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 older system was characterised by disease eradication programs and by the dominance of nation states and the organisations of the United Nations. The actors, intervention targets and tools of contemporary global health contrast with 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. Global health can also be characterized by co-morbidities between 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 and epidemiological prediction. This emerging field takes on a radically different appearance when examined at the level of its infrastructures (such as the WHO, the World Bank or the Gates Foundation) or at the level of the knowledges and anticipatory practices generated by its practices and local instantiations.

This seminar will combine historical, sociological and anthropological approaches to examine this globalized space and the assemblages that constitute it: new actors, targets and tools such as public-private partnerships, foundations, local communities, cancers, non-communicable diseases, risk prevention, monitoring and evaluation, etc. Particular attention will be given to the infrastructures and the contemporary dynamics of knowledge production, insurance techniques and diagnostic interventions, therapeutic ‘innovations’ in their diverse geographies, including Africa, Asia or Latin America. These often differ widely from transfer schemes between the global north and the global south that insist on technological dependency. The seminar will examine the myriad local forms that global health takes in everyday practices from epidemiological forecasting, to research, care, policy-making and the possible futures they anticipate.

Organized by Claire Beaudevin (CNRS-Cermes3), Jean-Paul Gaudillière (Inserm-Cermes3), Frédéric Keck (CNRS-LAS/Musée du Quai Branly), Guillaume Lachenal (Université Paris Diderot-IUF), Céline Lefève (Université Paris Diderot – Centre Georges Canguilhem), Vinh-Kim Nguyen (Collège d’Etudes Mondiales), Laurent Pordié (CNRS-Cermes3), Émilia Sanabria (Inserm-École Normale Supérieure de Lyon).

Source: http://globhealth.vjf.cnrs.fr/index.php/events/6-globalization-of-health-study-seminar-at-the-ehess-in-paris