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‘Connecting Kinship: Personalised Medicine, and The Psychology of Cooperation’. A discussion with Sophie Day and Charles Stafford

Sophie Day

Professor of Anthropology, Goldsmiths

Professor Sophie Day has recently concluded research on a Wellcome Trust collaborative medical humanities project ‘People Like You.’ She is also preparing a monograph, Rendering Houses, about Ladakhi biographies and working as a Visiting Professor in the School of Public Health at Imperial College, London where she is seconded 2 days a week. Professor Day studied social anthropology at Cambridge University, Stanford University, Ca., and the London School of Economic and Political Sciences, where her PhD explored spirit possession in Ladakh, North India. She was awarded the Eileen Basker Prize and the Wellcome Medal for Anthropology as Applied to Medical Problems for her 2007 monograph, On the Game: Women and Sex Work (London: Pluto Press).

Recent publications: 

• Day, Sophie E.; Gleason, Kelly; Lury, Celia; Sherlock, Di; Viney, William and Ward, Helen. 2022. ‘In the Picture’: Perspectives on Living and Working with Cancer. Medical Humanities, ISSN 1468-215X
• Day, Sophie E.; Lury, Celia and Ward, Helen. 2022. Personalisation: A new political arithmetic? Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory, ISSN 1600-910X
• Viney, William; Day, Sophie E.; Bruton, Jane; Gleason, Kelly; Ion, Charlotte; Nazir, Saima and Ward, Helen. 2022. Personalising Clinical Pathways in a London Breast Cancer Service. Sociology of Health & Illness, 44(3), pp. 624-640. ISSN 1467-9566
• Day, Sophie E.; Viney, William; Bruton, Jane and Ward, Helen. 2021. Past-futures in experimental care: breast cancer and HIV medicine. New Genetics and Society, 40(4), pp. 449-472. ISSN 1463-6778

Charles Stafford

Professor of Anthropology, LSE

Charles Stafford is an Anthropologist of Taiwan, China and the USA. His research work has focused primarily on issues related to learning and cognition – including child development, emotion and identity, morality and ethics, and the psychology of economic life. Professor Stafford's first major fieldwork project was conducted in the late 1980s in a Taiwanese fishing community where he examined child development through the lens of nationalist schooling and Taiwanese popular religion. This resulted in his monograph, The roads of Chinese childhood (Cambridge 1995). In the early 1990s he began to conduct research in mainland China on issues related to kinship, religion, and Chinese historical consciousness. He became especially interested in the rituals and practices of ‘separation’ and ‘reunion’ that structure the flow of social life in rural communities - see his Separation and reunion in modern China (Cambridge 2000). More recently, his work has focused on the intersection between everyday moral/ethical life and economic psychology, including the psychology of cooperation. His recent edited books are Ordinary ethics in China (Bloomsbury 2013), and Cooperation in Chinese communities (Bloomsbury 2018). In his latest single author monograph, Economic life in the real world: logic, emotion and ethics (Cambridge 2020), he brings insights from Anthropology, Psychology and Economics into dialogue. His most recent periods of fieldwork have been carried out in the US ‘heartland’ state of Oklahoma, where he has been studying patterns of kin and non-kin cooperation.

Recent publications:

• Stafford, Charles. 2018. ‘Moral judgement close to home’, Social Anthropology 26: 117-129.
• Stafford, Charles. 2019. Economic life in the real world: logic, emotion and ethics. Cambridge University Press.
• Stafford, Charles. 2018. ‘Kin and non-kin cooperation in China’. In: Stafford, Charles, Judd, Ellen R. and Bell, Eona, (eds.) Cooperation in Chinese communities: morality and practice. Bloomsbury Academic, London, UK.

If you are interested in taking part in this discussion. Please contact SoMA rep Giorgia Kerr at giorgia.kerr@ed.ac.uk