Wednesday 2 August 2017

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
Published: 13 July 2017

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 [23]. 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 [456]. 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 [1011]. Likewise, in spite of significant concerns about the role of medical tourism in exacerbating health inequities in both Global South and Global North countries [1213], 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 [1516]. 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 [1819]. 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

Friday 23 June 2017

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

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.

Wednesday 14 June 2017

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


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




1a. Valuing Life I: More-than-Human Labor, Vibrancy of Matter and Value
Bosrandzaal


1d. Valuing Life IV: Lively Encounters, Ethics of Care and Affective Emergences
Bosrandzaal

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





1b. Valuing Life II: Earthly flows of life, Resistance and Relationality
Bosrandzaal



1e. Valuing Life V: Threatened Life, Affective Emergences and Care-full Futures
Bosrandzaal


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





1c. Valuing Life III: Lively Encounters, Ethics of Care and Value Regimes
Bosrandzaal



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