Configurations of diagnostic processes, practices and evidence

Diagnoses are fundamental classification tools in medicine and work at several interrelated levels-as e.g. categories of illness and disease, as organization of illness, as processes of creating social order, and as legislative and administrative justifications. We see a need to critically engage with and analyze the configurations of diagnostic processes, practices and evidence. Over the past years, biomedicine has developed tremendously at technological and scientific levels and issues such as biotechnology, epigenetics, screening programs and new diagnostic solutions bring along new formations and borders of diagnosis. To meet this need a conference will be organized with three interrelated aims: Firstly, to place diagnosis centre-stage - as a concept and practices in-the-making; secondly, to attend to the multi-faceted aspects of how diagnostic processes, practices and evidence are being produced; thirdly, to discuss the dual location of diagnosis in both anthropology and medicine, and its bridging role between the two disciplines. We hope that the conference will contribute with a rethinking of empirical and conceptual phenomena on technology, power relations and interactions of the many parties involved in defining and responding to diagnoses, and also to provide insight into existing and changing values, structures and contexts for new configurations of diagnostic processes, practices and evidence. The conference will take place from June 2-5 2016 as the IXth biannual MAAH conference (Medical Anthropology At Home). It will be arranged by UiT The Arctic University of Norway,at Malangen Brygger, Tromsø. An expected number of 45 researchers will participate and contribute to the discussions on diagnostic processes, explored and analysed from the view point of medical anthropology.