Rebeca Ibáñez Martín | Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (original) (raw)
Papers by Rebeca Ibáñez Martín
Somatosphere, 2019
The lone-fieldworker model of research may still be the norm for anthropology in the United State... more The lone-fieldworker model of research may still be the norm for anthropology in the United States, but this is not the case for anthropology everywhere. The European Research Council (ERC), the main funding body for anthropological research in Europe, favors team-based research. Following the model of a scientific laboratory, a principal investigator (PI) is awarded funding meant to support the training and research of others (e.g. Postdocs, PhDs). By design, the work is both individualized and collectivized.
Wijsgerig Perspectief, 2019
Etnofoor, 2019
Most studies and debates in the field of sustainable experimentation and innovation underline the... more Most studies and debates in the field of sustainable experimentation and innovation underline the urgent need to understand social transformation in terms of the urban. Current estimates of increasing urbanisation rates (Hofmann and Wan 2013) feed into a general consensus that environmental challenges can be best tackled and studied in cities (Low 1996; Raven 2016). Villages are, by and large, absent from these debates. This is remarkable, since urban growth, specifically the modernist trope that equates growth with societal progression and prosperity, has been subjected to numerous critiques, with scholars advocating for the urgent necessity of studies on degrowth and descaling (Kallis 2011).Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in and around two Dutch villages, we contribute to the relational study of ‘the village’ by reasserting the (re)production of ‘the village’ in a landscape produced by more-than-humans. For this objective, we have selected two cases of villagers practising self-defined processes of innovation and sustainable experimentation. In our first case, we followed the production of a recently founded ‘eco village’ in the southern Netherlands, Ecodorp Boekel, that aspires to live sustainably. In our second case, we traced the reproduction of Holwerd, a long-established village along the low-lying coastal area of the Wadden Sea in the northern Netherlands, a village struggling with the negative consequences of population shrinkage and the threat that salinisation poses to agricultural livelihoods. We elaborate on how, in both cases, innovation requires establishing, and working with, multispecies assemblages, and what this entails for our conceptual understanding of ‘the village’. Through ethnographic exploration of what Haraway (2015) termed ‘making kin’, we account for the processes of innovation which, in both cases, involve learning to collaborate, not only with human actors, but also with other elements such as algae, bacteria, tides and soils.
Sociology of Health and Illness, 2019
In the face of warnings about total institutions and growing concern about the quality of care, h... more In the face of warnings about total institutions and growing concern about the quality of care, healthcare professionals in Western Europe and North America have increasingly been exhorted to tailor their services to individuals in their care. In this article, we invite our readers to become more interested in the kinds of differences care is being tailored to, and with what effects. Focusing on food provision for residents with dementia, we present three repertoires through which care workers attend to, and enact different sets of differences between individuals: providing choice allows residents to express fleeting preferences; knowing residents places emphasis on care providers’ familiarity with a person; and catering to identities brings to the fore the tastes which make up part of who someone is. The analysis brings attending to difference to the fore as a practical process and suggests that tailoring care requires sensitivity to the different kinds of individuals enacted when attending to difference.
In Spain, dietary recommendations for “healthy eating” hinge on the nutrient content of foods. Dr... more In Spain, dietary recommendations for “healthy eating” hinge on
the nutrient content of foods. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in
domestic kitchens, I argue that this essentializing approach fails to
attend to the multiple “registers of valuation” of foods – and especially
of fats – that are at work in the practice of cooking. This argument has
policy implications: for dietary recommendations to transform eating
practices it is necessary to take into account how, while cooking, actors
draw on these various forms of valuation. Such a re-focus will make
dietary recommendations more sensitive to the social and material
conditions under which cooking is done and better attuned to the
eating practices present in mundane culinary contexts.
While waste marks the beginning of relocation, re-materialization, and resourcing processes, it i... more While waste marks the beginning of relocation, re-materialization, and resourcing processes, it is also a set of connections, producing specific figurations of citizenship that follow from, as they inform, waste management strategies. This article regards household practices to do with the disposal of used fats as a site where citizenship forms. The authors see the figure of 'good citizen' appear along the trajectory of kitchen fats. They contrast this figure with the 're-user,' who acts by a different set of rules, so as to explore logics and normativities embedded in the mundane processes of discarding fats. Fat waste not only turns out to be different things for different stakeholders; it is in different fat disposal practices that different (kinds of) stakeholders emerge. As the authors situate citizenship in mundane practices, kitchen fats suggest the situational, material-relational character of waste and waste-eliminating schemes – and of citizenship itself.
