An Anthropology of -isations

Inaugural lecture - Ayo Wahlberg, Professor MSO

Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen

Among many other options, modernity’s growing inventory of –isations might be conceived of as a heavy accumulation of patterned knowledges and practices. Over the last couple of decades, I have ethnographically tracked the modernisation of traditional herbal medicine in Vietnam and the United Kingdom, the routinisation of reproductive technologies in China and more recently, the governmentalisation of morbid living through an ongoing collaborative research project that will span four countries. In this lecture, I will point to three analytical routes for the anthropological study of –isation processes with a particular focus on the medical technologies I have studied. We need to attend to the ways in which: firstly, –isations tend to entrench certain knowledge configurations, complexes or dispositifs (contestation and resistance notwithstanding);secondly, –isation processes are carried by a certain ‘daily grind’ or regularity of practices, even if such regularities are often disrupted; and finally, –isations contribute to the making up an managing of particular subjectivities, however derided such interpellations might be. Together, these analytical routes help us to explore the conditions of possibility that allow for, e.g. herbal medicines, reproductive technologies or ‘quality of life’ treatments. Ethnographic methods are necessary since, as I will show, accumulations of patterned knowledges and practices are always particular to the places, objects and people we
study.

After the inaugural lecture the Department of Anthropology will host a reception in
building 33, room 33.1.19.