CFP - 2012 AAA Meetings - Healing Speech in the Cultural Borderlands of Illness

[Jennifer Guzman]

Dear Colleagues,

I am looking for contributors to fill out a proposed panel for the 2012 AAA
meetings titled "Healing Speech in the Cultural Borderlands of Illness."
Please share the CFP with anyone who might be interested.

Best regards,

Jennifer Guzmán


CALL FOR PAPERS

Proposed Panel - 2012 AAA Meetings

San Francisco, November 14-18, 2012



Healing Speech in the Cultural Borderlands of Illness



Mattingly (2010) recently described a “flexible space in which healing is
carried out” (7) as a cultural borderland where the sick, family members,
and healing practitioners engage with one another in efforts to ameliorate
suffering and disease*.* Given contemporary realities of medical plurality,
religious diversity, multilingualism, and health disparities the world
over, the metaphor of a borderland is productive for considering the kinds
of practices and social relations that happen in the wide variety of
medical, religious, and familial activities in which illnesses are
addressed.



This panel proposes that some communicative practices in the cultural
borderlands of illness not only facilitate the coordination of therapeutic
action but also constitute, *ipso facto*, a mode of healing themselves. We
explore this idea by examining a range of semiotic practices, from symptom
description to petitions to the divine, in a variety of settings, both
within and beyond institutional boundaries, where language is construed as
constitutive of healing. These ethnographic explorations consider
ethnotheories about the force of language (i.e. its material and
performative qualities) as well as about the multi-dimensionality of
healing, including not only physiological but also social and cultural
processes. The panel addresses issues such as: the therapeutic effects of
semiotic practices; ideologies surrounding the healing effect of social
interaction; the indexical connection between ways of speaking and
recovery; how practitioners or caregivers are socialized into healing
speech; and how individuals come to recognize and respond to the healing
potentialities of certain genres.



Contributing authors may wish to address, but are not limited to, the
following topics:



--Therapeutic genres of talk

--Efficacious interaction between providers and recipients of care

--The therapeutic value of narrative or storytelling practices

--Prayer or other speech genres that recruit the help of the supernatural
in healing

--Ethnotheories about the efficacy of language-healing interactions

--The notion of ‘patient voice’

--Talk therapies

--The role of symbolism in healing



If you would like to contribute a paper to this panel, send an email with
your name, affiliation, and a 250-300 word abstract to Jennifer Guzmán (*
jennifer.r.guzman at gmail.com*) *as soon as possible* and no later than March
21, 2012.



Mattingly, Cheryl (2010). The Paradox of Hope: Journeys Through a Clinical
Borderland. Berkeley: University of California Press.


-- 
Jennifer R. Guzmán
Ph.D. candidate
UCLA Department of Anthropology
375 Portola Plaza
341 Haines Hall, Box 951553
Los Angeles CA 90095-1553
Fax: (310) 206-7833