Reflections on ‘medical tourism’ from the 2016 Global Healthcare Policy and Management Forum

Reflections on ‘medical tourism’ from the 2016 Global Healthcare Policy and Management Forum

• Valorie A. CrooksEmail author,
• Meghann Ormond and
• Ki Nam Jin

BMC Proceedings201711(Suppl 8):6

https://doi.org/10.1186/s12919-017-0075-8

©  The Author(s). 2017

Published: 13 July 2017

Web: https://bmcproc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12919-017-0075-8 

Abstract

In October 2016, the Global Healthcare Policy and Management Forum was held at Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea. The goal of the forum was to discuss the role of the state in regulating and supporting the development of medical tourism. Forum attendees came from 10 countries. In this short report article, we identify key lessons from the forum that can inform the direction of future scholarly engagement with medical tourism. In so doing, we reference on-going scholarly debates about this global health services practice that have appeared in multiple venues, including this very journal. Key questions for future research emerging from the forum include: who should be meaningfully involved in identifying and defining categories of those travelling across borders for health services and what risks exist if certain voices are underrepresented in such a process; who does and does not ‘count’ as a medical tourist and what are the implications of such quantitative assessments; why have researchers not been able to address pressing knowledge gaps regarding the health equity impacts of medical tourism; and how do national-level polices and initiatives shape the ways in which medical tourism is unfolding in specific local centres and clinics? This short report as an important time capsule that summarises the current state of medical tourism research knowledge as articulated by the thought leaders in attendance at the forum while also pushing for research growth.

Keywords

Medical tourism Medical travel Research

Introduction

On 18–19 October 2016, the Global Healthcare Policy and Management Forum (GHPMF) was held at Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea. The goal of the forum was to discuss the role of the state in regulating and supporting the development of medical tourism. By ‘medical tourism’ we are referring to the practice whereby patients travel across international borders in order to privately access medical care [1]. The GHPMF included participants who were established medical tourism researchers from ten countries (Canada, China, Germany, Japan, Malaysia, The Netherlands, Singapore, South Korea, the United Kingdom and the United States) representing diverse academic disciplines (e.g., geography, business/marketing, political science, public policy, health systems management, and sociology), government (e.g., medical travel booster organisations) and industry (e.g., healthcare provider, healthcare marketing and branding, healthcare and health tourism market platform and association). It built on recent conferences organised in Madrid (2016), Wageningen and Leeds (2013) and Vancouver (2010) seeking to bring scholarly, policy and industry approaches to ‘medical tourism’ in conversation with one another [2, 3]. In this short report article, we identify key lessons from the forum that can inform the direction of future scholarly engagement with medical tourism. In so doing, we reference on-going scholarly debates about this global health services practice that have appeared in multiple venues.

GHPMF participants extensively discussed how ‘medical tourism’, a term widely popularised by the media, inadequately captures the diverse needs and experiences of people travelling outside of their countries of habitual residence to privately access medical treatment [4, 5, 6]. A more nuanced categorisation of the scope and scale of, and interactions between, patients travelling for treatment and the diverse array of stakeholders generating and responding to these patients’ needs and wants prior to, during and following their travels in their home, transit and destination countries is necessary. Such categorisation will enable global health researchers to transcend simple documenting of such diversity in order to begin to identify and effectively monitor basic variables that would permit, first, timely assessment of the economic and health equity impacts of travelling patients and, second, evidence-based discussion about and action regarding accountability for addressing these impacts. A key question for researchers is: who should be meaningfully involved in identifying and defining categories of those travelling across borders for health services and what risks exist if certain voices are underrepresented in such a process?

Governments around the world have been motivated to develop and promote their countries, cities and medical facilities as medical tourism destinations, seeking to tap into potential economic gains associated with the emerging sector (see, e.g., [7]). They routinely measure – and, with limited critique, both scholars and the media generally report – the number of medical travellers they receive per year as the key indicator of a medical tourism destination’s significance and its healthcare providers’ competence [8]. Yet, GHPMF attendees believe that such figures communicate very little and, because they are oftentimes arrived at through organization-specific counting processes that render them very difficult to compare, actually serve as hyperbolic obstacles to generating an objective overview of the scale of and diversity within the industry. Since, on the whole, travelling patients are thought to stay longer and spend more on average than conventional tourists [9], we argue that focus should instead be on calculating medical and non-medical spending and resource use associated with different types of medical treatment, and that this information be accessible for broader study of the industry. Researchers can work to produce new knowledge that can contribute to answering key questions such as: who does and does not ‘count’ as a medical tourist and what are the implications of such quantitative assessments?

Significant gaps in our knowledge about medical tourism exist. For example, while data is gathered in some countries on hospital revenue derived from treatment of foreign patients, scarce data is available on the indirect economic impacts of this practice (e.g., revenue for other medical and non-medical sectors, healthcare management innovation, employment generated, etc.), though its most significant economic benefits may well be for non-medical sectors [10, 11]. Likewise, in spite of significant concerns about the role of medical tourism in exacerbating health inequities in both Global South and Global North countries [12, 13], presentations at the GHPMF revealed that no research to date has evaluated or established a method with a coherent set of qualitative and quantitative measures to evaluate this exacerbation effect. Why have researchers not been able to address these pressing knowledge gaps? GHPMF attendees agree there is no singular answer. However, unlike the conventional tourism industry, there appears to be neither sufficient recognition of the utility among, nor adequate incentive for, public- and private-sector actors involved to align themselves to establish common definitions and data collection and reporting standards in order to identify economic and health equity impacts. Many GHPMF attendees agreed that this can be attributed to the fragmented nature of the medical tourism industry, characterised by a large pool of individual industry actors concerned with internal and international competition, and political sensitivities surrounding the distribution and management of finite healthcare resources.

