Professor of Culture, Health and Well Being at the University of Turku Marja-Liisa Honkasalo will hold a public lecture entitled "Culture, Health, and the Human Condition" on Friday the 13th of September 2013 at 12:15 - 13:45 pm in the Institute of Cultural Research and Fine Arts of Tartu University (Ülikooli 16-214).
Honkasalo's research interests and topic has always concerned the relationship between nature and culture. As a medical doctor and anthropologist, she has approached this enigma in various ethnographic domains: most notably illness, the body and death. In her research, she argues that the body and its illnesses are "done" by a variety of cultural practices, including medical technology.
The aim of this lecture is to outline a few important topics for the research of culture and health. Theoretically, the approach departs from the idea of health as culturally conditioned. "How we can understand and study the sufficient and the necessary conditions of health? Would cultural capital, as Bourdieu puts it, serve as an approach to a sufficient cultural condition of health?", states Honkasalo. Nevertheless, a genuinely interesting question remains concerning the necessary cultural condition.
The lecture series was named after the geography professor Johannes Gabriel Granö, who was a professor at Tartu University from 1919-1923. The aim of the Granö lectures is to create new ties between Estonian and Finnish scientists. Lectures and seminars are organized by the Finnish Institute in cooperation with the University of Turku, the University of Tartu and the Granö Center.
The lecture will be held in English on Friday, 13 September, at 12:15 in Ülikooli 16-214. Everybody is welcome to attend!
Additional information:
Kadri Kaljurand
Finnish Institute
Phone: + 372 742 7319
kadri.kaljurand [at] finst.ee