Annemarie Mol Online Lecture: Opening up Normativities in a Material World
Wednesday, October 11 · 4:30 - 5:30pm BST
What is it to qualify, value, contribute to, aim for – or otherwise differentiate between goods and bads in practice? As a way of opening up normativities, this talk unravels the qualification clean operative in urban public spaces and surface waters in and around Amsterdam. Here, clean comes in different registers – hygienic, aesthetic, environmental – that call up different realities – of bugs and hosts, signs and senses, thriving and poisoning. There are also diverse ways of assessing what is and isn’t clean, while doing clean may take the shape of realising rather than assessing. Attempts to realise cleanliness hit up against, or are juggled with, other goods, such as working hours, costs (in money or energy), freedom, utility. Since attempts to control, that is achieve total cleanliness, invariably fail, the question arises how those involved find ways to continue to care. This question also goes for social scientists. How do we keep caring?
Annemarie Mol is professor of Anthropology of the Body at the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research. She is the author of "The Body Multiple", "The Logic of Care", and "Eating in Theory"; and a co-editor of "Differences in Medicine, Complexities, Care in Practice", and "On Other Terms".
She also wrote and co-authored a long list of articles. Currently, she is studying "Clean as a Good" with a spirited team of younger researcher.