relationship between care and labor, and critically appraise the theoretical usefulness of the concept of care itself.

Questions of interest include (but are not limited to) the following: What are the conditions on which care gains the recognition as labor? In lacking or gaining such recognition, how do the putatively private and intimate relations of care reproduce, destabilize, or transform our imaginations of political economy and the public? In turn, what labor, as a category, can tell us about care? What can be the ends of care, for example in terms of the life forms and socialities that it seeks to produce? If care is entangled with complicated affects such as fear or disgust, and if it is carried out in acts of control, confinement or violence, then how should we rethink the ethics and politics of care, its utopia and dystopia? Moreover, in face of such practical ambiguity and affective ambivalence, what does an analytical designation of care in ethnographic situations reveal or conceal?

If you are interested, *please submit your abstract to Zhiying Ma (zhiyingma@uchicago.edu) by Jan 24th, 2014, along with your name, contact information, and institutional affiliation.

Tuesday 14 January 2014

Special issue CFP on geographies of mobility

Annals of the Association of American Geographers

2016 Special Issue on the Geographies of Mobility



The Annals of the Association of American Geographers invites abstracts of papers to be considered for a special issue on the Geographies of Mobility, which will be published in 2016. This will be the eighth of a series of annual special issues that highlight geographic research around a significant global theme.



Significant theoretical and methodological contributions are sought from a broad spectrum of scholars who address social, cultural, political, environmental, economic, theoretical, and methodological issues related to human mobility. These include geographic research in areas such as: (im)mobility and social differentiation and inequality; (im)mobility of the oppressed, subjugated and persecuted; (im)mobility and social exclusion; experience of (im)mobility; politics of (im)mobility; commuting; leisure travel; tourism; mobility by different transport modes; sustainable mobility; mobility and resilience; disasters, natural hazards, and mobility; mobility, wellbeing and health; mobility, energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions; space-time modeling and GIS-based analysis of mobility; mobility research methods; and other relevant areas.



Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be submitted by March 1, 2014, to Journals Managing Editor Miranda Lecea at mlecea@aag.org. Final papers will be due on September 1, 2015, for publication in 2016. Papers will have a target maximum length of 5,000 words, with a smaller limit if a large number of tables and/or figures are included. All submitted papers will be subject to full peer review.



All papers published in the 2016 Special Issue will later be published (by Taylor & Francis) as an edited book

Friday 3 January 2014

Australian researchers investigate patients’ experiences of ‘Stem Cell Tourism’

Stem Cell Tourism Research Project


High hopes, high risk? A sociological study of stem cell tourism", a project funded by the Australian Research Council and conducted by Monash University researchers, seeks to capture the experiences of those who have travelled or thought about travelling overseas to receive stem cell treatments. Stem cells and the promise that they hold for new treatments have captured the public’s attention. However at the moment there are very few medical conditions where stem cell treatments are routinely offered in Australia. However clinics and companies overseas are promoting stem cell treatments for many conditions including multiple sclerosis.
If you have travelled abroad for stem cell treatment, as a patient or a carer or if you have considered travelling abroad but perhaps decided against it, the researchers would like to capture your story via an interview. Interviews will involve answering a series of questions over the phone and will usually take 30 to 40 minutes. Insights from this study will help in producing information for patients and their families who are contemplating stem cell treatments.
For further information and contact details please visit: http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/stem-cell-tourism-research-project/