Call for applications - junior scholar and student travel grants
BodyCapital Inaugural Conference 2017. The healthy self as body capital: Individuals, market-based societies and body politics in visual twentieth century Europe.
In the context of the upcoming international conference to be held in Strasbourg, February 23rd-25th, 2017, travel grants will be awarded to a number of students and junior scholars interested in health and visual culture in the twentieth century. Candidates will be invited to further participate in a workshop on February 27th, 2017.
Conference outline
Do you know how much rapid eye movement (REM) sleep you need to be efficient, look at food labels to ensure that you are getting all the required vitamins and minerals or know someone who uses a step counter to ensure they are getting enough physical activity? These are just a few examples of what has happened to health perceptions and practices of individuals during a twentieth century in Europe characterized by an extension of body and health improvement techniques and products supported by a flood of transnationally circulating visuals and the advent of a media society. Bodily health has evolved as a new form of capital (Bourdieu 1979) conceptualized as a form of symbolic capital that can be transformed into economic capital.
The new ERC funded research group “The healthy self as body capital: individuals, market-based societies and body politics in visual twentieth century Europe” (BodyCapital) led by Christian Bonah (Strasbourg University) and Anja Laukötter (MPIHD Berlin) will research this understanding and history of body capital in focusing on the history of visual mass media (film, TV, Internet) and inédits (amateur, family and private visuals) throughout the 20th Century in Europe and beyond.
The research group is based on the idea that visuals are not conceived merely as a mirror or expression of what is observed. Visuals are regarded as a distinct, interactive performative power of mass media societies. We consider them essential and novel because first, their distribution has been considerably extended, secondly because they transcend professional and social groups, thirdly because of their utilitarian character and fourthly their complementarities with economic market principles in terms of promotion/communication. For us, visuals have heuristic and analytical meanings.
Thus we aim to better understand the role that modern visual mass media have played in what may be cast as the transition from a national bio-political public health paradigm at the beginning of the nineteenth century -- characterized by collective bodies, a work force and labour society, as well as state interests in being able to mobilize large cohorts of able-bodied workers, soldiers and colonial subjects -- to societal forms of the late twentieth century where normality for better and healthier life is increasingly shaped by market forces/fundamentalism -- characterized by individualized approaches, my-body-capital in a consumer society, and market incentives -- leading to what may be defined as commoditized/commodified bodies.
We aim to study these developments through the lenses of the visuals in three entangled histories of European countries central to the economy and visual production, yet differing in their visual culture and their embrace of neo-liberal market policies during the twentieth century: France, Germany and Great Britain. Moreover the developments and influences of the United States and Canada as well as Russia/USSR will be included as complementary references and as analytical counterpoints. Within this spatial historical framework the project focuses on four main fields of health interests in the 20th Century:
- history of food/ nutrition
- history of movement/exercise/sports
- history of sexuality/reproduction/infants
- history of dependency/addiction/overconsumption-.
The inaugural conference of this new research group to be held in Strasbourg (February 23rd-25th, 2017) aims to bring together topic and media related scholars from the field of history/history of medicine, media studies, film studies and film history. The conference tries to approach and explore the wide field of the research agenda within four overlapping and different axes:
1. Between Medicine, Sciences and Markets
This panel will explore the connections and relationship of the history of medicine, different scientific fields (from psychiatry, psychology to neurobiology and chemistry) and various industries such as pharmaceutical industries. Yet the panel will not only explore how these different power players constructed and worked on the consumer with and within visuals but also how the (economic) interests overlap between these different fields and countries within the 20th Century.
2. Between state regulation and subjectification
The second panel highlights the role of visuals in two different agencies and its possible relationships: it will focus on the relationship of attempts and practices of state regulation to enforce/educate its citizens to live a healthy life. It will be explored how the different European health systems shaped these efforts and how economic interests played out. Moreover, focusing also on individuals’ perspectives the panel will not only explore how individual people reacted to these state efforts but also how individuals actively performed health. Thus the panel will focus on practices of internalizations of health practices that have been described in concepts as the “preventive self” (Lengwiler/ Madarász 2010) and beyond.
3. Between Collectivization and Distinction
The third panel explores how visuals play out in different developments in European countries and US ranging between phenomena described as different forms of collectivization and distinction. On the one hand we find different forms of health related group formations ranging from self-help groups (such as AIDS-Activist, Alcoholics Anonymous
to so-called Obesity-groups) to promote new health related attitude and practices. At the same time we find individuals organized in different distinct activity groups (such as Aerobic-or vegan-movement) that promote not only a new healthy life but function as a new marker of social difference and class-boundness.
4. Between local formations and global realms
This panel will explore developments and relationships between the formation, activities and goals of global organizations (ranging from UNESCO to WHO) to capture and spread their aims via visuals. It will focus on how global institutions conceptualized health issues as global issues and which role visual play in these efforts. Moreover the panel will focus on local organized formations as the amateur film movement and how these groups used visual as an expression of a new individual and group understanding of health.
To apply:
Candidates should hold a masters’ or doctorate degree in history, history of science, history of medicine, history of film, visual studies, film studies or related field.
Send a CV (with publication list) and a short cover letter stating your interest in the ERC BodyCapital project and in attending the conference to tkoenig@unistra.fr before 30 November 2016.