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- Convenor:
-
Léo Bernard
(IFRIS-Cermes3)
Send message to Convenor
- Format:
- Panel
- Location:
- Theta room
- Sessions:
- Friday 8 September, -
Time zone: Europe/Vilnius
Short Abstract:
This open panel invites researchers who come from different disciplinary fields to conduct fine-grained studies of the relationship between religion and technology through the theme of medicine, which allows us to think of religion in and against technology.
Long Abstract:
This open panel argues that the complex relationship between religion and technology can be partly grasped through the study of the medical field, a field which intertwines these two phenomena.
On one hand, medicine can indeed be perceived as a field of application of religious and spiritual beliefs. Catholic physicians constitute a well-known topic of inquiries which illustrates this statement, but one could also think, for example, about the impact of esoteric currents on medical holism during the interwar period. Spiritual cosmologies and anthropologies often translate in medical theories and practices, even in Western countries during the modern period.
On the other hand, medicine is of course deeply related to technology. In the broadest sense, medicine is a technology. To cure diseases and to maintain health are practical goals which can be achieved, even on an industrial scale, through the application of a specific knowledge (either scientific or not). Moreover, artificial intelligence, robotics and other digital developments are becoming increasingly more important in the medical field and raise the issue of transhumanism; a question that has been addressed by numerous spiritual and religious thinkers.
Therefore, this panel invites researchers who come from different disciplinary fields (science and technology studies, religious studies, health studies, etc.) to conduct fine-grained studies of the relationship between religion and technology through the theme of medicine, which allows us to think of religion in and against technology. Examples of proposals may include the criticism of the pharmaceutical industry and laboratory medicine by qualified physicians (either Westerners or not) that hold religious or spiritual beliefs, but papers on the development of particular therapeutic techniques and the manufacturing of remedies or medical artefacts based on religious or spiritual knowledge during the modern period are also welcome.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 8 September, 2023, -Paper short abstract:
The aim of this paper is to analyze how missionaries who worked in the early modern period in East Asia (more precisely in the Sinosphere) treat traditional Chinese medicine in their texts, especially with regard to the religious aspects of this phenomenon.
Paper long abstract:
The aim of this paper is to analyze how missionaries who worked in the early modern period in East Asia (more precisely in the Sinosphere) treat traditional Chinese medicine in their texts, especially with regard to the religious aspects of this phenomenon. In particular, I would like to focus on how, in the context of this particular instance of intercultural and interreligious contact, European missionaries who encountered Asian cultures distinguished between the traditional Chinese healing practices they considered non-religious (which were generally admired by them) and the healing practices they considered magical and condemned as witchcraft.
Paper short abstract:
This paper seeks to highlight the metaphysical conceptions of nature that explain naturist oppositions to medical innovations after the Second World War.
Paper long abstract:
The French naturist milieu of the post-WWII years was animated by actors with varied profiles from scholars to entrepreneurs and prophets. It can be gathered loosely around the shared goal of living and healing naturally. It was therefore within this “cultic milieu”, which has constituted a matrix favourable to the development of the movement of opposition to vaccines, that naturopathy has emerged in France. However, vaccines were not the only medical innovations to be debated by naturist actors. Antibiotics were also criticised. The arguments of naturists were not only medical, but also based on philosophical stances and spiritual believes. They were, and still are, related to metaphysical conceptions of nature, which this paper seeks to highlight.
Paper short abstract:
Post-mortem organ donation and diagnoses of brain-death have challenged religious experts to evaluate their understandings of death, burial rites, personhood and charity. This paper will contextualize articles of German Catholic theologians from the 1960s-80s to reconstruct paths of argumentation.
Paper long abstract:
Transplant surgeons, who have an interest in the history of religion, like to point to the miracle leg transplantation conducted by the Arab physicians and Christian Saints Cosmas and Damian, as a clear indication, that transplantation surgery is the fulfillment of a long held dream of mankind. The first successful human heart transplant in 1967 by Christiaan Barnard was celebrated by media outlets as such a 'medical miracle', but at the same time posed a fundamental moral question: "Is everything that is medically possible also ethically justifiable?".
This paper will focus on how German Catholic theologians reacted to the early successes of post-mortem organ transplantation. Post-mortem organ donation and the diagnoses of brain-death have challenged religious experts to evaluate their understandings of death, burial rites, personhood and charity. Especially brain-death put theologians in the position to engage with current findings of neurology and technologies of neurological testing, such as measuring electrical activity of the brain with an Electroencephalography (EEG). How could they argue on basis of 'foreign knowledge' (neurology) but also claim authority as religious experts? To reconstruct those paths of argumentation, articles from the 1960s-80s have been collected and surveyed. The recurring arguments will be further situated in the wider context of a post-fascist Germany and papal statements on the subject. The results show, how religious experts weigh up ideas about death, burial customs, concepts of personhood and charity against promising medical innovation.
This paper is based on the draft-chapter on the history of organ donation in Germany of an ethnographic PhD project on contemporary decisions on organ donation and religion.
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses therapeutic nature connection, as it balances between critique of, and integration in, the conventional healthcare system in Sweden, based on ethnographic research between 2018 and 2022.
Paper long abstract:
Forest bathing, nature therapy, and similar practices have quickly gained popularity in many parts of the world in the last decade. Many practitioners have either a background or a current employment within the conventional healthcare system. And many also show clear ambitions to integrate these practices into that system. Some participate actively in clinical psychological studies, or even design and conduct such studies. On the other hand, there is also a critique of the narrowness of conventional medicine, formulated in terms of a holistic and ecological philosophy. This is a tension shared with many forms of spirituality and alternative medicine. To (at least partially) make a living out of these practices, practitioners need to adjust either to capitalist business models as sole proprietors or strive to integrate the practices into conventional healthcare. Of course, the endeavour to integrate the practices into conventional healthcare also entails a hope of changing the latter from within. Having followed the establishments of these practices in Sweden since 2018, through in-depth interviews, participant observations, and publications, I will in this paper discuss the delicate balancing act that its practitioners are performing in a climate where nature connection has become increasingly attractive – while alternative medicine has become increasingly controversial.