Emilie Cloatre | University of Kent (original) (raw)

Events by Emilie Cloatre

In this workshop, we seek to interrogate the complex ways in which therapies that rest on assumpt... more In this workshop, we seek to interrogate the complex ways in which therapies that rest on assumptions other than those of biomedicine fit in healthcare practices, and public health systems. Even as biomedicine has come to establish its dominance as system of knowledge and practice in healthcare, patients around the world continue to rely on a multiplicity of therapies and techniques to address their everyday healthcare needs, illnesses and ailments. The cultural, epistemological and therapeutic make-up of these practices vary greatly, as does the socio-political positioning that they occupy in broader state understandings of care: for example, patients may rely on traditional therapies long-established in local practices, on healing practices borrowed from other cultural systems (and often transformed and adjusted to their new context), on newly emerged alternative therapies, or on hybrid systems of care that seek to provide newly imagined versions of long-standing practices. The relationship of each of these systems of care with biomedicine and the state will vary from a position of complementarity to one of opposition and/or exclusion, causing varied degrees of friction, or indeed of intended as well as unexpected collaborations. Over the past few decades, the question of how to frame, organise and accommodate alternative and traditional practices in healthcare systems has become more salient. States around the world, and international institutions, have sought to reimagine how such systems of care could be regulated to facilitate the benefits that they may offer to patients, while limiting the potential risks that alternative and traditional healers (and their products) could pose. While at one level such effort is often presented as a matter of filtering between 'genuine' and 'fake' , or 'legitimate' and 'illegitimate' therapies, these strategies are also loaded with socio-political implications, and rooted in deep historical and cultural contexts. They are complicated further by the epistemological challenge that systems of care that differ from the logics of biomedicine can pose for states and regulatory systems that have often come to rely on science to arbiter matters of legitimate in healthcare. Finally, they remain entangled in the complex institutional history of biomedicine, and its (post)colonial implications. The workshop aims to bring together scholars engaged in critical reflections on the stakes, mechanisms and meanings that animate such processes of social ordering of 'other' therapies. Some of the questions we seek to address are: What is the role of recognition in the regulation of traditional and alternative medicines? What are the unexpected effects in practice from different regulation models? How do these regulatory models take into account for historical exclusionary practices entangled in social ordering systems like gender, race, nationality, and (post) colonialism? This workshop is part of the Wellcome Project Law, Knowledges, and the Making of Modern Healthcare: regulating alternative and traditional medicines in contemporary contexts.

This workshop stems from several observations: first, that socio-legal scholarship as a whole is ... more This workshop stems from several observations: first, that socio-legal scholarship as a whole is strongly influenced by both institutional contexts and local scholarly traditions, which has led it to adopt very varied forms across jurisdictions. Second, that this diversity is both an interesting object of study to understand the possibilities and forms of socio-legal research and critique, and an obstacle to some cross-jurisdictional conversations. Third, that this is particularly noticeable and interesting in the context of France and the UK. While socio-legal studies have significantly developed over the past few decades, both in the UK and (though arguably to a lesser extent) in France, cross-channel conversations across relevant communities have remained limited. In addition, the forms that socio-legal scholarship has adopted in those two contexts are strikingly different (see: Renaud Colson, Stewart Field, "Socio-legal Studies in France: Beyond the Law

Books by Emilie Cloatre

This book offers a new perspective on the much-debated issue of the links between intellectual pr... more This book offers a new perspective on the much-debated issue of the links between intellectual property and access to medication. Using ethnographic case studies in Djibouti and Ghana, and insights from actor-network theory, it explores the ways in which TRIPs and pharmaceutical patents are translated in the daily practices of those who purchase, distribute, and use (or fail to use) medicines in sub-Saharan Africa. It suggests that focusing on routine practices and the material deployment of intellectual property significantly enriches our understanding of the complex dynamics that animate the field of access to medicines, and helps relocate the role of law within these processes.

The relationships between knowledge, technologies, and legal processes are central to the constit... more The relationships between knowledge, technologies, and legal processes are central to the constitution of contemporary societies. As such, they have come to provide the focus for a range of academic projects, across interdisciplinary legal studies and the social sciences. The domains of medical law and ethics, intellectual property law, environmental law and criminal law are just some of those within which the pervasive place and ‘impact’ of technoscience is immediately apparent. At the same time, social scientists investigating the making of technology and expertise - in particular, scholars working within the tradition of science and technology studies - frequently interrogate how regulation and legal processes, and the making of knowledge and technologies, are intermingled in complex ways that come to shape and define each other. This book charts the important interface between studies of law, science and society, as explored from the perspectives of socio-legal studies and the increasingly influential field of science and technology studies. It brings together scholars from both areas to interrogate the joint roles of law and science in the construction and stabilization of socio-technical networks, objects, and standards, as well as their place in the production of contemporary social realities and subjectivities.

