Medico-legal borderlands?
What is this nebulous sounding compound concept, “medico-legal borderlands”? How has it been used by social scientists whose ethnographic studies scratch at itches in the intersecting areas of human health and illness and the organization and production of health care systems?
Through a collection of four essays curated for this Somatosphere series, we invite readers to join us …
The concept of the “medico-legal borderland” commonly refers to the discursive intersection of medical and legal knowledges in the constitution of a new knowledge regime (McClelland, 2013). The following essay adds to the discussion of borderlands an empirical illustration showing how the flow of knowledge in borderland spaces is highly policed and disciplined. Further, it demonstrates that even disciplining itself …
mediating microtubules netting and nesting
across difference
across distance
through boundaries permeable or/and with a gloss of seal
with folds and gullies
muted quiet shouting rages
irritating and porous
insecure uninsulated exposing
falsely secure muttering safewords
holding space for the fragile and vulnerable
us all embraced within
bounding palpating palpitating edges
clinging together in a forest clearing.
We built a sculpture to physically and visually discuss boundary and immunity. As a conscious act of investigation for two days we instigated a physical boundary. The sculpture was built on a stairway, it is a complex place, it is our main route through the building.
We covered the stair in a fine white talcum powder. At first it was …
The Great Wall of China is not the barrier to barbarians it is sometimes thought to be. These days, it does not seem to bound anything [1], in and of itself. Did it ever? The wall is not an iron curtain of the impenetrable sort, heavily policed (though its flows have been managed, at times and in places). …