Invitation to Conference on Health - Call for abstracts

Department of Organization, Copenhagen Business School
September 13-15, 2010

Key note speakers and stream conveners: Senior Lecturer, PhD Monica Greco, Associated Professor, PhD Thomas Lemke, Professor Alan Petersen, Professor Paul Du Gay and Associate Professor, PhD Eric Mykhalovskiy.

Conference organizers: Associate Professor, PhD Nanna Mik-Meyer and PhD fellow Anne Roelsgaard Obling.

Health – A new religious awakening in Western Societies?

Some scholars claim that health has taken over the role of religion in contemporary Western societies. Health has become synonymous with happiness and the possibility of living a perfect life. Health has become a matter of truth, intertwining norms, human practices and power relations. Today life itself is permeated by different kinds of health strategies, which situates the medicalised body as subject and object of regulation. The individual subject is now expected to experience the inner and outer world, and rebuild its own identity in relationship to a discourse of health and well-being. Speaking in the light of health is, as Monica Greco claims, a very powerful rhetoric. In this conference we have invited some of the most influential scholars working in the fields of sociology, history of medicine and the body, politics of bioethics, critical theory etcetera to discuss the prominent, normative role of health today. They will touch upon questions such as: How does the sociology of the body and the way we reflect upon diseases connect to neoliberal thinking? How do technologies of health differ from other technologies of subjectification? How does health and well being discourse define us as human beings? How does the normal differs from the pathological in these discourses? And are we all becoming somatic individuals?

The conference will involve a combination of plenary lectures from five key note speakers, and the presentation of papers by conference participants in smaller, themed groups. The groups will be organized in following tracks:
1)      Health as religion: the normative role of health in contemporary Western societies
2)      The politics of bioethics: bio-medicine, neo-liberalism and health
3)      Health care professionals, patients, citizens and the re-organizing of private and public domains
4)      Identity formation in health discourses: the sick body as object and subject of regulation

Important dates:
April 1, 2010: Abstract
May 1, 2010: Notification of decision of acceptance
August 10, 2010: Full Paper

Email contact information: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Abstracts should be approximately 500 words (ONE page, Word document, single spaced, excluding references). New and young scholars with 'work in progress' papers are welcomed. In the case of co-authored papers, ONE person should be identified as the corresponding author. Note that due to restrictions of space, multiple submissions by the same author will not be timetabled. Abstracts should include FULL contact details, including your name, institutional affiliation, mailing address, and e-mail address. State the title of the track to which you are submitting your abstract. Abstracts should be emailed to: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Papers should be approximately 7500 - 10000 words. Work in progress is accepted as well as full papers.
Price of conference: 100 Euro (including lunch, coffee, conference materials)