Papers by Emilie Cloatre

Feminist Legal Studies, 2018

This paper examines Irish campaigns for condom access in the early 1990s. Against the backdrop of... more This paper examines Irish campaigns for condom access in the early 1990s. Against the backdrop of the AIDS crisis, activists campaigned against a law which would not allow condoms to be sold from ordinary commercial spaces or vending machines, and restricted sale to young people. Advancing a conception of 'transformative ille-gality', we show that illegal action was fundamental to the eventual legalisation of commercial condom sale. However, rather than foregrounding illegal condom sale as a mode of spectacular direct action, we show that tactics of illegal sale in the 1990s built on 20 years of everyday illegal sale within the Irish family planning movement. Everyday illegal sale was a long-term world-making practice, which gradually transformed condoms' legal meanings, eventually enabling new forms of provocative and irreverent protest. Condoms 'became legal' when the state recognised modes of con-dom sale, gradually built up over many years and publicised in direct action and in the courts.

This article interrogates the contributions that Actor-Network Theory (ANT) has made, and can con... more This article interrogates the contributions that Actor-Network Theory (ANT) has made, and can continue to make, to the critical study of law. Both within its original field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and beyond, ANT has enabled a reimagining of thèsocial' as rela-tional, heterogeneous, and fluid. In turn, it has argued for a renewed attention to materiality in social analysis. For law, such approach is potentially fruitful, significant, and disruptive of a number of assumptions of previous (socio-)legal scholarship. In this article, I sketch out key elements (and critiques) of ANT, previous efforts to bring ANT into law, and discuss its potential for enhancing understandings of law. At the same time, I argue that ANT in law is best approached with a commitment to care, and to kinship, and in conversation with feminist thinkers, legal ethnographies, and the discrete voices of law.

Routledge Handbook of Law and Theory Legalities and materialities

This chapter reflects on what materiality-inflected methodologies can bring to an anthropology of... more This chapter reflects on what materiality-inflected methodologies can bring to an anthropology of law, and to legal studies more generally. Its starting point is an increasing attention across the social sciences and humanities for objects, and thinking beyond the human. These have often, but not only, emerged from science and technology studies (STS), to which we pay particular attention. However, approaches to materiality have themselves become diversified, and their implications for law can similarly be read in multiple ways. At the same time, legal anthropology has helped to re-characterise the complexity of law as a field of social activity by paying attention to its meanings, for actors within as well as outside its own institutions; to its modes of action in practice, again within its explicitly designated spaces as well as its everyday; to its unexpected forms, patterns and directions; to its multiplicity and uncertainty. Approaches within a broadly defined ‘legal anthropology’ agenda have provided tools to move away from grand and removed theorisation of the law, or an exclusive attention to its own claims, and towards a subtler understanding of law as a relatively fluid, changing and uncertain set of practices. While doing so, legal anthropology has also reminded us of the significance of empirical research to identify and theorise the complex existences of law, a contribution which echoes some of the implications of materiality-oriented theories.

In this chapter, I explore the regulation of alternative and traditional medicine, in order to re... more In this chapter, I explore the regulation of alternative and traditional medicine, in order to reflect on how particular temporalities shape, and are shaped by, the interface between law and medicine. This chapter makes two key points: first, it argues that both biomedicine and law have relied on a particular sense of ‘modernity’ as a linear temporal process; in turn, this has been key in developing both crude, and more subtle, social patterns of power, dominance, and exclusion that continue to impact on contemporary societies. Second, it argues that as law increasingly engages in the regulation of other types of medicine, it continues to emulate biomedical models and assumptions as to what ‘modern medicine’ should look like, including its temporal features.