Resumen En este trabajo presentamos algunas investigaciones realizadas en el área de estudios soc... more Resumen En este trabajo presentamos algunas investigaciones realizadas en el área de estudios sociales de la ciencia bajo el enfoque denominado Ciencia, Tecnología y Género (CTG). La intersección de los estudios sociales de la ciencia con la teoría feminista y los estudios de género ha dado lugar a este campo de estudio interdisciplinar. En el Estado español, se han llevado a cabo múltiples trabajos en esta línea, de los que exponemos algunos de los realizados por nuestro grupo de investigación al menos en los últimos diez años. Se centran en estudios de caso, que implican diferentes tecnologías biomédicas, y en los que los cuerpos juegan un papel fundamental estableciendo alianzas, resistencias o cuestionando los marcos normativos en los que cuerpos y tecnologías se hayan inmersos.
A group of elderly and retired women from a northern village in Spain (they call themselves las c... more A group of elderly and retired women from a northern village in Spain (they call themselves las chicas, the girls), try gather every week to take a walk together. Assembling my ethnographic notes, I describe the walk and offer an analytical foray into the following questions: What can we learn about the rural and the relationship of these women with the rural? What is the specificity of walking here? Walking is a practice that has in this case a twofold capacity: walking creates a mobile space for visibility in in which rural women’s work is considered private, and thus, walking provides a precious inter-subjective space for relationality; and second, the walk enacts a particular archaeology of memoir. The landscape bears witness to the socioeconomic changes of the rural environment. Such memoirs are actualized in the walk. Finally, as las chicas walk, not only do they travel across space and time, their movement allows for a particular methodological engagement of the researcher with the methods of research. Mobilities often question what hinders mobilities. But here my question is, what is the walking telling us about both the rural and these women in the rural context?
In the early 21st century quite a few social scientists and scholars in the humanities are arguin... more In the early 21st century quite a few social scientists and scholars in the humanities are arguing that we should pay more attention to things material. For, as they say, not only humans act but so, too, do materials. Joining this discussion, in this paper we will use the case of omega-3 fatty acids to address the questions of how materials may act; in which ways this is relevant; and what is linked up with it. Hence, we will come to speak about research in prisons where inmates were badly nourished; fish being caught in the Global South for Scandinavian fish pills; and the urgency of shifting from the verb 'to act' to a differentiated list of modes of doing. Learning from the natural sciences, we will argue, requires that their methods and concerns be carefully attended to. Taking matters seriously comes with the obligation of tracing where such matters come from and where they go. And talking about 'action', finally, demands that, beyond liberal notions of isolated individual actors, it be creatively retheorised.
Cineblend: 25 Years of Beeld voor Beeld. Who Needs Visual Anthropology? De Tolhuistuin, Amsterda... more Cineblend: 25 Years of Beeld voor Beeld. Who Needs Visual Anthropology?
De Tolhuistuin, Amsterdam, February 15, 2015
EASST Review Volume 3 2 (201 3 ) Number 1
How would an academic association look that doesn’t have the characteristics of a “typical asso... more How would an academic association look that
doesn’t have the characteristics of a “typical
association”? Which members would form the
association? Which places would be its sites of
action? These are a few questions that, at least
partially, describe the developing process of the
Spanish Network for Science and Tech nology Studies (Red eSCTS) since its launch in 2010.
The very name of a “network” (instead of
association) points to a first main goal: to explore
a new modality of academic relation.
