Call for abstracts for edited volume: Immobility and Medicine
Immobility and Medicine: Exploring Stillness, Emptiness and the In-Between
Edited by Cecilia Vindrola-Padros, Bruno Vindrola-Padros and Kyle Lee-Cross= ett (University College London, London, UK)
The social sciences have experienced a =93mobilities turn=94 in the last tw= o decades, which critiqued fixed and sedentary notions of social life and d= rew attention to the constant flows of people, ideas, and objects that perm= eate our daily lives. This emerging field of thought proposed to study mobi= lities =93in their own singularity, centrality and contingent determination= =94 (D=92Andrea et al. 2011:150), creating a new, dynamic, lens through whi= ch to (re)examine social thought and practice (Soderstrom et al. 2013: vi).
Mobility forms were considered as acting in dialectical relationship with t= he immobile, where flows of people, information or objects might be interru= pted, fixed or suspended at specific time points (Hannam et al. 2007; Urry = 2007). Recent work has highlighted the importance of thinking about a mobil= ity/immobility continuum, where movement intersects with processes that mig= ht entail episodes of transition, waiting, emptiness, and fixity (Khan 2016= ). We believe that this focus on stillness, things that are stuck, incomple= te or in a state of transition can point to new theoretical, methodological= and practical dimensions in social studies of medicine.
Social studies of health, illness and medicine have drawn from the mobiliti= es literature to explore the flows of people, patients, medical technologie= s, and healthcare workers through concepts such as healthscapes (Llewellyn = et al. 2017), biotech pilgrimage (Song 2010), and mobilities of wellness (M= asuda et al. 2017). Considerable work has been carried out on mobile techno= logies in healthcare delivery, mainly in the form of mhealth or virtual car= e, such as, telemedicine (Lupton 2018). A significant amount of attention h= as been placed on the study of mobility, but not always in relation to immo= bility (Vindrola-Padros et al. 2018).
In this edited volume, we will bring the concept of immobility to the foref= ront of social studies of medicine to answer the following questions:
- How does immobility shape processes of medical care?
- How is a continuum of mobility/immobility made in the medical context= ?
- What are the theoretical and methodological challenges of studying im= mobility in medical contexts?
- How can we change the ways in which we conceptualise and study stilln= ess and fixity to address these challenges?
We are seeking chapter contributions that explore different manifestations = of immobility in medical contexts. Chapters can explore the following conce= pts (or additional manifestations of immobility not featured here):
- Stillness: physical and imagined restrictions of movement and a sense= of =93stuckedness=94 fixity or =93going nowhere=94 (Hage 2009).
- In-betweeness: conditions and practices of uncertainty, in-betweeness= , never-ending transition, and waiting (Szakolczai 2009).
- Motility: the potential for movement, aspirations for movement that a= re never materialised, movement imaginaries, ideas of incompleteness and ne= ver-arriving (Leivestad 2016).
- Emptiness: affective dimensions of immobility, for instance, states o= r emotions that might be unavailable (Deleuze 2004).
The chapters included in the edited volume might cover more than one dimens= ion as these overlap conceptually. We would also encourage authors to propo= se additional topics to those outlined above.
Please submit an abstract (300 words), author names and affiliations by 20t= h December 2018. Full manuscripts for accepted abstracts will be due in Apr= il 2019.
Abstracts and queries should be sent to Cecilia Vindrola: c.vindrola@ucl.ac= .uk
References D=92Andrea, A., et al. (2011). Methodological challenges and innovations in= mobilities research. Mobilities 6(2): 149-160.
Deleuze, G., Guattari, F. (2004). A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schiz= ophrenia. London: Continuum.
Hage, G., ed. (2009). Waiting. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
Hannam, K., Sheller, M. Urry, J. (2006). Editorial: Mobilites, immobilities= and moorings. Mobilities 1(1): 1-22.
Khan, N. (2016). =93Immobility.=94 In: Keywords of Mobility: Critical Engag= ements, edited by Noel Salazar and Kiran Jayaram, 93-112. Oxford, UK: Bergh= ahn Books.
Leivestad, H. H. (2016). =93Motility.=94 In: Keywords of Mobility: Critical= Engagements, edited by Noel Salazar and Kiran Jayaram, 133-151. Oxford, UK= : Berghahn Books.
Llewellyn, H., et al. (2017), Topographies of =91care pathways=92 and =91he= althscapes=92: Reconsidering the multiple journeys of people with a brain t= umour. Sociology of Health and Illness doi:10.1111/1467-9566.12630
Lupton, D. (2018). Digital Health: Critical and Cross-Disciplinary Perspect= ives. London: Routledge.
Masuda J., et al. (2017). Mobilities of wellbeing in children=92s health pr= omotion: Confronting urban settings in geographically informed theory and p= ractice. In: Children=92s Health and Wellbeing in Urban Environments, C. Er= gler, R. Kearns and K. Witten, (eds.), pp. 207-222. London: Routledge.
Salazar, N., Smart, A. (2011). Anthropological takes on (im)mobility. Ident= ities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 18: i-ix.
Soderstrom, O., et al. (2013). Critical Mobilities. London: Routledge.
Song, P. (2010). Biotech pilgrims and the transnational quest for stem cell= cures. Medical Anthropology 29(4): 384-402.
Szakolczai, A. (2009). Liminality and experience: Structuring transitory si= tuations and transformative events. International Political Anthropology 2:= 141-172.
Urry, J. (2007). Mobilities. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Vindrola-Padros, C., Johnson, G., Pfister, A. (2018). Healthcare in Motion:= Immobilities in Health Service Delivery and Access. Berghahn Books: New Yo= rk.
