Successful interdisciplinary exchange in the STS methods lab: ‘Resistant bodies – in science and culture’

On December 8thResBod and COMPARE organized the STS Methods Lab with the topic ‘Resistant bodies – in science and culture’. The lab was organized as a panel conversation on the challenges, approaches, and concepts of immunology ‘before and now’. The invited panelists were anthropologist Emily Martin from NYU and biologists and immunologists Kjetill Sigurd Jakobsen, Finn-Eirik Johansen and Shou-Wang Qiao from the COMPARE project based at the University of Oslo. 

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Photo credit: Kristin Asdal

Emily Martin gave a wonderful introduction looking back at the work leading up to the book “Flexible Bodies: the role of immunity in America from polio to the age of Aids” published in 1994. The book had a great impact on science and technology studies (STS) and medical anthropology. It demonstrated how science is translated into culture and vice versa how cultural metaphors are taken up in scientific representations. Furthermore, the book captured how immunology needs to be understood in its historical and cultural contexts. 

Jakobsen, Johansen and Qiao responded by sharing their readings of Flexible Bodies in a contemporary context and from an immunological and biological point of view. The exchange was also about their ongoing research on cod immunology and new ways of working in immunology as part of COMPARE. They pointed out the importance of interdisciplinary approaches to current challenges in immunology. Moreover, they argued for there being limits of the established model apparatus in medical research, and how experiments with non-model organisms such as the cod may help produce new insights on immune systems. 

The event page is here: https://www.sv.uio.no/tik/english/research/news-and-events/events/sts-methods-lab---resistant-bodies---in-science-an.html

Tags: immunology, anthropology, more-than-human By Tone Druglitrø and Kristin Asdal
Published Jan. 12, 2022 9:31 PM - Last modified Jan. 12, 2022 9:35 PM