Cuerpos y Diferencias, ed. Eulalia Pérez Sedeño y Rebeca Ibáñez, Plaza y Valdés, 2012
INTRODUCCIÓN urante la última década, la noción del «paciente informado» ha ido ganando una impor... more INTRODUCCIÓN urante la última década, la noción del «paciente informado» ha ido ganando una importancia creciente en las políticas sanitarias y en las reflexiones sobre la salud, en tanto modo de conceptualizar y reflejar toda una serie de tendencias en el ámbito sociomédico, desde la centralidad actual de Internet entre las fuentes de información social sobre la salud ) hasta los procesos de «empoderamiento» del paciente y los retos que el nuevo protagonismo del enfermo/paciente plantea a las formas tradicionales de autoridad médica , pasando por el impacto del creciente consumismo de productos sanitarios o de las nuevas formas de gobernanza neoliberal sobre una economía sanitaria en la que las fronteras entre sanidad pública y sanidad privada, cuidado y consumo, Estado y mercado son cada vez más tenues . El paciente informado sería aquel que, contando con una información suficiente y objetiva sobre una situación relacionada con su salud, logra tomar una decisión consecuente y racional entre las diversas ofertas del mercado de la salud. La decisión informada se plantea así como un ideal en la relación entre el individuo, el mercado y los sistemas de
Los intentos de relacionar el colesterol alto con el riesgo de desarrollar una enfermedad cardiov... more Los intentos de relacionar el colesterol alto con el riesgo de desarrollar una enfermedad cardiovascular se remontan a 1916. Es a partir de 1950 cuando se produce un momento de gran intensidad de estudios clínicos y epidemiológicos que buscan pruebas para esta relación. La hipótesis del colesterol, lejos de ser aceptada, estuvo sometida a una gran polémica durante la década de 1950, y también a gran atención por parte de la opinión pública. La importancia que adquieren las ideas sobre nutrición es fundamental para que se empiece a relacionar el colesterol adquirido a través de la alimentación con un elevado colesterol en sangre, y el efecto de este en el riesgo de sufrir una enfermedad cardiovascular. En este contexto, la aparición en el mercado estadounidense de una margarina a base de ácidos grasos vegetales poliinsaturados capaz de reducir el colesterol y la hipótesis que sostiene que un elevado colesterol supone un factor de riesgo para desarrollar una enfermedad coronaria son un ejemplo de la compleja relación entre investigación científica, industria alimentaria y consumidores. Todos ellos participan de un proceso de coproducción del conocimiento alrededor de colesterol, dieta y prevención de enfermedad coronaria.
Palabras clave: coproducción, colesterol, margarina, prácticas
Attempts to relate high cholesterol to the risks associated with cardiovascular disease date back to 1916. Since 1950, intensive clinical and epidemiological studies have sought evidence for this relationship. The “cholesterol hypothesis”, far from being accepted, enjoyed not only great debate during the 1950's, but also great amounts of attention from the public. The importance gained by nutritional ideas was essential to establish a relation between cholesterol acquired through diet with high blood cholesterol and an increase of the risks associated with cardiovascular disease. In this context, the appearance on the U.S. market of a margarine based on vegetable polyunsaturated fatty acids that reduces cholesterol, and the hypothesis that high cholesterol is a risk factor for developing heart disease, are an example of the complex relationship between scientific research, food industry and consumers in this process. All of them participate in a process of co-production of knowledge about cholesterol, diet and prevention of coronary heart disease.
Key words: coproduction, cholesterol, margarine, practices
CUADERNOS KÓRE, Jan 1, 2011
Resumen: Ciertos aspectos de la vida cotidiana, previamente excluidos de la jurisdicción de la me... more Resumen: Ciertos aspectos de la vida cotidiana, previamente excluidos de la jurisdicción de la medicina, aparecen, cada vez más, definidos como problemas médicos. Un ejemplo es el auge de los alimentos funcionales, que habitan una frontera difusa entre la medicina preventiva y el alimento. En este mercado, las mujeres son objetivo preferente, ya que los estudios muestran su mayor interés en temas de salud. Este artículo explora el modo en el que la recreación de la imagen de las mujeres a través de la fabricación y publicidad de alimentos funcionales refleja la aparición de "estilos de vida" que suponen un reto para la teoría del déficit cognitivo en la comprensión pública de la ciencia y propician una reflexión sobre la figuración de las mujeres como cuidadoras.
Palabras clave: alimentos funcionales, nutrición, biomedicalización, percepción social de la ciencia y la tecnología, mujeres, salud.
Abstract: Certain aspects of daily life, previously outside the jurisdiction of medicine, are being increasingly defined as medical problems. One such example is the rise of functional foods, which inhabit an unclear boundary between preventive medicine, and just food. In this market, women are a preferred objective, since studies have shown their interest in health issues. This article explores the way in which the image of women in the manufacture and advertising of functional foods reflects the emergence of new "lifestyles" that pose a challenge to the deficit model in public understanding of science and the figuration of women as caregivers.
Key words: functional foods, nutritional knowledge, biomedicalization, social perception of science and technology, women, health.
![Research paper thumbnail of Review: [Up in the Air: Gender and Astronomy in Spain]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/13331301/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](complex synergetic effect on people's health and quality of life? However, this book is a mine of... more complex synergetic effect on people's health and quality of life? However, this book is a mine of treasures and a major theoretical and empirical contribution to gender and medicine; the first of its kind. As a researcher, teacher and supervisor I will undoubtedly make it central in my future work.