Presentations at the GHPMF underscored how numerous governments have allocated significant funds to states, municipalities and medical service providers for the development of services and facilities to attract international patients, including offering land grants and fiscal incentives to build and renovate medical facilities, creating incentives to attract top medical expertise, importing cutting-edge medical equipment, promoting medical tourism and acquiring international accreditation for facilities. South Korea, for instance has spent more than USD 10 million per year on industry development since it identified medical tourism as an economic growth engine [14]. Yet the lack of widely-accepted definitions and their operationalisation into reliably and routinely measured variables effectively hinders bodies from measuring the return on their investments (ROI) and, in turn, from critically reviewing policy outcomes and more effectively executing or revising policy. GHPMF attendees agree this is problematic when we consider how medical tourism has been taken up by governments as an economic growth engine – with potential for generating and diversifying employment opportunities in struggling regional economies, boosting demand for locally-produced medical equipment and attracting biotechnology research and development – and been deployed in economy of scale arguments to justify the acquisition and geographic distribution of high-end medical technology that rarely would be required for use by local patients (e.g., proton-beam therapy). Examining economic efficacy thus calls political attention to the usefulness of policy facilitating medical tourism and to underlying motivations for pursuing such policy.

It is imperative that researchers more rigorously assess impacts not only at the national level but also at the supra-national level and the sub-national regional and municipal levels by asking nuanced questions such as: how do supra-national- and national-level polices and initiatives shape the ways in which medical tourism is unfolding in specific local centres and clinics? For example, certain cities and regions, like Penang in Malaysia or Seoul in South Korea, are disproportionately affected as destinations for travelling patients [15, 16]. Yet, no studies assessing their specific, local needs and concerns exist to date. Furthermore, simple comparison of national-level industry outcomes without considering the heavy investments made ultimately hinder our understanding of policy performance.

International agreements fostering trade liberalization, including the offshoring of medical-related services, have frequently been cited as key to advancing the globalisation of healthcare [17]. While such agreements have certainly further commoditised healthcare sectors around the world, the imaginary they conjure of a free market in a flat world has not (yet) come to be. Rather, presentations at the GHPMF underscored the continued significance of geographic and cultural-linguistic proximity in shaping transnational flows of travelling patients. Unless travelling for very specific or advanced procedures, long-haul travel is rare; people are more likely to seek care in neighbouring countries and places with which they already have established networks [18, 19]. A far more nuanced grasp of the needs, wants, material circumstances, origins and impacts of different travelling patients, therefore, would enable more targeted destination marketing efforts, doing away with wasteful promotion of entire countries as destinations for all types of medical treatments to largely undifferentiated imaginary pools of ‘medical tourists’. Likewise, a more nuanced grasp of where travelling patients are receiving care, the type of care, how they travel and are accommodated, and how they spend their time in destinations would enable far better destination and patient management. A useful question for researchers to explore is: what types of data can help us to articulate such nuanced perspectives and how can they be obtained and meaningfully incorporated into analyses? Meanwhile, the outcomes of such analyses can lead to more targeted development and allocation of healthcare and promotional resources and greater capacity to inform and engage local affected populations and supra-national regional bodies about the distribution and management of available healthcare resources and the benefits and challenges this poses.

Conclusion

The GHPMF was held in Korea in October 2016. Forum attendees examined cutting-edge research findings regarding many facets of medical tourism and talked extensively about key research challenges that exist in this domain of scholarship. In this short report, we have characterised the scope of these examinations and discussions, and in doing so we have articulated specific questions that researchers must tackle in order to shape the policy dialogues and inform on-going debates about the potential for medical tourism to transform destination communities’ economies while benefitting or harming local people. We thus view this short report as an important time capsule that summarises the current state of medical tourism knowledge and policy as articulated by the thought leaders in attendance at the GHPMF while also pushing for research growth. We encourage the continued production of high-quality research in this field by scholars from a wide range of disciplines, as was observed at the GHPMF, and for continued dialogue between researchers about how we can advance the state of knowledge that informs contemporary thinking about this particular global health care mobility.

Abbreviations

GHPMC: 

Global Healthcare Policy and Management Forum

 

ROI: 

Return on investment

Declarations

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the insights offered by fellow GHPMF participants Andrew Garman, Ruth Holliday, Tricia Johnson, Irving Stackpole, Ilan Geva and Keith Pollard in the preparation of this short report article.

Availability of data and materials

Not applicable.

Funding

VAC is funded by a Scholar Award from the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research and holds the Canada Research Chair in Health Service Geographies. Funding for the publication of this article came from VAC’s Canada Research Chair funds.

Authors’ contributions

All authors made substantial contributions to the short report’s conception and design. MO and VAC were involved in drafting the manuscript and KNJ revised it critically for important intellectual content. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Not applicable.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

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New Special Issue on International Medical Travel in Asia Pacific Viewpoint

Asia Pacific Viewpoint Volume 58, Issue 2 Pages 127 - 254, August 2017 Special Issue: International Medical Travel

Editorial

International medical travel and the politics of transnational mobility in Asia (pages 129–135) Heng Leng Chee, Andrea Whittaker and Brenda S.A. Yeoh Version of Record online: 1 AUG 2017 | DOI: 10.1111/apv.12164

