CALL FOR PAPERS: TELEVISING THE SOCIALIST BODY. PROJECTIONS OF HEALTH AND WELFARE ON THE SOCIALIST AND POST-SOCIALIST SCREEN

An ERC BodyCapital conference, Paris, 18-20 June 2020, co-organised with the Centre d'études des mondes russe, caucasien et centre européen (EHESS). Deadline 31 January 2020.

Television prospered upon a tension between education and leisure, which was especially acute in a socialist context. Televisions began to appear in homes in Eastern Europe after its stabilization as a socialist “block” dominated by the USSR. However diverse by nature and history, all the socialist regimes shared common strategies of mass propaganda, i.e. the intensive use of media to convert people and transform collective/individual behaviours. Television was supposed to be a new tool allowing direct normative shaping of every citizen, but some circles also blamed it for stimulating the disarticulation of the class/work/political collective. Moreover, this tool was not easy to master: the professionals trained to produce an efficient TV discourse mainly focused on socialist progress (i.e. omitting shortcomings and problems from the picture), and the viewers learned to watch and interpret selectively at the very same time. Finally, crossed communication around programs helped the citizens to identify themselves with a Soviet way-of-life that was more “normal” than in the past 40 years. The specificity of the Eastern case in the broader history of European television and the question of “socialist” body values merit both a nuanced assessment. The development of television coincided with a period in which ideas about the public’s health, the problems that public health faced and the solutions that could be offered, were changing. The threat posed by infectious diseases and famines was receding, to be replaced by chronic diseases, which were linked to lifestyle and individual behaviour. In 1920s’ Soviet Russia, and then on a large scale after World War II, the state turned into a welfare state. Lifelong medical care and social security was granted. In exchange, citizens had to adopt new hygiene habits and healthy conduct: every citizen now had the right and the duty to be “healthful.” The state commissioned the educational institutions and the mass media to purge popular unscientific perceptions of medicine and impose an expert perception of the body. In Eastern Europe, political parties emphasized the necessity of a collective reshaping of the body, defining a “socialist” body that contrasted with its “corrupt” Western counterpart.

Watching TV in the 1950s-1990s was part of a shift towards more sedentary lifestyles, and also a vehicle through which products that were damaging to health, such as alcohol, cigarettes and unhealthy food, could be advertised to the public. In the Eastern part of Europe, where food was less scarce than before, and alcohol and cigarettes were affordable, the states endeavoured simultaneously to promote an ambiguous “socialist” wellbeing and fight the usual “social diseases”, encouraged consumption while condemning consumerism. Throughout the age of television, health and body-related subjects have been presented and diffused into the public sphere via a multitude of forms, ranging from short films in health education programmes to school television; from professional training videos to TV ads; from documentary and reality TV shows to TV news; but also as complementary VHS and similar video formats. Viewers were invited to be active TV consuming audiences: TV set-ups integrated and sometimes pretended to transform the viewer into a participant of the show. TV programmes spread the conviction that subjects had the ability to shape their own body.

Bodies and health on television have not been extensively researched, in particular in the socialist and transition to market-economy contexts. The conference seeks to analyse how television and its evolving formats—contemporary, similar and yet differing in national broadcast contexts—expressed and staged bodies and health from local, regional, national and international perspectives. Focusing on the Central and East-European countries after 1945, the conference seeks to better understand the role that TV, as a modern visual mass media, has played in what may be cast as the transition from a national bio-political public health paradigm at the beginning of the twentieth century, to alternative societal forms of the late twentieth century when (supposedly) “better” and “healthier” lives were increasingly shaped by market forces.

We are looking for proposals that will answer such questions as (but not limited to):

How should we understand the relationship between TV and public health in a socialist and post-socialist context? Could we identify a common trend and transfers among the televisual treatment of health in different socialist countries and contexts? What are the key changes and continuities over time and place? How does thinking about the relationship between public health and TV change our understanding of both? How were shifts problems, policies and practices in public health represented on TV? How did TV represent institutions concerned with the public’s health? How was TV used to improve or hinder public health? What aspects of public health were represented on TV, and what were not? In what way was TV different from other forms of mass media in relation to public health? How did the public respond to health messages on TV? To what extent can the notion of “market” be used in the socialist context to define the relationship between viewers/patients and television/doctors?

The conference aims to bring together scholars from different fields (such as, but not limited to, history, history of science, history of medicine, anthropology, sociology, communication, film and media studies, television studies, communication) working on the history of television in East European countries and the USSR/Russia in the post-Stalinist era and the years following the collapse of the Socialist Bloc. Papers might focus on one national, regional or local framework, or may be comparative in approach. Indeed, considerations of the history of health-related (audio-) visuals as a history of transfer, as entangled histories or with a comparative perspective inside the Socialist Bloc and/or with Western counterparts, are welcome. The organizers welcome contributions with a strong historical impetus from all social and cultural sciences.

The conference will take place in Paris, 18-20 June 2020. Travel and accommodation funding will be available, upon application.

Proposals for presentations of approx. 3000 characters as well as a short CV are requested by 20 December 2019 by e-mail to: Alexandre Sumpf. Candidates will be notified by 31 January 2020.

Conference Scientific Committee: Frances Bernstein (Drew University) Alain Blum (CERCEC/EHESS, co-organizer in Paris) Christian Bonah (Université de Strasbourg, BodyCapital) Kirsten Bönker (Universität Bielefeld) Heather Gumbert (Virginia Tech) Aniko Imre (University of Southern California) Heike Karge (Universität Regensburg) Anja Laukotter (Max Planck Institute, BodyCapital) Sarah Phillips (Indiana University) Katrin Steffen (Universität Hamburg) Alexandre Sumpf (Université de Strasbourg, BodyCapital)

Conference Organizing Committee: Alain Blum (CERCEC/EHESS, co-organizer in Paris) Christian Bonah (Université de Strasbourg, BodyCapital) Tricia Close-Koenig (Université de Strasbourg, BodyCapital) Anja Laukotter (Max Planck Institute, BodyCapital) Alexandre Sumpf (Université de Strasbourg, BodyCapital)