Books by Rebeca Ibáñez Martín
El cuerpo es el entorno primario que habitamos, la frontera física que nos identifica a un tiempo... more El cuerpo es el entorno primario que habitamos, la frontera física que nos identifica a un tiempo como lo mismo, como individuos singulares, y como lo otro, frente a los demás cuerpos. La ciencia y la tecnología se han ocupado de la tarea de conocer los cuerpos abriéndolos, troceándolos, modificándolos, ofreciendo descripciones y prescripciones sobre los mismos.
Los trabajos que componen este volumen no parten de una idea prefijada de lo que un cuerpo es y cuáles son sus fronteras sino que pretenden analizar, en cambio, los muchos cuerpos producidos y performados por diferentes prácticas bio-médicas y las “conexiones parciales” entre ellos: los cuerpos de las tecnologías reproductivas y terapéuticas, los de las tecnologías de re/asignación de sexo, de las tecnologías reparadoras, etc. En este libro encontrarán reflexiones en torno a una pregunta aparentemente sencilla pero inquietante al mismo tiempo ¿cómo se hacen los cuerpos? ¿Cómo se modelan en la práctica y cuáles son los significados atribuidos a ciertos cuerpos en éstas?
La obra está estructurada en tres secciones y un epílogo. Las tres partes están dedicadas al estudio de los cuerpos en tres territorios distintos: la primera se encarga de los cuerpos como objeto de la investigación biomédica, la segunda de los cuerpos que se hacen a través de esas mismas prácticas, y la tercera de los cuerpos en los espacios liminales de la “feminidad” . El volumen concluye con un epílogo a cargo de la filósofa Helen Longino.
Book Chapters by Rebeca Ibáñez Martín
Cartografías del cuerpo. Biopolíticas de la ciencia y la tecnología, 2014
Tomando como estudios de caso la percepción pública de los alimentos funcionales y los problemas ... more Tomando como estudios de caso la percepción pública de los alimentos funcionales y los problemas ambientales, se propone una reflexión sobre el modo en el que el conocimiento condiciona las actitudes y comportamientos del público frente a asuntos de carácter tecnocientífico. Frente al modelo de déficit
cognitivo, se subraya el papel de la confianza en las fuentes de información y la relevancia de la misma en el contexto individualizado y globalizado de las sociedades contemporáneas.
In the Press by Rebeca Ibáñez Martín
El Ground Control Climate and Agricultural Camp de Ámsterdam ha sido la primera iniciativa de un... more El Ground Control Climate and Agricultural Camp de Ámsterdam ha sido la primera iniciativa de un verano de acciones climáticas.
¿Cómo pensar la ciencia más allá de la producción de verdades únicas? ¿Se puede hacer crítica de ... more ¿Cómo pensar la ciencia más allá de la producción de verdades únicas? ¿Se puede hacer crítica de su epistemología sin que sea
”irracional“?
Somatosphere, 2019
The lone-fieldworker model of research may still be the norm for anthropology in the United State... more The lone-fieldworker model of research may still be the norm for anthropology in the United States, but this is not the case for anthropology everywhere. The European Research Council (ERC), the main funding body for anthropological research in Europe, favors team-based research. Following the model of a scientific laboratory, a principal investigator (PI) is awarded funding meant to support the training and research of others (e.g. Postdocs, PhDs). By design, the work is both individualized and collectivized.
Wijsgerig Perspectief, 2019
Etnofoor, 2019
Most studies and debates in the field of sustainable experimentation and innovation underline the... more Most studies and debates in the field of sustainable experimentation and innovation underline the urgent need to understand social transformation in terms of the urban. Current estimates of increasing urbanisation rates (Hofmann and Wan 2013) feed into a general consensus that environmental challenges can be best tackled and studied in cities (Low 1996; Raven 2016). Villages are, by and large, absent from these debates. This is remarkable, since urban growth, specifically the modernist trope that equates growth with societal progression and prosperity, has been subjected to numerous critiques, with scholars advocating for the urgent necessity of studies on degrowth and descaling (Kallis 2011).Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in and around two Dutch villages, we contribute to the relational study of ‘the village’ by reasserting the (re)production of ‘the village’ in a landscape produced by more-than-humans. For this objective, we have selected two cases of villagers practising self-defined processes of innovation and sustainable experimentation. In our first case, we followed the production of a recently founded ‘eco village’ in the southern Netherlands, Ecodorp Boekel, that aspires to live sustainably. In our second case, we traced the reproduction of Holwerd, a long-established village along the low-lying coastal area of the Wadden Sea in the northern Netherlands, a village struggling with the negative consequences of population shrinkage and the threat that salinisation poses to agricultural livelihoods. We elaborate on how, in both cases, innovation requires establishing, and working with, multispecies assemblages, and what this entails for our conceptual understanding of ‘the village’. Through ethnographic exploration of what Haraway (2015) termed ‘making kin’, we account for the processes of innovation which, in both cases, involve learning to collaborate, not only with human actors, but also with other elements such as algae, bacteria, tides and soils.
