Forthcoming issue

CARGO – JOURNAL FOR CULTURAL AND SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

special issue Call for papers

“(Re)producing medical anthropology in central and eastern europe”

Medical anthropology today is one of the most dynamic and vibrant fields within the anthropological enterprise, contributing substantially to the enhancement of anthropological theory and a better understanding of crucial social processes in the contemporary world. The significance of topics such as the impact of the new genetics, the role and effects of new medical technologies, public health measures in transitional economies, the influence of the pharmaceutical industry on the scientific enterprise and medical treatments, and a wide range of bioethical (and many other) issues have attracted the close attention of anthropologists worldwide. In spite of the considerable international recognition reflected in the extensive amount of work on these and similar topics, the relevance of medical anthropological research is insufficiently recognized on the local level by academic communities in Central and Eastern Europe, where social and cultural anthropologists prefer to pursue different topics.

Cargo, a peer-reviewed journal published by the Czech Association for Social Anthropology (CASA), is now accepting submissions for the 2011 special issue on medical anthropology in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), broadly defined. The goal of this issue is to bring together contributions that address diverse topics relevant to medical anthropology in the region, written both by international as well as local scholars, and provide a platform that could shape directions medical anthropological scholarship in CEE will take.

We welcome theoretical as well as empirical papers that address a wide range of topics relevant to medical anthropology and its institutional and disciplinary genealogies. In this regard we substantially build on intellectual debates that were part of the conference, “Health in transition: (Bio)Medicine as culture in post-socialist Europe,” held in Prague in 2011. With a strong regional focus, we welcome contributions from a wide range of topics, including, but not limited to:

  • contemporary forms of biomedical governance
  • the impact of EU regulations on pre- and new accession states
  • traditional/alternative healing
  • new biomedical technologies
  • patterns of medicalization and disease
  • gender and health
  • migrant and ethnic health
  • poverty and unequal access to health
  • bioethics
  • state-ownership/privatization of health care
  • the institutional backdrop of medical anthropological research
  • local communities of medical anthropologists and their research interests
  • disciplinary history(ies) of medical anthropological scholarship

Please send an expression of interest in the form of an abstract of up to 350 words, together with the author’s institutional affiliation, to the editor via email by December 20th 2011. The issue is slated to be published in June 2012.

Authors are requested to submit their full manuscripts for consideration to: ehresano@kss.zcu.cz by February 29th 2012. The manuscripts should be up to 63.000 characters long, preferably in MS Word, and written in English.

We also invite short commentaries, book reviews, and brief reports relevant to the topic.

Cargo is a peer-reviewed journal published by the Czech Association for Social Anthropology (CASA). Cargo contains texts in Czech, Slovak, and English.

The journal Cargo is listed in the European Reference Index for the Humanities (ERIH), section C.

Information on peer-review, the editorial board, forthcoming issues, and details on manuscript format, are available at: www.casaonline.cz/cargo