Special Articles

Regional circuits of international medical travel: Prescriptions of trust, cultural affinity and history(pages 136–147) Andrea Whittaker, Heng Leng Chee and Heong Hong Por Archipelagic genes: Medical travel as a creative response to limitations and remoteness in the Maldives (pages 148–161) Eva-Maria Knoll Regional reproductive quests: Cross-border reproductive travel among infertile Indonesian couples(pages 162–174) Linda Bennett and Mulyoto Pangestu Cross-border patient movement from the Lao PDR and the interplay between social networks and economic and cultural capital: A qualitative study (pages 175–189) Jo Durham Trading faces: The ‘Korean Look’ and medical nationalism in South Korean cosmetic surgery tourism (pages 190–202) Ruth Holliday, Olive Cheung, Ji Hyun Cho and David Bell Crossing boundaries of state and religious power: Reproductive mobilities in Singapore (pages 203–215) Danicar Mariano, Brenda S.A. Yeoh and Yi'En Cheng Navigating the ‘grey areas’: Australian medical travellers in China's stem cell bionetwork (pages 216–227) Jane Brophy Spaces of connectivity: The formation of medical travel destinations in Delhi National Capital Region (India) (pages 228–241) Heidi Kaspar and Sunita Reddy Medical travel facilitators, private hospitals and international medical travel in assemblage (pages 242–254) Heng Leng Chee, Andrea Whittaker and Heong Hong Por

'Transnational Lives: Economies, Bureaucracies, and Desires' Workshop, Oslo, Norway, 11-12 January 2018

Webpage: https://www.prio.org/Projects/Extensions/Transnational-Lives-in-the-Welfare-State-TRANSWEL/Transnational-lives-2018-workshop/?xitem=1660&handler=Project 

Background

This exploratory workshop will examine the significance and implications of leading life in two (or more) countries. The workshop title reflects the particular perspectives we encourage. ‘Transnational lives’ suggests analyses that go beyond particular transnational practices—such as remittance-sending or expatriate voting—yet remained grounded in lived experience. The words ‘economies, bureaucracies, and desires’ allude to the diversity of encounters, frictions and forces that may shape transnational lives.

The workshop aims to make a concerted effort for analytical progress. Twenty-five years after the transnational turn in migration studies was introduced, what are the most promising lines of inquiry within a transnational perspective? How should developments in related fields inform our approach to transnationalism? What are the implications of changes in technology, policies, and societies for transnational perspectives on migration?

In the call for papers we specifically encouraged empirically grounded papers that make theoretical advances in the research agenda on transnationalism, related to the themes outlined in the workshop title. Transnational perspectives remain associated with international migration from lower-income to higher-income countries. We encouraged contributions that widen this scope, for instance through studies of transnational living among élites in the Global South, among Europeans or North Americans without an immigrant background, or between countries in the Global South. Transnational lives need not be studied from the perspective of the transnational subjects. The workshop will include contributions that focus on people or institutions that interact with those who lead transnational lives. 

The workshop is organized in conjunction with the project Transnational Lives in the Welfare State (TRANSWEL), which is funded by the Research Council of Norway and carried out by the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), the Erasmus University Rotterdam, and the University of Oslo.

Selected papers

On the basis of an open call for abstracts, the following papers have been selected. (The titles are provisional.)

• Jørgen Carling (Peace Research Institute Oslo, Norway): The parameters of transnational living
• Carol Chan (Universidad de Alberto Hurtado, Chile): Multi-national migrants at 'the end of the world': Chinese temporary citizens and permanent migrants in the Americas
• Olga Cojocaru (University of Warsaw, Poland): Missing and waiting for each other: the temporalities of separation in transnational families
• Marta Bivand Erdal (Peace Research Institute Oslo, Norway): New economics of transnational living
• Marie Godin (University of Oxford, United Kingdom) & Justyna Bell (NOVA, Norway): Fluid social protection assemblages throughout the life course: the case of Polish and British migrants in a changing European context 
• Guive Khan-Mohammad (University of Geneva, Switzerland): Transnational traders and bureaucracy in Burkina Faso: towards a new political management of extraversion
• Stephen Lubkemann (George Washington University, United States): Meatpacking ministers and transnational class disorders: the empirical paradoxes and theoretical implications of simultaneous and contradictory socio-economic mobilities and of the production of class bi-polarity within the Liberian Transnational Field
• George Mavrommatis (Harokopio University, Greece): Moving beyond the peculiar sedentarism of transnationalism? Illuminating instances of en route transnational phenomena in the lives of refugees on the move
• Khangelani Moyo (University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa): Transnational habitus and sociability in the city: Zimbabwean migrants’ experiences in Johannesburg 
• Gayle Munro (The Salvation Army, United Kingdom): Transnational lives within a changing socio-political-legislative environment on (im)migration: challenges, negotiations and opportunities
• Meghann Ormond (Wageningen University and Research, Netherlands): Formal and informal economies and bureaucracies in medical travel between Indonesia and Malaysia
• Eveline Reisenauer (University of Hildesheim, Germany): Diversity of transnationality
• Sarah Scuzzarello (University of Sussex, United Kingdom): Gender and transnational practices among Western retirees in Thailand
• Erik Snel & Godfried Engbersen (Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands): Bureaucratic encounters and transnational living
• Iris Sportel (University of Göttingen, Germany): How could I have been so blind?' Narratives of love, money, and power in transnational relationships
• Paul Statham (University of Sussex, United Kingdom): Building “transnational lives” as a strategy for a better life: the aspirations, experiences and transformations of Thais who partner ‘older’ Western men
• Cathrine Talleraas (Peace Research Institute Oslo, Norway): Transnational living in a national framework: bureaucratic discourses
• Aysen Ustubici & Ezgi İrgil (Koç University, Turkey): Transnational practices in life course: evidence from EU migrants in Turkey
• Nicholas Van Hear (University of Oxford, United Kingdom): Imagining Refugia: thinking outside the current international migration regime
• Zvezda Vankova (Maastricht University, Netherlands): National policies, transnational workers: bureaucratic encounters of Eastern Neighbourhood migrants in Bulgaria and Poland
• Marcia Vera Espinoza (University of Sheffield, United Kingdom): Translocal Belongings: the role of faith and religion negotiating refugee integration in Latin America
• Nanneke Winters (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany): Transnational lives en route: African trajectories of displacement and emplacement across Latin America

Papers will be grouped in thematic sessions at the workshop. There will be no parallel sessions.

