Memo+3+-+Speculative+Bio+2020...

NEW Speculative Biosketch 2020:

Gareth Edel PhD, is Associate Professor of Science and Technology Studies, Hunter University, and the CUNY Graduate Center. He is former visiting professor of Science studies at Hampshire college, his alma mater, and a Former postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Society and Medicine. He is a recipient of Fulbright and National Science Foundation fellowships.

His theoretical expertise is on Sociological Theory of ‘The Body;’ Theories of Globalization and Transnationalism; Feminist and Marxist theory of Marginality and Deviancy come together in his research on the Social Studies of Biomedical Research and Practice and the History of Western Medicine with a focus on International Travel For Care and contemporary “medical tourism”. He has an interest in the play of materiality, agency and structure; and the impacts of language and metaphor in Science.

Using the trope of the “medical tourist” Gareth’s work looks at the processes of social change in thinking about health, and the relationship of individual and community. His first book //Distributing Suffering & Survival: The History and Social Meaning of International Travel for Health Care// (2014), examined the relationship of the individual and state in the construction of categories of health, and the transfer of medical knowledge. It won the Ludwig Fleck Prize of the Society for Social Studies of Science. In that work he weaved the stories of seven participants in medical tourism, each inhabiting a different social institution, they tell the story of the development and affect of the industry. His second book //Transient Care: the founding of a new medical industry in the language of choice// (2016) continued this trope in a monumental and difficult analysis of the process of ethical shift in U.S. healthcare regime in the last fifty years and showing the change in medical understandings and categories as underlying ethics and politics changed. He is the coeditor of three works other works and the regular author of journal articles.

__Keyword Biosketch 2020__

Gareth Edel PhD, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, School of Arts & Sciences Fordham University: Social Studies of Health Medicine and the Body, The construction of deviancy and normalcy in Biomedicine, Culture and Political Economy of International and Transnational Healthcare.

__Speculative Biographical Sketch__

Gareth Edel PhD, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, School of Arts & Sciences Fordham University, is Former postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Society and Medicine, and recipient of Fulbright and National Science Foundation fellowships. He has previously been a lecturer throughout the CUNY system. He received his BA from Hampshire College, and completed an Ms and PhD with the Department of Science and Technology Studies (2011).

Research interests center on the social studies of health, medicine and the body, with particular focus on the construction of deviancy and normalcy in biomedical practice and research. His work has focused on the cultural formation and political economy of international/transnational healthcare practice and institutions. Early publications centered on the positional situatedness of knowledge and the processes by which translation occurs between communities of practice in intimate encounters, especially those centered on the body.

Author of numerous Journal articles and book chapters, he is the author of two books //Distributing Suffering & Survival: The History and Social Meaning of International Travel for Health Care// (2014), and //Transient Care: the founding of a medical industry// (2016), both arising from his doctoral research. He is the coeditor of two works: //Science’s Fictions and Science Fiction: the role of genre and language in the national science dialogue// with Sean Ferguson, and Gabrial McKee (2013), and //Seeing People in The city: Intimacy and the Urban Public and Private// (2015) with Lynne Desilva-Johnson et al. His is a regular contributor to //Seed// magazine. His new book //Prediction and Probability: the social formation of possibility is expected (2020).//