Keynote lectures for the Oslo Workshop

Alienation and mental health: Escaping the therapeutic society  

Emil Øversveen

Abstract

Due to its perceived ability to explain the distinctive experiences of powerlessness and isolation pervading modern society, Marx’s theory of alienation quickly become one of his most influential contributions when it was discovered in the 1930s, and remains a powerful explanatory tool for those seeking to understand the relationship between social conditions and mental health. Inspiring everything from the Frankfurt School to anti-consumerist movements of the 1990s, alienation theory proved controversial among traditionally inclined Marxists, who rejected it as a non-scientific remnant of Marx’s youthful Hegelianism. In this keynote I chart the troubled history of alienation theory in 20th century critical theory, before outlining a reinterpretation that grounds the concept more firmly within Marx’s critique of political economy. I then consider the potential of alienation theory to illuminate the relationship between social inequality and health, focusing in particular on its ability to enhance the psycho-social theories advanced by Marmot, Wilkinson and others. I conclude the presentation by engaging with Christopher Lasch’s critique of the therapeutic society, arguing that politicizing alienation can provide an alternative to what Lasch saw as a retreat from politics into psychological self-healing.  

Suicidal conditions: State and Corporate Violence in the Making of Suicide 

China Mills

Abstract

Suicide doesn’t occur in a vacuum—it is complex, multidimensional, and often the result of many intersecting factors building up to make life unliveable. Dominant political narratives often centre mental health when talking about suicide, at best treating suicide as a tragic and unfortunate side-effect of political conditions. But what about the role of State and corporations in producing conditions that make people’s lives unliveable? What about when unliveability and death-making are designed into policy?  

In this session, we explore what it means to understand some suicides as a symptom of state and corporate violence—violence which is slow, often bureaucratic, normalised, and which eludes simple cause and effect, enabling denial of responsibility from the state and corporations. We will also explore the what resistance looks like and how it is often those most impacted who are envisioning justice through dreaming, creating and enacting life-affirming systems and infrastructures.  

Call for papers: Politics of Health, Illness and Wellbeing: Conflicts, Controversies and Contestations

7-8 June 2023, University of Oslo

Keynote speakers:

Emil Øversveen, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

China Mills, City University of London

The workshop addresses different modes and manifestations of conflicts, controversies and contestations related to health and wellbeing. Cultural understandings of health and wellbeing, as well as the structures and institutional arrangements associated with them, are important political questions and arenas of struggle in society, both historically and today. Health and wellbeing are also complexly entangled with relationships of power, and are traversed by social inequalities around gender, ethnicity, class, sexuality, age and ability.

The workshop invites submissions that address specific conflicts, controversies and political mobilisations concerning health, illness and wellbeing. It sets out to map and advance our understanding of the processes of politicization and depoliticization around these issues and the consequences they have. The workshop addresses, for example, the following questions: what kinds of conflicts and controversies can we identify in different contexts, and what kinds of political mobilisations do they give rise to? What kinds of conflicts and controversies may arise among health care professionals, and between professionals and patients? What issues or dimensions of health and wellbeing are being ignored, silenced or depoliticised? What kinds of visions and ideals are promoted and how are they marked by different axes of inequality and (dis)advantage? How are conflicts and controversies articulated in the media, and how are they governed and managed in state policies? What kinds of positions do various actors representing diverse forms of expertise and knowledge take and how are these positions negotiated?

The workshop seeks to facilitate multidisciplinary discussion. We welcome submissions that may relate to but need not be limited to the following themes:

  • Health social movements, patient organisations and health activism
  • Politicization of evidence and expertise
  • Mental health
  • Therapeutic culture and wellness
  • Health inequalities
  • Complementary and alternative medicine
  • Vaccine hesitancy
  • Medicalisation and pharmaceuticalization
  • Conspiracy theories
  • Commodification of health and wellbeing
  • Care and social reproduction
  • Health citizenship

Application process and funding 

Apply for the workshop by filling the online application form:

https://forms.office.com/Pages/ShareFormPage.aspx?id=EWg7RqSwKku5MnLEyXDF0pABVZxqrzlMl5Qwka6ur7JUQ0NQOThZTjlRQUZRVVIxTFQ3NU5LUkVUQy4u&sharetoken=n3pT0ZA73zy0VLNE5Rk4

Thirty participants will be accepted in the workshop. Priority will be given to scholars working in the Nordic countries. A balanced representation from different disciplines will also be used as a selection criteria.

NOS-HS funding is used to cover the travel and accommodation costs up to ca. 450 EUR per participant. We encourage the participants to try to avoid any extra costs and book their travel as soon as possible. We also encourage participants to prioritize traveling by train, bus and ferry.

Organizing committee:

Ole Jacob Madsen, University of Oslo, Norway

Suvi Salmenniemi, University of Turku, Finland

Jenny-Ann Brodin Danell, Umeå University, Sweden

Maria Kristiansen, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Important dates:

28 February 2023: Deadline for abstracts

15 March 2023: Notification of acceptance

7-8 June 2023: Workshop in Oslo

Call for papers for the 2nd workshop: How to study contestation of health and wellbeing? Methodological and epistemological approaches

17-18 November 2022, Umeå University, Sweden

Medical knowledge and expertise have been increasingly contested from a number of fronts in recent years. Vaccine hesitancy has emerged as an important political and public health concern, articulating critique of and distrust in medical research and health authorities. Food and nutrition are topics of intense ethical and political debate where official nutrition recommendations are frequently challenged by those drawing on experience-based knowledge and new sources of health authority, such as food bloggers or nutrition coaches. Complementary and alternative medicine, along with popular psychology self-help and New Age spiritualities, have been gaining popularity and offering
alternative forms of care and healing.


