Challenges of 21st Century: past, present and future of medicine and health care in post-socialist world(s)

The 3rd Annual Health in Transition Conference

7-8 June 2013

Kindly hosted by: Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Warsaw

Medical anthropology and other social sciences still have “white gaps”. Problems related to contemporary transformations and contexts of changes in medical settings in post-social world have focused little attention of the scientific community. The land once hidden behind the “Iron Curtain” for many scholars around the world is still “terra incognita”. This conference aims to start filling in these gaps through an interdisciplinary meeting addressing the challenges of medicine and health care in post-socialist countries.

Success of previous explorations on relations between health and transition in post-socialist Europe have encouraged us to continue the efforts started in Prague in 2011 and maintained in Bucharest last year. As during the last two editions, the goal of the 3rd Health in Transition Conference is to bring together medical anthropologists and social science healthcare researchers focused on post-socialist area. We hope to broaden our scope by extending an invitation to researchers with knowledge of the economical, historical, legal, medical and political contexts. We believe that such interdisciplinary synergy will engender a better understanding and more complex scientific scrutiny in exploration of the region which has faced an overwhelming cultural, social, political and economic readjustment during the last two decades.  

We also aspire to consolidate the scientific environment focused on post-social countries and its medical and social challenges. Without question, a debate and open forum will improve and strengthen medical anthropology in and about post-socialist world. Health in Transition Conferences emphasize the need for enhanced awareness and acknowledgment of medical anthropology while highlighting its potential for applied, critical and engaged research.

With a focus on Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe as well as the former Soviet Union, organizers welcome contributions based on ethnographic research, including, but not limited to:

• reflections on forms of biomedical care

• social responds to illness and disease

• ethics

• impact of Europeanization and globalization on local health practices

• new patterns of medical approaches to disease

• social background of disease and illness

• development and role of new medical technologies

• emergence of new sources of knowledge and authority in a context of illness

• intersections of health and markers of social difference

• personhood, the body and bio-politics

• development of health-related professions

• health and healthcare among migrant and refugee populations

• poverty and unequal access to health

• state ownership and privatization of health care

• uses of ethnography in health policy and practice

• medical anthropology and the question of post-socialism