EDCMA

2020 SoMA Symposium: Uncertain Futures, Uncanny Present(s)

Discussion
27 April 2020
09:30 - 15:00
SoMA warmly invites you to join us for an experimental digital edition of the 2020 SoMA Symposium: Uncertain Futures, Uncanny Present(s) on the 27th April. The event is open to our colleagues and friends within and without the Edinburgh community and from within and tangential to anthropology. Please register on Google Forms.
 
COVID-19 has overwhelmed global consciousness. sparking criticisms about the nature of our healthcare infrastructures and economies, the production of global metrics, our understandings of what constitutes ‘good’ care, and cultural notions of moral responsibility, preparedness and risk. What is foregrounded, and what becomes hidden from view, forgotten, or absent from discussions, practices and experiences surrounding COVID-19? 
 
In this reshaped symposium (following the postponement of SoMA’s Uncertain Futures symposium due to the virus) we invite junior and early career researchers to contribute  250-word responses and reflections which speak to or between these themes. Researchers may present their original paper submitted to the Uncertain Futures symposium, or offer new ethnographic, speculative, or imaginative thoughts concerning the work of medical anthropologists in these new and uncertain presents/futures.
 
Our discussion will unfold in two parts: Reveal (morning session), and Obfuscate (afternoon session). Creative and experimental formats are welcome. Responses may include media such as photographs, sounds, artistic outputs. Although this workshop is hosted by the Edinburgh Centre for Medical Anthropology, perspectives from both wider anthropology and related disciplines are encouraged.Please note that submitting a response is not required to attend and participants may choose to attend one or all sessions.
 
Themes of these reflections may include, but are not limited to:
  • Politics of care
  • Affect
  • Morality
  • Responsibility
  • Risk
  • Metrics of global health
We aim to collate these responses into a collaborative output to publish on EdCMA’s / MAT’s new research blog.
 

Programme draft

9.30 - 10.00: Set up and welcome:
10.00 - 11.30: What is revealed by COVID-19
11.30 - 13.00: Break
13.00 - 14.30: What does COVID-19 obfuscate?
14.30 - 15.00: Discussion and concluding thoughts
 
Please RSVP to this registration form to attend the Symposium. To participate, please respond to either the REVEAL or OBFUSCATE responses with your intended submission or email one of the SoMA Team by the 17th of April.
 

REGISTRATION: Google Form