What all these cases have in common is that they often stand in conflicted relationship to biomedical and professional psychological notions of health and wellbeing and challenge traditional hierarchies of knowledge. At stake in these conflicts is what counts as evidence and expertise and how such definitions are drawn, recognized and evaluated. Experience-based knowledge is frequently pitted against scientific knowledge and alternative conceptions of evidence and knowledge production are promoted. Moreover, the authority of traditional experts is often challenged by a host of new ‘cultural intermediaries’, such life coaches, spiritual healers and complementary and alternative therapists.


Engagement with expert knowledge can be complex and take different forms, ranging from outright rejection to a dialogue, mixing and matching of various healing systems, and various modes of collaboration and co-production of knowledge. The conflicts around health and wellbeing also have important political implications, raising questions, for example, about the Internet and social media in the production and dissemination of health knowledge, the role of social movements in the politicization of health and wellbeing, the legal regulation of various healing practices, and connections between conspiracy theories and the contestation of expertise and evidence.


The workshop seeks to bring together scholars to examine epistemological and methodological questions related to contestation of health and wellbeing. We will discuss a range of research materials and methodological approaches that have been employed in empirical research, to identify their strengths and limitations and to promote methodological development. The workshop addresses a number of established methods, such as ethnography, narrative analysis, bibliometrics, media analysis, survey and mixed methods, but we also welcome other methods. Furthermore, we address questions of positionality, reflexivity and the researcher-researched relationship as well as ethical questions in the research process. The workshop seeks to open up new methodological avenues and facilitate creative combining of different research methods and materials.

At the workshop, participants will present their own work (around 20 minutes per participant). We will facilitate thematic discussions, and offer key note lectures on the general theme.

The workshop is part of the workshop series “Contestation of Health and Wellbeing in the Nordic Countries” (COHEWE), funded by the Joint Committee for Nordic research councils in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NOS-HS). This is the second workshop. The first workshop was on the theme of theorising contestation of health and wellbeing, hosted by University of Turku (20-21 January, 2022). The third workshop will focus on politics and wellbeing, hosted by University of Oslo in 2023.


Keynote speakers
Maria Kristiansen, Associate professor, University of Copenhagen
Pia Vuolanto, Senior research fellow, Tampere University

Application process and funding

Apply for the workshop by filling the online application form here.
Twenty-five participants will be accepted in the workshop. Priority will be given to early-career scholars working in the Nordic countries. A balanced representation from different disciplines will also be used as a selection criteria.


NOS-HS funding is used to cover the travel and accommodation costs up to ca. 350 EUR per participant, depending on the place of residence. We encourage the participants to try to avoid any extra costs and book their travel as soon as possible. We also encourage participants to prioritise travelling by train, bus and ferry.


Organizing committee
Suvi Salmenniemi, Professor, University of Turku, Finland
Jenny-Ann Brodin Danell, Associate professor, Umeå University, Sweden
Ole Jacob Madsen, Professor, University of Oslo, Norway
Maria Kristiansen, Associate professor, University of Copenhagen, Denmark


Important dates
• 31 May 2022: Deadline for applications
• 15 June 2022: Notification of acceptance
• 17-18 November 2022: Workshop in Umeå

Jaana Parviainen and Ayo Wahlberg as keynote speakers in the workshop “Theorising contestation of health and wellbeing: State of the art and how to move forward?” , 20-21 January 2022

We are delighted to welcome Dr. Jaana Parviainen (University of Tampere) and Professor Ayo Wahlberg (University of Copenhagen) as keynote speakers for the event. Here below you can find abstracts of their presentations.

Non-knowledge and political decision-making in the age of the coronavirus

Jaana Parviainen

The coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has had far-reaching effects on public health and led to global socioeconomic disruption despite attempts to prevent the spread of the disease by quarantine. The international committee World Health Assembly (WHA), convened by World Health Organization (WHO), cautioned in 2011 that the outbreak of a new pandemic is inevitable but many countries have been ill-prepared to respond to a severe influenza pandemic. European countries including Finland have had pandemic plans but few have recently tested them in the real life. Under the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemics, public authorities and politicians have struggled how to manage an enormous amount of ignorance regarding the virus. In this presentation, my purpose is to discuss the role of non-knowledge in political decision-making by analyzing the actions of the Finnish government in the Spring 2020. Drawing on insights from social epistemology, science and technology studies (STS) and the emerging interdisciplinary field of ignorance studies, my presentation focuses on the the temporality of non-knowledge in decision-making, e.g., the role of scenarios and predictions as ‘not-yet-known’. Illustrating my epistemic analysis with media material and press releases by the Finnish government, my paper proposes that making decisions under ignorance requires new forms of rationality, justification, legitimation, and observation of consequences.

Knowing better

Ayo Wahlberg

When people feel unwell they often seek out ways by which to get better. In some cases, sensations and feelings of malaise and discomfort can signal something that is acutely life-threatening. In other cases, feeling unwell can be directly connected to a known chronic condition that,  perhaps unknowingly, has “crept up” on a person. Yet, in probably more cases of “medically unexplained” or “diffuse” sensations and embodied feelings, people are left frustrated without a (biomedical) explanation (e.g. diagnosis) for their unwellbeing. In such cases, people may seek out so-called “alternative” or “traditional” explanations and related forms of treatment and care. In this talk, I explore the notion of “contestation” when it comes to health by asking: what does it mean to “know better” when it comes to health? I suggest that, more than a matter of epistemology alone, this question has to do with what might be thought of as situated pluralism which is to say the variegated ways in which certain explanations and courses of action come to gain ‘currency’ over others.