Cultural Systems of Classification: Sickness, Health and Local Biologies. Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Medical Cultures
in Anthropology and the Historical Sciences

June 6-7, 2016, Freie Universität Berlin

BabMed Annual Workshop 4, organized by Ulrike Steinert and Markham J. Geller

Conference programme

Both historians of medicine and medical anthropologists encounter similar problems when studying medical systems, past and present. One major issue concerns the elucidation of culture-specific classification systems guiding the interpretation of what is to be considered sickness, and why. Only recently have historical disciplines grown more alert regarding the divide between modern biomedical disease classifications and the classification of sickness events described in the textual sources of ancient cultures. Medical Anthropology, however, has developed theoretical approaches to clarify the relationship between notions of universal disease entities affecting human bodies in contrast to culturally differing experiences and meanings attached to illnesses. Recent advances in Medical Anthropology have also made clear that the understanding of illness is not only shaped by experience, but also by “local biologies”, i.e. by varying models and concepts about the human being, the body and personal well-being.

Analyses or case studies will address questions such as: Illness vs. disease: how can we deal with the divide between cultural relativity vs. supposed universal biological facts? Are cultural systems of classifying illness a problem of conflicting epistemologies: how can we bridge the gap between “them” and “us”? When interpreting concepts of health and illness, how do we reach beyond the body-mind-dichotomy? Are there universal patterns or tendencies in classifications of illnesses?

Speakers include, amongst others, Aaron Amit (Bar-Ilan Univ.), Patricia Baker (Univ. of Kent/Canterbury),
Erica Couto-Ferreira (Heidelberg), Elisabeth Hsu (Oxford), Rune Nyord (Cambridge), Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan (Niamey/Paris), Katharina Sabernig (Vienna), Susanne Radestock (Leipzig), Lucia Raggetti (Berlin) and Juliane Unger (Heidelberg). This workshop aims at a dialogue between scholars in Medical Anthropology and the History of Medicine, in search for common ground and interdisciplinary theoretical approaches to the question of how different classificatory systems may be compatible or translated across cultural boundaries.

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Ulrike Steinert: ulrike.steinert@fu-berlin.de

For further assistance, please also contact our BabMed project office
Agnes Kloocke: babylonian-medicine@geschkult.fu-berlin.de
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www.fu-berlin.de/babylonianmedicine