Overview

The Monthly Seminar Series CES, Health and Epistemologies of the South emerges from a shared desire to intertwine and discuss the various research produced at the Centre for Social Studies with an emphasis on the diseases we have, the health we want and the science that we do. Bringing researchers and paths closer together, the intention is to mobilize a group of studies that reinforces the conceptual, theoretical and methodological links that embed us in the programmatic matrix of Southern Epistemologies.

Against the monoculture of knowledge and underlining the ontological and epistemic diversity of the world, the Epistemologies of the South propose to bring to discussion and activate an Ecology of Knowledges, where the South is a metaphor for the abundance of experiences, forms of knowledge and agency emerging from bodies, communities, places and realities ignored and excluded under the violence of a monolithic science designed by capitalism, colonialism and patriarchy.

Doing justice to the “wasted experiences” under this “abyssal line”, calls for a “sociology of absences and emergencies”, reducing exclusions, making science with and for the community(s), focused on their urgencies, needs and demands, learning from their forms of struggle and resistance, working for the common good, creating knowledge for a more dignified existence.

On health issues, those who live, treat and investigate disease are brought up for discussion, seeking well-being, learning from the experiences, concepts and representations of patients, caregivers, families and communities, but also therapists, researchers and activists , from a geographic, geopolitical and epistemic South, allowing us to rethink care and resistance, looking for broader concepts and more inclusive actions.

Note: The seminar series page provides a support reading on the fittings of Health in Epistemologies of the South.

Coordination: Susana de Noronha and Tiago Pires Marques