European Science Foundation Conference
THE PERFECT BODY: BETWEEN NORMATIVITY AND CONSUMERISM

The Choice is Yours

column by Gregor Wolbring 

October 15^th, 2009 

http://politicsofhealth.org/wol/2009-10-15.htm

I just attended the European Science Foundation Conference, THE PERFECT BODY: BETWEEN NORMATIVITY AND CONSUMERISM  in Linköping Väst, Sweden. It was very interesting. The conference chairs were Dr.Katrin Grueber from the  IMEW (Institut Mensch, Ethik und Wissenschaft), Berlin Germany and Dr.Ursula Naue from the Life Science Governance Research Platform, University of Vienna, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Political Science, Vienna Austria. The principal task of the institute [IMEW] is to further interdisciplinary and independent research in the field of medical ethics. The institute concerns itself in particular with the problems of disabled and chronically ill people as seen from their own standpoint, as well as the impact of bioscience on society as a whole.

The institute was established in Germany in 2001 and is a non-profit public company with limited liability. The circle of nine partners consists of nine disability and selfhelp-organisations.To my knowledge this was one of the first, if not the first, conference that focused on enhancement but with an audience that is linked to disability studies and disabled people.  Some of the questions addressed by the conference were as follows:

• To what extent and in what way does consumerism influence the current debate about enhancement technologies?

• Which problems arise from this understanding of enhancement technologies for disabled and non-disabled persons and consumers of these technologies?

• What are the consequences of enhancement technologies for disabled persons?

• Is the “upgrade” an upgrade from old established norms or is a “new normal body” created?

• Who is excluded by both starting points of enhancing the human being? 

• Do enhancement technologies carry a risk of excluding certain groups within society, such as disabled persons?

• How can consumerism be embedded in an ethical framework?

• What role does normativity play?

• What new possible forms of exclusion and inequality on several levels might occur as a result of using enhancement technologies?

My two contributions to the conference were about the ethics of enhancement. I covered mostly the issue of ableism ethics and the future of ableism and its ‘realpolitik’, taking into account envisioned and appearing science and technology, and internal and external body interventions.  Topics at the conference were:  How to build a Cyborg; Anti-aging therapies; Liberal Societies and the Moral Evaluation of Human Capacities: Ethical presuppositions in the Enhancement-debate; Whose body's perfect? Who decides? Disability, enhancement, rehabilitation and transableism; Morality and Perspectivism in the Therapy-Enhancement-Distinction; Reprogenetics, enhancing and the invisible vessel; Obesessed?; Cochlea implant as a case study for promises and expectations; The Perfect Body: between Normativity and Consumerism;  The Medical and the Social model of Disability; Dimensions of disability; This is how I am: Bodies, difference, and identity; Politicising fatness, repudiating obesity discourse: challenging sizism and normativity in ‘epidemic’ times; Picturing Disability; Body, power, difference - reflections about normativity, normality and disability; Normality and deviance; Roundtable : Ethical Dimensions of Enhancement; Ableism, Transhumanism and the transhumanization of Ableism: The Future has started today?; Cyborgs and Humanoid Robot: Myth and Reality; Panel Session: Enhancement and Disability; Views on enhancement from people with experience of disability and full morphological freedom: Transhuman diversity and the limits of liberalism; Enhancement technologies: rethinking the disability paradigm; Practitioners at the cutting edge: Subverting medical knowledge and materials in the making of non-mainstream bodies.

The Choice is Yours:

Eeuropean Science Foundation conferences are set up with the expectations that people network afterwards. I can only hope that this will happen and I that more disabled people, disability studies scholars and people linked to disabled people are getting more involved in the enhancement discourse.    

 
All of the "The Choice is Yours" articles till June 2009 can be found here, after June 2009 here

Gregor Wolbring is an Assistant Professor at the University of Calgary. He is Affiliated Scholar, Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University, USA; Part Time Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa Canada; Adjunct Faculty Critical Disability Studies, York University, Canada. He is a science and technology governance scholar, a disability/vari-ability/ability studies scholar, and a health policy and science and technology studies researcher. He is the Chair of the Bioethics Taskforce of Disabled People's International. He publishes the Bioethics, Culture and Disability website, authors a weblog on NBICS and its social implications and on  Ableism and Ability Ethics and Governance  and contributes to the What Sorts of People blog.

Please contact the author for additional information on this article or for other references at gwolbrin@ucalgary.ca

© Gregor Wolbring, All Rights Reserved, 2009. Please contact the author for permission to reprint.