Information for non-participants

The workshop itself is a closed event for the group of presenters only. Please contact the authors individually if there are papers you are particularly interested in.

Organizing committee

Grete Brochmann, University of Oslo
Jørgen Carling, Peace Research Institute Oslo*
Godfried Engbersen, Erasmus University Rotterdam
Marta Bivand Erdal, Peace Research Institute Oslo 
Erik Snel, Erasmus University Rotterdam
Cathrine Talleraas, Peace Research Institute Oslo

*) Contact person for enquiries.

Programme for 'The Value of Life: Measurement, Stakes, Implications' Conference, Wageningen University & Research, 28-30 June, Wageningen, The Netherlands

Programme International Conference ‘The Value of Life: Measurement, Stakes, Implications’
Day 1 – 28 June 2017			Day 2 – 29 June 2017			Day 3 – 30 June 2017
8:30 – 9:00	Coffee and registration	Hotel reception
9:00 – 9:30	Welcome	Bosrandzaal
9:30 – 11:00	Keynote Katherine Gibson:  Thinking with interdependence: From Economy/Environment to ecological livelihoods	Bosrandzaal	9:30 – 11:00	Keynote Annemarie Mol:  Valuing here or there: the pertinence of where questions	Bosrandzaal	9:30 – 11:00 7th parallel sessions	20a. Valuing wellbeing I: practices of wellbeing within and beyond neoliberal financialisation	Bosrandzaal
							21a. Whose Heritages Matter? I	Lijsterbes
							15c. The Production and use of citizen science and academic knowledge in political grassroots movements III	Boomgaardzaal
							22. Towards Resilient Tourism Destinations	Meidoornzaal
							23. Materializing Value	Aboretum
11:00 – 11:30	Coffee/Tea		11:00 – 11:30	Coffee/Tea		11:00 – 11:30	Coffee/Tea
11:30 – 13:00 1st parallel sessions	1a. Valuing Life I: More-than-Human Labor, Vibrancy of Matter and Value	Bosrandzaal	11:30 – 13:00 4th parallel sessions	1d. Valuing Life IV: Lively Encounters, Ethics of Care and Affective Emergences	Bosrandzaal	11:30 – 13:00 8th parallel sessions	20b. Valuing wellbeing II: practices of wellbeing within and beyond neoliberal financialisation	Bosrandzaal
	2. On State and Non-State Territorialization in Forest Reserve	Arboretum		11. Urban Matter(s): the Non-Human Life in the Cities	Boomgaardzaal		21b. Whose Heritages Matter? II	Lijsterbes
	3. Health, justice and inequality	Boomgaardzaal		12a. Caring for a ‘good’ life? I	Aboretum		15d. The Production and use of citizen science and academic knowledge in political grassroots movements IV	Boomgaardzaal
	4a. Valuing the Environment I	Meidoornzaal		13a. The Politics of Plants and Animals I – valuing other lives	Meidoornzaal		24. Roundtable: Tourism and Degrowth	Meidoornzaal
	5. Value, Violence and Visibility	Lijsterbes		14a. Questions of Measurement and Value I	Lijsterbes		25. REDD+ and the limits of climate goverance based on the quantification of ecosystem services and carbon trading	Aboretum
13:00 – 14:00	Lunch		13:00 – 14:00	Lunch		13:00 – 14:00	Lunch
14:00 – 15:30 2nd parallel sessions	1b. Valuing Life II: Earthly flows of life, Resistance and Relationality	Bosrandzaal	14:00 – 15:30 5th parallel sessions	1e. Valuing Life V: Threatened Life, Affective Emergences and Care-full Futures	Bosrandzaal	14:00 – 15:30 9th parallel sessions	26. Valuing Everyday Practices and Unseen Spaces	Meidoornzaal
	6. Life and value as seen in community attempts to pursue environmental challenges	Arboretum		11b. Caring for a ‘good’ life? II	Arboretum		15e. The Production and use of citizen science and academic knowledge in political grassroots movements V	Boomgaardzaal
	4b. Valuing the Environment II	Meidoornzaal		12b. The politics of plants and animals II - valuing other lives – Roundtable	Meidoornzaal		27. The value of wildlife	Arboretum
	7a. Diverse economies I: the development of new social practices	Boomgaardzaal		13b. Questions of Measurement and Value II	Lijsterbes		28. The Value of Food	Lijsterbes
	8a. Natural Capital Accounting I: Can Nature’s Valuation Save the Planet?	Lijsterbes		15a. The Production and use of citizen science and academic knowledge in political grassroots movements I	Boomgaardzaal
15:30 – 16:00	Coffee/Tea		15:30 – 16:00	Coffee/Tea		15:30 – 16:00	Coffee/Tea
16:00 – 17:30 3rd parallel sessions	1c. Valuing Life III: Lively Encounters, Ethics of Care and Value Regimes	Bosrandzaal	16:00 – 17:30 6 th  parallel sessions	16. Value in the Urban Sphere	Arboretum	16:00 – 17:30	Plenary closing session: Mole ethnography	Bosrandzaal
	9. Data, Value and Life: New ways of measuring progress and prosperity	Arboretum		17. Space/time dimensions of value	Meidoornzaal
	7b. Diverse economies II: food and rural development	Boomgaardzaal		18. Film screening: Conflict conservation cinema	Bosrandzaal
	8b. Natural Capital Accounting II:  Can Nature’s  Valuation Save the Planet?	Lijsterbes		15b. The Production and use of citizen science and academic knowledge in political grassroots movements II	Boomgaardzaal
	10. Film screening: Poachers' Moon: Light and Darkness in Austral Africa	Meidoornzaal		19. Measuring 'Social Impact' in the Social Sciences	Lijsterbes
19:00	Conference dinner at Colors	Colors World Food

