ASS Extended: Health, Body, and Consumption





NEW CALL FOR PAPERS – DEADLINE EXTENDED till 20th of February


ASS – Anthropology Students’ Sessions
ASS – Anthropology Students’ Sessions was established in October 2010 as weekly self-organized activities of students at the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology of University of Ljubljana. From the very beginning our sessions have been interdisciplinary and international since students of different social and humanistic sciences joined us as well as exchange students at the department.

The main goal of ASS is to create an informal and non-hierarchical space for sharing our knowledge by using various creative means and methods and to enable open discussions on very diverse topics. In time ASS has crossed the borders of the university and we have moved the sessions to the premises of [A]Infoshop, an autonomous place in Ljubljana, run by an anarchist collective, and it has become open to a broader specter of people.

ASS Extended: Health, Body, and Consumption, 29th – 30th of March 2013
In our globalized societies there are coexisting different medical systems and other knowledge about health that on one hand compete for their believers and on the other influence each other and due to ongoing syncretism and hybridization we are faced with more and more methods and techniques of taking care for our health and body. This is not only changing the conceptions of health and disease and the perceptions of our bodies but it also influences our daily lifestyles. On every step we hear about “healthy life style” and “healthy body” – and about the ways to achieve them: which physical activities to pursue, what kind of food to eat, and which philosophy to follow. What is often forgotten in this context is that all theories and practices concerning care for our health and body are deeply embedded in economic and political spheres. A believer is at the same time a consumer and the experts’ advices are at the same time marketing.

The goal of ASS Extended is to share and confront different critical views on this complex system, to explore it from different angles, to teach and learn about different segments and aspects of it through workshops, paper presentations, films, discussions, or any other form you can think of.

All additional information will be sent to you via e-mail and will be available on http://anthropologystudentssessions.blogspot.com.


The Submission
You are invited to submit an abstract of your paper or a film that you would like to have screened (it can be your own work but not necessarily); a short description of a round-table or a workshop; or an explanation of any other idea that you have for the activity that would contribute to the knowledge on the topic of Health, Body, and Consumption. The submission should not be longer than 200 words.
Please, add the title of and form of your contribution (presentation, workshop, film, etc.), your full name, information about your education (or in which discipline you feel comfortable in), and your e-mail address.

The deadline for the submission is 20th of February 2013. Send it to ass.collective10@gmail.com. We will inform you whether you have been selected as soon as possible.

We are planning to edit a collection of papers on the topic of Health, Body, and Consumption. We hope that there will be enough interest and suitable material for it. You are welcome to contribute your ideas for the edition. More information about this will be available in a special invitation of applications after the conference.

There is no participation fee. ASS Extended will be held in [A]Infoshop, part of the autonomous cultural center Metelkova, Ljubljana. There will be a cooked meal provided each day of the conference. However, we regret we cannot assure you an accommodation, but can send you the information about inexpensive options.

Also guests without their own presentation are kindly invited to join us as listeners and debaters! They can come without any previous application. However, they can contact us for information about the conference, accommodations, and transportations.

Anthropology Students’ Sessions Collective

Ljubljana (Slovenia), January 2012