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Gergely Mohácsi
■Affiliation
Researcher, Keio Advanced Research Centers (Global COE CARLS), Keio University
■Outline of Research
In my current research, I focus on pathologies and practicalities of chronic conditions by examining how the decay of the human body is attended, conceptualized, and enacted in medical practice and popular health culture. Conducting ethnographic fieldwork in clinical settings and health care facilities, I am looking at the daily trial and error struggles of patients suffering from diabetes, a rapidly growing health care issue in contemporary Japan. Building my analysis around the anthropological concept of embodiment, I try to describe how daily encounters with medical technologies and practices of care introduce new ways of attending bodies (of self and other). My argument, in short, is that the daily routines of disease (here, the treatment of high sugar levels in the blood) mobilize new and rich sensory modalities through a restructuring of basic processes of the collective social and technological shaping of human experience.
■Education and Professional Experience
2009- Lecturer, Anthropology Department, The College of Liberal Arts, International Christian University
2007- Lecturer, Department of Education, Faculty of Integrated Arts and Social Sciences, Japan Women's University
2002- The University of Tokyo, Japan, Ph.D. Candidate in Cultural Anthropology
2002. Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan, M.Sc., Agricultural Economics
2002. ELTE University, Budapest, Hungary, B.A. and M.A., Cultural Anthropology
1999. ELTE University, Budapest, Hungary, B.A. and M.A., History
■Recent Academic Papers and Presentations
"Sai wo mi ni tsukeru - Tonyobyoyaku no shiyo ni miru ningen to kagaku no sokansei" (Embodying Difference: The Pharmaceutical Mediation of Human and Scientific Values in Diabetes Care). Bunkajinruigaku (Cultural Anthropology) 73(1): 70-92., 2008.
"In Search of New Pharmaceutical Senses" -- Paper presented at Medical Anthropology at the Intersections: Celebrating 50 Years of Interdisciplinarity. International Conference of the Society for Medical Anthropology, Yale University, September, 2009.
"Missing Hormones, Working Men, and Other Metabolic Interferences" -- Paper presented at Traveling Comparisons: Ethnographic Reflections on Science and Technology, International Workshop at Osaka University. July, 2009.
"Byōki no sōō : tōnyōbō to sutoresu (Tōkyo no serufuherupu gurūpu no jirei kara)" [Commensurating Disease : The Case of Diabetes and Stress (A Study of a Self-Help Group in Tokyo)] -- Paper presented at the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Cultural Anthropology, National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, May 2009.
"Genomic Interferences: Reflections on Difference and Similarity in Diabetes Research" - Paper presented at the International Symposium A New Horizon In Cultural, Medical, and Clinical Anthropology: Genes, Oracles, Biotechnologies organized by the Centre of Advanced Research on Logic and Sensibility, Keio University, Tokyo, January, 2009.
"Trials of Difference: The Case of Clinical Research on Diabetes in Japan" - Paper presented at the 107th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, San Francisco, November, 2008.