28 June, keynote lecture, 9:30 – 11:00
Katherine Gibson Thinking with interdependence: From Economy/Environment to ecological livelihoods
Room: Convenors:	Bosrandzaal Robert Fletcher
28 June, session 1, 11:30 – 13:00
1a. Valuing Life I: More-than-Human Labor, Vibrancy of Matter and Value
Room: Convenors: Maan Burua Katharine Legun Ursula Lang Neera Singh	Bosrandzaal Heidi Hausermann (chair)       Sian Sullivan (discussant) Generating value from nonhuman life: charisma, capital, captivity Biologies/Varieties/ Plant-power: the creative economic work of apples, tomatoes, and hops The life of urban storm water Valuing Life: Ethics of Care and Conservation
2. On State and Non-State Territorialization in Forest Reserve
Room: Convenors: Josie Chambers Nadya Karimasari Danya Kiernan Yance Arizona	Aboretum Nadya Karimasari Exploring a landscape of conservation governance strategies in Peru Reverse territorialisation: from land to labour enclosure in Indonesian protected areas Attaining Power through Spatial Territorialization: A Case Study of Boundary Making, Conservation NGOs, and Legal Activism in Indonesia’s Leuser Ecosystem Dilemma of legalising adat territory through lawmaking process at the district level in Indonesia
3. Health, justice and inequality
Room: Convenors: Ju-chen Chen Beatrijs Haverkamp & Tjidde Tempels Hannah LeBlanc	Boomgaardzaal Meghann Ormond Wishing Well: Aspirations of Filipino Domestic Workers in Hong Kong Socioeconomic inequalities in health: structural injustice? Home Economists, Doctors, and the Hungry: The Politics of Authority in Postwar Nutrition Research
4a. Valuing the Environment I
Room: Convenors: Alberto Morales Jenny Goldstein Arne Harms	Meidoornzaal Bram Büscher Scales and Becomings of Marine Biodiversity In/visible value and the politics of satellite-based environmental monitoring in Southeast Asia Enacting Carbon at the Fringes: Forestry and Finance in the Indian Himalayas
5. Value, Violence and Visibility
Room:                              Convenors:                             Jonny Bunning                       Emily Gilbert                          Yaffa Truelove                       Niels van Doorn	Lijsterbes Rene van der Duim The Value of Critique: Irony, Activism, and the Life of Capitalism Geopolitics, Violence, and the Value of Life Disrupted Waters: The Uneven Hydro-Social Geographies and Infrastructural Violence of Delhi’s 2016 Water Crisis On Value and Visibility: The (de)valuation of life-sustaining labor in the on-demand economy

28 June, session 2, 14:00 – 15:30
1b. Valuing Life II: Lively Encounters, Ethics of Care and Value Regimes
Room: Convenors: João Alfonso Baptista Olivia Angé Elise Demeulenaere Josh Fisher	Bosrandzaal Cecilie Vindal Ødegaard (chair)       Marc Brightman (discussant) Body Land The value of lively potato in the Peruvian Highlands Farmer Seed Networks in France: from communities of practices to matters of care A Crisis of Urban Wildness? On the Value(s) of Living Well in Nicarague
6. Life and value as seen in community attempts to pursue environmental challenges
Room:                                    Convenors:                            Elliot Meador Margaret Tingey Gerald Taylor Aiken           Sarah O’Sullivan	Aboretum Gerald Taylor Aiken Local assets, local decisions and community resilience: What does success looks like in rural Scotland?      Measurement, stakes, and implications in the valuing of the benefits of decentralised energy systems      Measuring Nature in Community Transitions: Permaculture, Modeling and Truth                     The Moral Ambiguity of “Vulnerability” and Aid Allocation among Beneficiaries in Northern Uganda
4b. Valuing the Environment I
Room: Convenors: Tarmo Pikner Chris Büscher Camille Reyniers Madhuri Ramesh	Meidoornzaal Bram Büscher Cosmopolitics entangeled to environmental legacies and foresight: Paldiski´s coastal terrain  Business models for sanitation in development: On the contradictions between use and exchange value of waste Bargaining the Reference Emission Level of the Democratic Republic of Congo: The case study of the Emission Reduction Program in Mai Ndombe province “There’s no such thing as a turtle expert”: Technologies of rule in wildlife conservation
7a. Diverse economies I: the development of new social practices
Room: Convenors: Flora Sonkin Camille Bruneau Sungwoong Jung Anke de Vrieze & Dirk Roep	Boomgaardzaal Joost Jongerden Municipal Goats: Exploring Agroecological Place-Shaping and Multiple Ruralities in Sierra de Guadarrama                                           Negotiating a real utopia: The ZAD of Notre-Dame-des-Landes Place reconstruction in-between the urban and the rural: Virtualizing Rurban over Spatial Intimacy                                               Transformative capacity of sustainable place-shaping practices
8a. Natural Capital Accounting I: Can Nature’s Valuation Save the Planet?
Room:                                 Convenors:                            Sian Sullivan Q                    Felipe Bucci Ancapi          Naomi Milner                      Ken MacDonald	Lijsterbes Robert Fletcher       Sian Sullivan Bonding nature? Exploring new natural capital frontiers in conservation finance Ecosystem Services: an analysis of its ethical implications, in natural conservation More than natural capital? Commoning and community forestry management in the Maya Biosphere Reserve, Guatemala Fields of green: Corporate sustainability and the production of economistic environmental governance