Sociology of Health and Illness, 2019
In the face of warnings about total institutions and growing concern about the quality of care, h... more In the face of warnings about total institutions and growing concern about the quality of care, healthcare professionals in Western Europe and North America have increasingly been exhorted to tailor their services to individuals in their care. In this article, we invite our readers to become more interested in the kinds of differences care is being tailored to, and with what effects. Focusing on food provision for residents with dementia, we present three repertoires through which care workers attend to, and enact different sets of differences between individuals: providing choice allows residents to express fleeting preferences; knowing residents places emphasis on care providers’ familiarity with a person; and catering to identities brings to the fore the tastes which make up part of who someone is. The analysis brings attending to difference to the fore as a practical process and suggests that tailoring care requires sensitivity to the different kinds of individuals enacted when attending to difference.
In Spain, dietary recommendations for “healthy eating” hinge on the nutrient content of foods. Dr... more In Spain, dietary recommendations for “healthy eating” hinge on
the nutrient content of foods. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in
domestic kitchens, I argue that this essentializing approach fails to
attend to the multiple “registers of valuation” of foods – and especially
of fats – that are at work in the practice of cooking. This argument has
policy implications: for dietary recommendations to transform eating
practices it is necessary to take into account how, while cooking, actors
draw on these various forms of valuation. Such a re-focus will make
dietary recommendations more sensitive to the social and material
conditions under which cooking is done and better attuned to the
eating practices present in mundane culinary contexts.
While waste marks the beginning of relocation, re-materialization, and resourcing processes, it i... more While waste marks the beginning of relocation, re-materialization, and resourcing processes, it is also a set of connections, producing specific figurations of citizenship that follow from, as they inform, waste management strategies. This article regards household practices to do with the disposal of used fats as a site where citizenship forms. The authors see the figure of 'good citizen' appear along the trajectory of kitchen fats. They contrast this figure with the 're-user,' who acts by a different set of rules, so as to explore logics and normativities embedded in the mundane processes of discarding fats. Fat waste not only turns out to be different things for different stakeholders; it is in different fat disposal practices that different (kinds of) stakeholders emerge. As the authors situate citizenship in mundane practices, kitchen fats suggest the situational, material-relational character of waste and waste-eliminating schemes – and of citizenship itself.
Resumen En este trabajo presentamos algunas investigaciones realizadas en el área de estudios soc... more Resumen En este trabajo presentamos algunas investigaciones realizadas en el área de estudios sociales de la ciencia bajo el enfoque denominado Ciencia, Tecnología y Género (CTG). La intersección de los estudios sociales de la ciencia con la teoría feminista y los estudios de género ha dado lugar a este campo de estudio interdisciplinar. En el Estado español, se han llevado a cabo múltiples trabajos en esta línea, de los que exponemos algunos de los realizados por nuestro grupo de investigación al menos en los últimos diez años. Se centran en estudios de caso, que implican diferentes tecnologías biomédicas, y en los que los cuerpos juegan un papel fundamental estableciendo alianzas, resistencias o cuestionando los marcos normativos en los que cuerpos y tecnologías se hayan inmersos.
A group of elderly and retired women from a northern village in Spain (they call themselves las c... more A group of elderly and retired women from a northern village in Spain (they call themselves las chicas, the girls), try gather every week to take a walk together. Assembling my ethnographic notes, I describe the walk and offer an analytical foray into the following questions: What can we learn about the rural and the relationship of these women with the rural? What is the specificity of walking here? Walking is a practice that has in this case a twofold capacity: walking creates a mobile space for visibility in in which rural women’s work is considered private, and thus, walking provides a precious inter-subjective space for relationality; and second, the walk enacts a particular archaeology of memoir. The landscape bears witness to the socioeconomic changes of the rural environment. Such memoirs are actualized in the walk. Finally, as las chicas walk, not only do they travel across space and time, their movement allows for a particular methodological engagement of the researcher with the methods of research. Mobilities often question what hinders mobilities. But here my question is, what is the walking telling us about both the rural and these women in the rural context?
