MEDICA VIII. Interdisciplinary Conference
Medical Pluralism in the Era of Digimodernism
Time: 28. November 2011
Place: Estonian Literary Museum, Vanemuise 42, Tartu
The conference working language is English.

Dear colleagues, we kindly invite you to participate in the 8th interdisciplinary Conference Medica, dealing this time with pluralism in medical context(s). The general aim of our annual meetings has been to analyze public and self-referential representations of health and illness problems in different contexts, bring together working group Medica.

This time we particularly look forward to papers dealing with pluralism issues, which actually was the topic of EASA conference (Medical Pluralism: Techniques, Politics, Institutions, Rome 7-10 September 2011).

On the basis of our previous experience, we have chosen the following five themes for panel discussions:

• Ethnobotanics
• Compilation of Techniques and Technologies
• Illness Narratives
• Healers and Healing
• Historical Perspectives

From a pre-medicinal facilitating behaviour, folk medicine has become a way of life, in which treatment and methods are incorporated or subjected to life style strategies, being also a certain component of medial pluralism. Some of the medical strategies have transformed into the source of folklore, as well as the folklore itself. Many narratives have a high applicative value (themes and functions range from case histories to narrativity mediating the experience of rehabilitation and inscribing to a specific social group, such as, e.g., personal experience narratives of cancer patients, narratives of participants of the new religious movement in/after the healing ceremony, etc.).

We ask you to join and discuss different medical realms, practitioners, users, traditions, rituals, new and old artefacts in different therapeutic traditions describing the processes and dynamics in the field. Our proposal is that ethno- and biomedical techniques and artefacts are travelling by way of philosophy, also by practitioners and institutions, which are part of the multilayered medical practice in Europe.

We would like to discuss also opportunities for collaboration within our Medica-network, also demonstrate new publications, data bases, etc.

We warmly welcome scholars interested in medical folkloristics, ethnomedicine, medical or cultural anthropology, ethnobiology, ethnobotanics, medics, interested in illness narratives, and other related subjects.

Please register and send your abstracts (300 words max), we would also look forward to your suggestions of what you would like to discuss.

Please register via e-mail: mare@folklore.ee

Organizing committee: Mare Kõiva, Renata Sõukand, Liisa Vesik.
Phone: 372-7377740