28 June, session 3, 16:00 – 17:30
1c. Valuing Life III: Lively Encounters, Ethics of Care and Affective Emergences
Room: Convenors: Hannah Pitt Juan Javier Rivera Andía Columba Gonzalez Heidi Hausermann	Bosrandzaal Elise Demeulenaere (chair)    Questioning the ethical value of connecting through encounters with more-than-humans The music of a living temple: Indigenous historical co-becomings in an extractivist context (Cañaris, Peru) Co-becomings: producing knowledge with a migratory butterfly Buruli ulcer treatment assemblages and encounters of care in rural Ghana
9. Data, Value and Life: New ways of measuring progress and prosperity
Room: Convenors: Crelis Rammelt Barbara Tielemans Barbara David de Witte Jesse Montes	Aboretum Dan Brockington You can’t eat money: the consequences of a financial view of development The Neverending Story of the North-South Divide: How Bordering serves to Perpetuate the Illusion of Progress Happiness, capabilities and self-possession Gross National Happiness: An Imaginary for Development and Governance
7b. Diverse economies II: food and rural development
Room: Convenors: Seth de Vlieger Seth Anom Sigit Suryawan Heriberto Ruiz Tafoya Zulfa Utami Adiputri	Boomgaardzaal Shuji Hisano The People Left Behind: The Agricultural Sector and Farmers in the Context of Dutch Depopulation and its Policy Reconstructing meanings and practices of halal: the politics of the new state-led halal standards in Indonesia                                              Political economy of corporate packaged food: A study of packepreneurs in Metro-Manila’ slums Local Actors in Global Non-state Multi Stakeholder Governance System
8b. Natural Capital Accounting II: Can Nature’s Valuation Save the Planet?
Room:                                 Convenors:                            Robert Fletcher & Wolfram Dressler Peter Wilshusen                  Mike Hannis	Lijsterbes Robert Fletcher       Sian Sullivan The Optimal Native: Making and Unmaking (Natural) Capital in Ruptured Landscapes Imagining Value: The Political Performativity of Natural Capital in Neoliberal Conservation Hunting Natural Capital? Economics, Ethics and the Reinvention of the Black Rhinoceros
10. Film screening: Poachers' Moon: Light and Darkness in Austral Africa
Room: Convenors: Film screening	Meidoornzaal Jeremie Brugidou

29 June, keynote lecture, 9:30 – 11:00
Annemarie Mol Valuing here or there: the pertinence of where questions
Room: Convenors:	Bosrandzaal Meghann Ormond
29 June, session 4, 11:30 – 13:00
1d. Valuing Life IV: Earthly flows of life, Resistance and Relationality
Room: Convenors: Jonathan DeVore Cecilie Vindal Ødegaard Stephanie Postar James Stinson	Bosrandzaal Josh Fishers (chair)     Alberto Arce (discussant) Land as a Second Mother: Estrangement, Care, and the Re-Enchantment of Nature Vital relations, land and labor in urban Peru Forest histories and nuclear futures: mapping value and landscape change in southern Tanzania "The National Park is a Tzuultaq’a”: Q’eqchi’ Maya Environmentalities and the Politics of Translation in Southern Belize
11. Urban Matter(s): the Non-Human Life in the Cities
Room: Convenors: Elisa Farinacci Valentina Gamberi Ivan Severi Orit Hirsch-Matsioulas, Yaara Sadetzki-Vered Nimrod Luz	Boomgaardzaal Elisa Farinacci   Valentina Gamberi   Nimrod Luz (discussant) Living in a Walled City: The Ethnographic Case Study of Palestinian Christians in Bethlehem and Beit Jala                                               Urban Religiouscape: Material Contributions Developing Arcosanti: the city like an organism Leash in the City: Dog-Leash-Human Entanglements and the Urban Space Holding the city in our hands: reflections in the material turn and the explanatory power of urban ethnography
12a. Caring for a ‘good’ life? I
Room: Convenors: Pieternel Cremers Lette Hogeling & Lenneke Vaandrager Meghann Ormond Trista Chih-Chen Lin	Aboretum Meghann Ormond Setting the scene: Identifying the contours of the Dutch disability tourism market and determining its value                                               Unravelling health promoting mechanisms using a realist approach to evaluation 'Constructing health care-related ‘deservingness’ in a neoliberal, entrepreneurial state: (Re)producing            ‘desirable’, ‘acceptable’, and ‘disposable’ migrants in Malaysia ‘Just’ motherhood? — The gender, sexual and (re)productive politics in a residential care center for young mothers’ wellbeing and development
13a. The Politics of Plants and Animals I – valuing other lives
Room: Convenors: Barbara Bossak-Herbst Kieran O’Mahony Zulkhairi Azizi Zainal Abidin Charles Mather	Meidoornzaal Clemens Driessen Human-animal cohabitation in the historic settlement at the back of Racetrack Sluzewiec in the capital of Poland Catching up with wild-life- the contested politics of managing reintroduced boar in the UK Structure And Predictive Validity Of Human Emotions To Animals Newfoundland’s Atlantic salmon: ‘too valuable to be caught only once’?
14a. Questions of Measurement and Value I
Room: Convenors: Thomas Franssen & Mandy de Wilde Patrick Bresnihan Kat Austen Tom O’Dea	Lijsterbes Chris Sandbrook ‘Getting people in the loop’: on valuing life in living labs Optimizing Water Services: Environmental Accounting, Water Pricing and Politics in Ireland’s Water Sector                                              Multiple Knowledges and Redefinition of the Self in the Environment Self-tracking devices, datafied bodes and algorithmic governance