In the early 21st century quite a few social scientists and scholars in the humanities are arguin... more In the early 21st century quite a few social scientists and scholars in the humanities are arguing that we should pay more attention to things material. For, as they say, not only humans act but so, too, do materials. Joining this discussion, in this paper we will use the case of omega-3 fatty acids to address the questions of how materials may act; in which ways this is relevant; and what is linked up with it. Hence, we will come to speak about research in prisons where inmates were badly nourished; fish being caught in the Global South for Scandinavian fish pills; and the urgency of shifting from the verb 'to act' to a differentiated list of modes of doing. Learning from the natural sciences, we will argue, requires that their methods and concerns be carefully attended to. Taking matters seriously comes with the obligation of tracing where such matters come from and where they go. And talking about 'action', finally, demands that, beyond liberal notions of isolated individual actors, it be creatively retheorised.
Cineblend: 25 Years of Beeld voor Beeld. Who Needs Visual Anthropology? De Tolhuistuin, Amsterda... more Cineblend: 25 Years of Beeld voor Beeld. Who Needs Visual Anthropology?
De Tolhuistuin, Amsterdam, February 15, 2015
EASST Review Volume 3 2 (201 3 ) Number 1
How would an academic association look that doesn’t have the characteristics of a “typical asso... more How would an academic association look that
doesn’t have the characteristics of a “typical
association”? Which members would form the
association? Which places would be its sites of
action? These are a few questions that, at least
partially, describe the developing process of the
Spanish Network for Science and Tech nology Studies (Red eSCTS) since its launch in 2010.
The very name of a “network” (instead of
association) points to a first main goal: to explore
a new modality of academic relation.
Cuerpos y Diferencias, ed. Eulalia Pérez Sedeño y Rebeca Ibáñez, Plaza y Valdés, 2012
INTRODUCCIÓN urante la última década, la noción del «paciente informado» ha ido ganando una impor... more INTRODUCCIÓN urante la última década, la noción del «paciente informado» ha ido ganando una importancia creciente en las políticas sanitarias y en las reflexiones sobre la salud, en tanto modo de conceptualizar y reflejar toda una serie de tendencias en el ámbito sociomédico, desde la centralidad actual de Internet entre las fuentes de información social sobre la salud ) hasta los procesos de «empoderamiento» del paciente y los retos que el nuevo protagonismo del enfermo/paciente plantea a las formas tradicionales de autoridad médica , pasando por el impacto del creciente consumismo de productos sanitarios o de las nuevas formas de gobernanza neoliberal sobre una economía sanitaria en la que las fronteras entre sanidad pública y sanidad privada, cuidado y consumo, Estado y mercado son cada vez más tenues . El paciente informado sería aquel que, contando con una información suficiente y objetiva sobre una situación relacionada con su salud, logra tomar una decisión consecuente y racional entre las diversas ofertas del mercado de la salud. La decisión informada se plantea así como un ideal en la relación entre el individuo, el mercado y los sistemas de
Los intentos de relacionar el colesterol alto con el riesgo de desarrollar una enfermedad cardiov... more Los intentos de relacionar el colesterol alto con el riesgo de desarrollar una enfermedad cardiovascular se remontan a 1916. Es a partir de 1950 cuando se produce un momento de gran intensidad de estudios clínicos y epidemiológicos que buscan pruebas para esta relación. La hipótesis del colesterol, lejos de ser aceptada, estuvo sometida a una gran polémica durante la década de 1950, y también a gran atención por parte de la opinión pública. La importancia que adquieren las ideas sobre nutrición es fundamental para que se empiece a relacionar el colesterol adquirido a través de la alimentación con un elevado colesterol en sangre, y el efecto de este en el riesgo de sufrir una enfermedad cardiovascular. En este contexto, la aparición en el mercado estadounidense de una margarina a base de ácidos grasos vegetales poliinsaturados capaz de reducir el colesterol y la hipótesis que sostiene que un elevado colesterol supone un factor de riesgo para desarrollar una enfermedad coronaria son un ejemplo de la compleja relación entre investigación científica, industria alimentaria y consumidores. Todos ellos participan de un proceso de coproducción del conocimiento alrededor de colesterol, dieta y prevención de enfermedad coronaria.