This article explores the ambiguities of the legal system that, in France, regulates 'alter-nativ... more This article explores the ambiguities of the legal system that, in France, regulates 'alter-native healing', and determines the boundaries of legitimate medical care. While the law suggests that the delivery of therapeutic care should be the monopoly of biomedically-trained professionals, alternative healers operate very widely, and very openly, in France. They practice, however, on the verge of (il)legality, often organising their activities, individually and collectively, so as to limit the likelihood of state intervention. This creates a high degree of precarity for both practitioners and, crucially, for patients. Efforts to change the system are being deployed, but while healers themselves have increasingly organised to seek recognition by the state, alternative healing occupies an uncertain policy space: they are not fully constituted as a social and policy matter by the state, and occupy a liminal position between medicine and spirituality that " unsettles " republican ideals of scientific rationality, and of secularism. This article explores some of those tensions , at the crossroad between law, science, and medicine. It reflects on why tensions seem to persist around the regulatory questions at stake, and suggests that ways forward may depend on moving away from science as a sole arbiter in drawing boundaries of legitimate and illegitimate care in regulation.

16th April 2018, University of Kent in Paris, 4 Rue de Chevreuse, Paris 75006 This workshop stem... more 16th April 2018, University of Kent in Paris, 4 Rue de Chevreuse, Paris 75006

This workshop stems from several observations: first, that socio-legal scholarship as a whole is strongly influenced by both institutional contexts and local scholarly traditions, which has led it to adopt very varied forms across jurisdictions. Second, that this diversity is both an interesting object of study to understand the possibilities and forms of socio-legal research and critique, and an obstacle to some cross-jurisdictional conversations. Third, that this is particularly noticeable and interesting in the context of France and the UK. While socio-legal studies have significantly developed over the past few decades, both in the UK and (though arguably to a lesser extent) in France, cross-channel conversations across relevant communities have remained limited. In addition, the forms that socio-legal scholarship has adopted in those two contexts are strikingly different (see: Renaud Colson, Stewart Field, " Socio-legal Studies in France: Beyond the Law Although various bridges and connections have been made – through common projects, borrowing of ideas, methods or theories, or occasional encounters at conferences or within topic-specific contexts – there has historically been limited efforts to engage more broadly the growing socio-legal communities in France and the UK. Such conversations on a broader scale, however, could be highly interesting at several levels. In spite of shared aspirations, UK socio-legal studies and its French equivalents have developed in very different ways, sharing some theoretical and methodological traditions, while differing in many others. In addition, the institutional settings in which each movement has developed are in stark contrast, which in turn has certainly influenced the shape of scholarship itself. Reflecting on those different contexts, and their influences is useful in a context of continuous pressure on the development and maintenance of interdisciplinary legal scholarship, both in research and teaching. In this workshop, we want to reflect on those different trajectories, and what they have to tell us about 'socio-legal studies in context', but also aim to bring together this scholarly diversity in order to explore ways forward, in terms of collaborations, and in terms of methodological and conceptual explorations. Therefore, this workshop positions itself both as a first step towards a broader set of discussions and as a significant opportunity to reflect on the impact on our own traditions on the forms of knowledge produced. The workshop has three key aims: 1) To reflect on how different institutional contexts and traditions have shaped socio-legal thought and scholarship in France and the UK 2) To bring together contrasting approaches developed by those traditions 3) To foster future exchange and research across communities in France and the UK and facilitate new collaborations

Journal of Law and Society, 2017

Between 1935 and 1985, Irish law criminalized the sale and importation of condoms. Activists esta... more Between 1935 and 1985, Irish law criminalized the sale and importation of condoms. Activists established illegal markets to challenge the law and alleviate its social consequences. They distributed condoms through postal services, shops, stalls, clinics, and machines. Though they largely operated in the open, their activities attracted little direct punishment from the state, and they were able to build a stable network of medical and commercial family planning services. We use 30 interviews conducted with former activists to explore this history. In doing so, we also examine the limits ofìllegality' in describing acts of everyday resistance to law, arguing that the boundaries between legal and illegal, in the discourses and practices of those who sought to challenge the state, were shifting and uncertain. In turn, we revisitìllegality', characterizing it as an assemblage of varying selectively-performed political practices, shaped by complex choreographies of negotiation between state and non-state actors.

Regulation and Governance, 2013

This paper examines the way in which regulation can become embedded in material objects and ‘blac... more This paper examines the way in which regulation can become embedded in material objects and ‘black-boxed’ to the point where it becomes invisible to everyday analysis, while maintaining its effects in action. It uses a case study of the supply of pharmaceuticals to a least developed country, Djibouti, to explore what Actor-Network Theory can bring to the understanding of regulation, by allowing us to conceptualise materials as able to enrol complex networks of other actors, rules, values and practices. It argues that this approach strengthens understandings of regulatory mechanisms as part of the heterogeneous ordering of society.