29 June, session 5, 14:00 – 15:30
1e. Valuing Life V: Threatened Life, Affective Emergences and Care-full Futures
Room: Convenors: Sue Ruddick John Moran Alder Keleman Annet Pauwelussen Jennifer Lee Johnson	Bosrandzaal Jennifer Lee Johnson (chair) Extant/extinction Precious Bycatch: The Cultural Impact of Biological Specimen Collection on Florida’s Forgotten Coast         Affect and Appropriation: Memory and Ethnic Identity in Native Food "Rescue" Movements in the Bolivian Andes                          The Thrills and Cramps of destructive fishing in Indonesia Same as it Never Was: Enkejje, Haplochromines, or Just Trash
12b. Caring for a ‘good’ life? II
Room: Convenors:                            Hilje van der Horst              Hasan Asraf                          Peter Lindner                       Stefan Wahlen	Aboretum Meghann Ormond Food banks: contesting value in practice The politics of infrastructure in Dhaka: which life matters? Ethopolitics, Wearables and the Nudge Revolution Meat and masculinities in the moral household economy
13b. The politics of plants and animals II - valuing other lives – Roundtable
Room: Convenors:	Meidoornzaal Clemens Driessen     Maite Hernando Aresse
Roundtable with Maite Hernando Arrese, Gerard Verschoor, Alberto Arce, Clemens Driessen
14b. Questions of Measurement and Value II
Room: Convenors: Jeroen Nawijn Chris Sandbrook & Rogelio Luque-Lora Sarah Drury Francisca Grommé Francisca Grommé	Lijsterbes Chris Sandbrook The Effect of Perceived Authenticity on Meaning in Life: The case of Dutch Concentration Camp Memorials                                               The social lives of camera traps: exploring conflict between ecological research and human activity Measuring Life is a Settler Colonial Project: Alternative Methodologies for Measuring Precarious Lives Configuring contemporary European (post-)colonial relations through official statistics: The case of the Caribbean Netherlands
15a. The Production and use of citizen science and academic knowledge in political grassroots movements I
Room: Convenors: Monique Nuijten & Maritza Bode-Bakker Stine Krøijer Heath Cabot	Boomgaardzaal Elisabet Rasch     Tord Austdal (discussant) The role of ‘messy knowledge’ in protracted power struggles. The fight of citizens against house evictions in Spain Translation and Leaky Theories: More-than-Human Politics and Wild Anthropology among Radical Environmental Activists in the Rhineland Anthropologizing Solidarity

29 June, session 6, 16:00 – 17:30
16. Value in the Urban Sphere
Room: Convenors: Robert Coates Ana Aceska Sven da Silva Pieter de Vries		Aboretum Pieter de Vries Disaster eventfulness and the protection of vulnerable life in urban Brazil Lost in translation: the concept of the good city in the post-war urban regeneration of Bosnia-Herzegovina Slum politics as a politics of hope in reactionary times: Urban inconsistency, community leaders and the ‘part of no part’ in Recife, Brazil Corruption, Left castration and the Decay of an Urban Popular Movement in Brazil: A Melancholy Story
17. Space/time dimensions of value
Room: Convenors: Valentina Marcheselli Cherryl Walker Gilles Marciniak Serge Cogels		Meidoornzaal Stasja Koot The search for life beyond Earth. An ethnographic study of astrobiologists' practices Astronomy, development and disparity in South Africa’s Karoo region The lived experience of a predicted future: a phenomenological approach to climate change predictions                                    Improving the livelihoods of people impacted by extractive projects in Central Africa: effectiveness and limits of SE indicators used to monitor quality of life
18. Conflict Conservation Cinema
Room: Convenors:	Bosrandzaal   Lisa Trogisch
Film screening and panel discussion
15b. The Production and use of citizen science and academic knowledge in political grassroots movements II
Room: Convenors: Søren Brofeldt, Nerea Turreira-Garcia, Dimitris Argyriou Nerea Turreira-Garcia, Søren Brofeldt, Dimitris Argyriou Andrew D. Spiegel		Boomgaardzaal Monique Nuijten     Heath Cabot (discussant) Does monitoring matter? Quality and impact of community-led monitoring in Prey Lang, Cambodia Who wants to save the forest? Characterising community-led monitoring in Prey Lang, Cambodia When the shit keeps flying: Challenging the statistics of global and local authority sanitation goal assessment in light of ethnographies of experience in selected informal settlements in Cape Town, South Africa
19. Measuring 'Social Impact' in Academia
Room: Convenors:	I Lijsterbes   Robert Fletcher      Meghann Ormond
Roundtable