Palabras clave: coproducción, colesterol, margarina, prácticas
Attempts to relate high cholesterol to the risks associated with cardiovascular disease date back to 1916. Since 1950, intensive clinical and epidemiological studies have sought evidence for this relationship. The “cholesterol hypothesis”, far from being accepted, enjoyed not only great debate during the 1950's, but also great amounts of attention from the public. The importance gained by nutritional ideas was essential to establish a relation between cholesterol acquired through diet with high blood cholesterol and an increase of the risks associated with cardiovascular disease. In this context, the appearance on the U.S. market of a margarine based on vegetable polyunsaturated fatty acids that reduces cholesterol, and the hypothesis that high cholesterol is a risk factor for developing heart disease, are an example of the complex relationship between scientific research, food industry and consumers in this process. All of them participate in a process of co-production of knowledge about cholesterol, diet and prevention of coronary heart disease.
Key words: coproduction, cholesterol, margarine, practices
CUADERNOS KÓRE, Jan 1, 2011
Resumen: Ciertos aspectos de la vida cotidiana, previamente excluidos de la jurisdicción de la me... more Resumen: Ciertos aspectos de la vida cotidiana, previamente excluidos de la jurisdicción de la medicina, aparecen, cada vez más, definidos como problemas médicos. Un ejemplo es el auge de los alimentos funcionales, que habitan una frontera difusa entre la medicina preventiva y el alimento. En este mercado, las mujeres son objetivo preferente, ya que los estudios muestran su mayor interés en temas de salud. Este artículo explora el modo en el que la recreación de la imagen de las mujeres a través de la fabricación y publicidad de alimentos funcionales refleja la aparición de "estilos de vida" que suponen un reto para la teoría del déficit cognitivo en la comprensión pública de la ciencia y propician una reflexión sobre la figuración de las mujeres como cuidadoras.
Palabras clave: alimentos funcionales, nutrición, biomedicalización, percepción social de la ciencia y la tecnología, mujeres, salud.
Abstract: Certain aspects of daily life, previously outside the jurisdiction of medicine, are being increasingly defined as medical problems. One such example is the rise of functional foods, which inhabit an unclear boundary between preventive medicine, and just food. In this market, women are a preferred objective, since studies have shown their interest in health issues. This article explores the way in which the image of women in the manufacture and advertising of functional foods reflects the emergence of new "lifestyles" that pose a challenge to the deficit model in public understanding of science and the figuration of women as caregivers.
Key words: functional foods, nutritional knowledge, biomedicalization, social perception of science and technology, women, health.
complex synergetic effect on people's health and quality of life? However, this book is a mine of... more complex synergetic effect on people's health and quality of life? However, this book is a mine of treasures and a major theoretical and empirical contribution to gender and medicine; the first of its kind. As a researcher, teacher and supervisor I will undoubtedly make it central in my future work.
El cuerpo es el entorno primario que habitamos, la frontera física que nos identifica a un tiempo... more El cuerpo es el entorno primario que habitamos, la frontera física que nos identifica a un tiempo como lo mismo, como individuos singulares, y como lo otro, frente a los demás cuerpos. La ciencia y la tecnología se han ocupado de la tarea de conocer los cuerpos abriéndolos, troceándolos, modificándolos, ofreciendo descripciones y prescripciones sobre los mismos.
Los trabajos que componen este volumen no parten de una idea prefijada de lo que un cuerpo es y cuáles son sus fronteras sino que pretenden analizar, en cambio, los muchos cuerpos producidos y performados por diferentes prácticas bio-médicas y las “conexiones parciales” entre ellos: los cuerpos de las tecnologías reproductivas y terapéuticas, los de las tecnologías de re/asignación de sexo, de las tecnologías reparadoras, etc. En este libro encontrarán reflexiones en torno a una pregunta aparentemente sencilla pero inquietante al mismo tiempo ¿cómo se hacen los cuerpos? ¿Cómo se modelan en la práctica y cuáles son los significados atribuidos a ciertos cuerpos en éstas?
La obra está estructurada en tres secciones y un epílogo. Las tres partes están dedicadas al estudio de los cuerpos en tres territorios distintos: la primera se encarga de los cuerpos como objeto de la investigación biomédica, la segunda de los cuerpos que se hacen a través de esas mismas prácticas, y la tercera de los cuerpos en los espacios liminales de la “feminidad” . El volumen concluye con un epílogo a cargo de la filósofa Helen Longino.
