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Lecture Series "Global Health: Knowledges, Dispositifs, Topographies" 2017-2018

École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris, France (October 2017-June 2018)

Organized by Claire Beaudevin (CNRS-Cermes3), Jean-Paul Gaudillière (Inserm-Cermes3), Guillaume Lachenal (Université Paris Diderot) and Andrew McDowell (Cermes3-Globhealth)

The framing of health as a global issue over the last three decades has carved out an intellectual, economic and political space that differs from that of the post-war international public health field. This earlier system was characterized by disease eradication programs, the dominance of nation states, and United Nations organizations. The actors, intervention targets and tools of contemporary global health differ from previous international health efforts. The construction of markets for medical goods takes a central place in this new era, as does regulation by civil society actors and large philanthropic organizations. Global health might also be characterized by co-morbidities linking chronic and infectious diseases, the stress on therapeutic intervention, risk management, health as an instrument of 'community' development, and the deployment of new modes of surveillance or epidemiological prediction.

This emerging field takes on a radically different appearance when examined at each of the following levels: infrastructures (such as the WHO, the World Bank or the Gates Foundation), policies (that remain largely national), regional circulations of knowledges, individuals, or products, or practice and local instantiations. This variety is not only 'scalar,' it is also topographical and topical.

With this seminar series, we will examine the interplay of scales and topographies in global health, both by drawing on studies of the favorite objects of global health and by attending to them obliquely. This year, we will continue to invite—without distinction—historians, political scientists, anthropologists and geographers who deal with health-related issues or not. The seminar series will consider the articulations of knowledges, dispositifs and topographies in global health.

This lecture series is supported by the ERC project "From International Public Health to Global Health" (CERMES3, Paris & University of Oslo).

Download the program