30 June, session 7, 9:30 – 11:00
20a. Valuing wellbeing I: practices of wellbeing within and beyond neoliberal financialisation
Room: Convenors: Eva Hilberg Kriti Kapila Georgette Morris Karolina Doughty		Bosrandzaal Karolina Doughty A global perspective on the quantified selves of technology-enabled mental health A Life Worth Saving: Hierarchies of Value in Health Emergencies in India Live in Caregiver program: The Jamaican Canadian Experience 1973 Cultures of health and water
21a. Whose Heritages Matter? I
Room: Convenors: Rob van der Vaart Laura Boerhout Marijke van Fassen Jana Finke		Lijsterbes Meghann Ormond     Karin Peters Cultural and historical canon of the Netherlands: The deliberation process (Countering) categories of difference on the wars in Yugoslavia in the Dutch Canon Rooted in Two Countries? Migrant Heritage, Emplacement and the ‘Canon van Nederland’ Responses of non-school actors in history education to the so-called “refugee crisis” in Germany and the Netherlands
15c. The Production and use of citizen science and academic knowledge in political grassroots movements III
Room: Convenors:		Boomgaardzaal Monique Nuijten
Plenary discussion table with key activists
22. Towards Resilient Tourism Destinations
Room:                                 Convenors:                            Bas Amelung                        Stuart Cottrell                      Esther Gitonga                     Machiel Lamers		Meidoornzaal Rene van der Duim Resilience in tourism studies: a state of the art Resilience in tourism development: a socio-ecological perspective Climate change and safari tourism Resilience and polar marine mobilities
23. Materializing Value
Room: Convenors: Nathan Wittock Alexandra Rijke Ágota Ábrán	Aboretum Bram Büscher   Spatialities of Blood: How to Make Sense of a Messy Object? Walling Assemblages and Checkpoint Materialities: 300 versus Qalandia Valuing plants as healers in Romania

30 June, session 8, 11:30 – 13:00
20b. Valuing wellbeing II: practices of wellbeing within and beyond neoliberal financialisation
Room: Convenors: Charles Dannreuther Sarah Atkinson Wayne Medford Wayne Medford Hannah Denton		Bosrandzaal Karolina Doughty Towards an IPE of Touch Wellbeing and the Wild, Blue 21st Century Citizen Assembling Potential Healing Experiences in Public Space: A Breastfeeding Initiation Campaign in a Northern English Town Mental health and sea swimming
21b. Whose Heritages Matter? II
Room:                                    Convenors:                             Dilek Karaağaçli                     Roel During                            Kristine Racina &                   Sarah Bringhurst Familia Monica Perez Vega,               Xenia Bordukowa Pattberg & Rowena Dring			Lijsterbes Meghann Ormond     Karin Peters Refugee histories matter The politics of linking, bridging and bonding heritage Expatriate Archive Centre Hiraeth
15d. The Production and use of citizen science and academic knowledge in political grassroots movements IV
Room:                                 Convenors:                             Dik Roth & Madelinde Winnubst           Michiel Kohne &                   Elisabet Rasch Hylke Hekkenberg		Boomgaardzaal Stine Krøijer     Jens Lund (discussant) On the safe side? Better safe than sorry? Knowledge claims, local protest and the complex entanglements around a river bypass Politics of knowledge, politics of fracking Against gas, in favour of renewable energy
24. Roundtable: Tourism and Degrowth
Room: Convenors:	I Meidoornzaal Robert Fletcher      Macià Blázquez-Salom      Ivan Murray
Roundtable with Macià Blázquez-Salom, Ivan Murray, Jolanda Iserlohn, Asunción Blanco-Romero
25. REDD+ and the limits of climate goverance based on the quantification of ecosystem services and carbon trading
Room: Convenors:		Aboretum Otherwise

30 June, session 9, 14:00 – 15:30
26. Valuing Everyday Practices and Unseen Spaces
Room: Convenors: Jessica de Koning Esther Veen & Marianne Dagevos Chizu Sato Edwin Schmitt	Meidoornzaal Esther Veen Studying unseen, shadowy places – consideration for studying institutions The value of mundane aspects and daily concerns in diverse economic activities Toward a postcapitalist politics of commoning in feminist political ecology Xiaokang Lifestyle: A Mixed Methods Approach to Understanding Themes and Implications for Rural Living within a Chinese Discourse of Economic Development
15e. The Production and use of citizen science and academic knowledge in political grassroots movements V
Room: Convenors: Tord Austdal Saskia van Drunen Lynn van Leerzem, Bruno Lauteslager & Merel Stoop	Boomgaardzaal Michiel Köhne     Stine Krøijer (discussant) Not Playing Indians: Skills, Body, and Knowledge in the US Primitivist Movement Exploring the potential of academic knowledge for action-oriented research on multinational corporations Teaching and learning about alternative economic thinking
27. The value of wildlife
Room: Convenors:                           Bram Büscher                      Emile Schmidt                     Stasja Koot                           Marlies Huijssoon	Aboretum Stasja Koot      Bram Büscher Exploiting Extinction? Charismatic species decline and the privatisation of nature in Africa The ‘War on Rhino Poaching’: Conservation as Pacification The value of living in Hoedspruit: White belonging to nature in post-apartheid South Africa Instrumentalizing gender in the South African anti-poaching field: a study of the Black Mamba Anti-Poaching Unit
28. The Value of Food
Room:                                 Convenors:                            Ceren Gamze Yaşar            Lucie Sovová                        Shiela Chikulo	Lijsterbes Han Wiskerke Food and Shelter: The interrelated policies of urban growth and agricultural production in Turkey Leisure gardening or subsistence agriculture? The social and the economic of growing your own Vendors and Vendettas: Space and Policy Contestations in Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Vending for Survival in Harare, Zimbabwe
30 June, plenary session, 16:00 – 17:30
Plenary closing session: Mole ethnography
Room: Convenors:	Bosrandzaal Dan Brockington     Robert Fletcher