Cartografías del cuerpo. Biopolíticas de la ciencia y la tecnología, 2014
Tomando como estudios de caso la percepción pública de los alimentos funcionales y los problemas ... more Tomando como estudios de caso la percepción pública de los alimentos funcionales y los problemas ambientales, se propone una reflexión sobre el modo en el que el conocimiento condiciona las actitudes y comportamientos del público frente a asuntos de carácter tecnocientífico. Frente al modelo de déficit
cognitivo, se subraya el papel de la confianza en las fuentes de información y la relevancia de la misma en el contexto individualizado y globalizado de las sociedades contemporáneas.
El Ground Control Climate and Agricultural Camp de Ámsterdam ha sido la primera iniciativa de un... more El Ground Control Climate and Agricultural Camp de Ámsterdam ha sido la primera iniciativa de un verano de acciones climáticas.
¿Cómo pensar la ciencia más allá de la producción de verdades únicas? ¿Se puede hacer crítica de ... more ¿Cómo pensar la ciencia más allá de la producción de verdades únicas? ¿Se puede hacer crítica de su epistemología sin que sea
”irracional“?
"La cocina es un lugar de mezcla y experimentación. En la cocina se mezclan ingredientes, se comb... more "La cocina es un lugar de mezcla y experimentación. En la cocina se mezclan ingredientes, se combinan variables (tiempos, cantidades, temperaturas, técnicas, velocidades, etc.) y se producen nuevas materialidades, guisos o amalgamas; las tortillas cuajan, las yemas se rompen, las masas suben, los ácidos lácticos fermentan. En las cocinas se siguen recetas o se improvisan mezclas, los alimentos se mezclan, lo crudo se transforma en lo cocinado. ¿Qué significa hacer una cocina pública (en una institución pública)?
Podríamos pensar en las cocinas como si fueran espacios paradigmáticos de creación y experimentación de conocimiento colectivo. O pensar sobre el carácter culinario del laboratorio. Antes que el laboratorio, la cocina es el lugar de la experimentación y la transformación. En el texto sugiero investigar qué podemos aprender y copiar teórica y metodológicamente sobre la creación del conocimiento en una cocina. Las recetas han sido un modelo paradigmático de lo común que, sin embargo, ha sido poco explorado como modelo teórico. No hay nada más abierto que una tortilla de patatas".
Living with Omega-3: Notes on new materialisms. Rebeca Ibáñez Martín, Sebastian Abrahamsson, Fil... more Living with Omega-3: Notes on new materialisms.
Rebeca Ibáñez Martín, Sebastian Abrahamsson, Filippo Bertoni & Annemarie Mol
Abstract:
These days (if only because environmental issues are getting ever more pressing), many of us seek to attend to matter and its capacities to act. Going with other forms of new materialism,
Jane Bennett talks of ‘thing-power’. But how to best attend to materialities?
To address this question, we will focus on a specific case, that of omega 3 fatty acids. In her Vibrant Matter Bennett relates that these ‘things’ are capable of altering the moods of the people
who ingest them. But when explored in more detail, it appears that this is not everything they do. In different contexts (prisons, research labs, fish, oceans) omega 3 fatty acids engage in
a range of different activities. And, or so we would like to argue, they never do so alone. It is laudable that Bennett seeks to draw ‘things’ into an all too human political philosophy.
However, our empirical explorations make us wonder if she might not (at the same time) be drawing (as a Trojan horse) an doubtful political philosophy into new materialism. For
the solitary things of her stories show a striking resemblance to the liberal subject. We will suggest ways of importing other political philosophy traditions into our materialism and
propose a shift from the question what ‘things’ do, to that other one: how might we live
together.
25.05.2011 - 27.05.2011 Place: Medialab-Prado. Plaza de las Letras, C/ Alameda, 15 · Madrid T... more 25.05.2011 - 27.05.2011
Place: Medialab-Prado. Plaza de las Letras, C/ Alameda, 15 · Madrid
The first meeting of the Social Studies of Science and Technology Network in Spain (eSCTS) aims to gather during three days researchers that work in Spain in this research fiel aiming to create a discussion and exchange space for shared knowledgeThat is why it has been called Making Visible the Invisible. What are our jobs bringing into light? What do different approaches of social studies of science add? What do they don't or invisibilize? Based on these premises we pretend to try a double exercise: on one hand, we want to discuss what do these studies add as a theoretical approach to social analysis, and on the other, try to make visible these research fields, debating the importance of social studies of science and technology, the variety of their approaches, as well as the different possibilities they offer to support a rich dialog among disciplines.