Ethnographies of Exposure

This call made me think of Kirstie Balls concept of "exposure" as a way to link subjectivities to surveillance processes. Although the call isn't targeted at surveillance, I think there are striking similarities between what they're interested in, and what we discussed with Kirstie at the CRISP doctoral school (vulnerability, embodiment, subject/object, insides/outsides). If I could, I'd go. Here and here are links to Kirstie's papers on exposure. And here's the call for the AAA exposure session:

Ethnographies of Exposure:
Rethinking the Body-Environment Relation

American Anthropological Association Meetings. Chicago, November 20-24, 2013.

A slew of contemporary phenomenon underscore emerging conceptions of the human condition as one of existential exposure to its surrounds: environmental toxicity, meteorological conditions, contaminated commodities, and global pandemics. These emerging conditions of exposure suggest a conception of a human body as ineluctably bound in ecologies populated by nonhuman and material others, underscoring an existential condition of the imbrication of human life with its surrounding material milieu. These exposure phenomena thus animate new understandings and enactments of relationality, as well as vulnerability, blurring boundaries between subjects and objects, persons and things, and insides and outsides. Furthermore, reconfigurations of human bodies, ecological milieus, and diverse conditions of exposure may provide us with new possibilities for bridging medical and environmental perspectives in anthropology.

This panel asks its participants to reflect on how ethnographies of exposure might challenge entrenched concepts of the human condition as a self-contained sovereign body and subject, offering instead a body inseparable from, vulnerable to, and affected by its environs, broadly understood. We also wish to consider what analytic tools are appropriate for considering conceptions of a human condition in exposure.

For this panel, we are searching for papers that attempt to consider the relationship between medical and environmental anthropology, focusing especially on reimaginations of the human body in the world. We especially welcome submissions that ethnographically consider ecological epidemiology, environmental degradation and contamination, post-disaster exposures, global pandemics, tainted commodities etc. If you have any questions, please contact the panel organizers: Stefanie Graeter (stgraeter@ucdavis.edu) or Jerry Zee (jcz@berkeley.edu). Please submit abstracts by midnight on Saturday April 6, 2013. We look forward to hearing from you!