Journal of Law and Society, 2012

This article explores the utility of actor-network theory (ANT) as a tool for socio-legal researc... more This article explores the utility of actor-network theory (ANT) as a tool for socio-legal research. ANT is deployed in a study of the evolution of divided regulatory responsibility for tobacco and medicinal nicotine (MN) products in the United Kingdom, with a particular focus on how the latter came to be regulated as a medicine. We examine the regulatory decisions taken in the United Kingdom in respect of the first MN product: a nicotine-containing gum developed in Sweden, which became available in the United Kingdom in 1980 as a prescription-only medicine under the Medicines Act 1968. We propose that utilizing ANT to explore the development of nicotine gum and the regulatory decisions taken about it places these decisions into the wider context of ideas about tobacco control and addiction, and helps us to understand better how different material actors acted in different networks, leading to very different systems of regulation.

Journal of Law and Society, 2012

This paper reviews the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), and analyses how it re... more This paper reviews the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), and analyses how it reflects a particular international vision of climate change and its solutions. It discusses how the expectations this approach embeds have become challenged by practice, and practitioners, and how alternative models for the CDM have been put forward. The paper argues that these challenges and alternatives can be understood better by borrowing Michel Callon's concept of 'actor--world', in order to analyse how contrasting visions of technologies also inevitably entail conflicting ideas about the world.

Social & Legal Studies, 2008

This article discusses the complexity inherent in the relationship between written law and social... more This article discusses the complexity inherent in the relationship between written law and social action. It uses actor-network theory (`ANT') to amplify this complexity and considers its value both in understanding socio-legal objects and, more broadly, to socio-legal studies itself. The article uses a case study of the role of the Trade Related Intellectual Property agreement (`TRIPS') regarding pharmaceutical patents in a `least developed country', Djibouti. The study uses this pharmaceutical example to argue the insights offered by ANT, conceptualizing socio-legal objects, beyond comparable approaches such as implementation studies. It also offers a different, more compelling set of understandings than that which appears in the more standard texts on TRIPS.

Sciences Sociales et Sante, 2008

Cet article commente les paradoxes générés par l’accord sur les Aspects des droits de propriété i... more Cet article commente les paradoxes générés par l’accord sur les Aspects des droits de propriété intellectuelle qui touchent au commerce (ADPIC) et les brevets pharmaceutiques en République de Djibouti. Il se situe au cœur d’un vaste débat académique et y ajoute de nouvelles questions, à travers l’exemple d’un type de pays peu étudié — un des pays les plus pauvres. L’exemple des ADPIC est également utilisé de façon à questionner plus généralement les positions théoriques et méthodologiques soulevées par l’étude d’objets juridiques, y compris transnationaux. Résultat d’une recherche empirique, largement inspirée de la sociologie de l’acteur réseau, cet article discutera des liens entre l’existence officielle d’outils juridiques et l’action sociale de ces objets.

Law & Policy, 2006

This article explores how the question of biopiracy, and the rights of indigenous people in the c... more This article explores how the question of biopiracy, and the rights of indigenous people in the context of patents over natural resources related to traditional knowledge became articulated within the European Union's law and policy process. It presents how this issue was first introduced into the EU during the negotiation on the Directive 98/44/EC, and which mechanisms transformed this ethical issue into a policy concern. Analyzing the history of this issue within that of Directive 98/44/EC offers significant opportunities for testing the appropriateness of multilevel governance and policy-network theories to empirical sociolegal research in the EU context.

Feminist Legal Studies, 2018

Routledge Handbook of Law and Theory Legalities and materialities

16th April 2018, University of Kent in Paris, 4 Rue de Chevreuse, Paris 75006 This workshop stem... more 16th April 2018, University of Kent in Paris, 4 Rue de Chevreuse, Paris 75006

Journal of Law and Society, 2017

Regulation and Governance, 2013

Journal of Law and Society, 2012

Social & Legal Studies, 2008

Sciences Sociales et Sante, 2008

Law & Policy, 2006

Journal of disputes resolutions, 2006

This research analyses the role and action of the Trade Related Intellectual Property Agreements ... more This research analyses the role and action of the Trade Related Intellectual Property Agreements (TRIPS) and pharmaceutical patents in the public health network of Djibouti, by using an approach largely inspired by actor-network theory (ANT). In doing so, it addresses issues that run beyond the specificities of this case study and relate more broadly to the relevance of ANT to sociolegal analysis.