Skin Health: New Biocultural Zones of Contact

The overall research question is: How is current skin health practiced in the intersections between everyday life, medical knowledge, industrial interests and aesthetic norms? To answer the research question, we will work with the following objectives:

1. To produce a nested set of ethnographic case studies spanning medical and technological knowledge practices, commercialization, everyday care practices and patient experiences, and situate this in relation to the cultural and medical history of skin and dermatology.
2. To empirically and theoretically advance and develop the notion of skin as a complex in-between biocultural phenomenon as an entry to understand current skin related healthcare issues such as inequality, shame, stigma, and medicalized bodies.
3. To develop a humanistic methodological concept, inspired by the concept of zone of contact, where ethnographic and cultural historical methods are combined to fully comprehend how historical, cultural, and social aspects are formative for and deeply embedded in current health and care practices, technology development and medical phenomena

In WP1, Transcending and Translating Skin, we will investigate how scientific understandings of skin construct the way we think and practice skin. Inspired by the current debate and activism on ‘decolonizing dermatology’ we will investigate the medical history of dermatology, where categories such as gender, race, class and morality have shaped not only the medical but also popular understandings of skin. We will study the intensified scientific interest in artificial skin (robotics and skin grown in laboratories) and skin microbiome habitats (the skin as a living landscape). We will conduct fieldwork in cutting-edge research contexts, such as the LEO Foundation Skin Immunology Research Center at the University of Copenhagen, the division of Engineering and Applied Science in Caltech, California, and companies, such as Touchlab in Edinburg, developing and producing eSkin and the US-based AOBiome Therapeutics engaged in developing new medical treatments and cosmetic products.

In WP2, Skin and the Life Course, we will study how skin health and skin care is part and parcel of our individual and collective lives, and how it is defined, shaped, and negotiated by a variety of actors in the course of an individual’s life. Throughout the life course skin is an ongoing matter of concern serving as an active canvas for care, social relations, industrial interests, power and inequality. We will study the everyday skin work related to infants/toddlers, teenagers, and older adults, as examples of critical skin stages over the life course. Empirically, we will focus on the daily skin care practices in households and in public institutions (e.g. nurseries and residential care units), and we will pay special attention to the impact of commercialization and aesthetic norms in daily practices.

In WP3, The Troubled and Ill Skin, we will develop an understanding of how skin is more than just a passive object of medicalization and treatment, but also an active sign and signal system that affords continued action and attention and may evoke processes of shame and stigma. We will investigate the detailed and time-consuming practices entailed in living with and treating a troubled skin, and we will explore the socio-material daily handlings of skin diseases with a focus on how everyday life becomes an intersection of medical, social, and cultural skin practices. We will investigate two types of skin conditions: scabies and psoriasis. The first is an infestation of mites demonstrating how the skin reacts to an ‘attack’ from the outside; the second is a chronic, autoimmune disease demonstrating how the skin reacts to internal attacks. We will conduct fieldwork with patients and relatives, healthcare professionals, pharmaceutical companies, and patient organizations

• Ken Arnold
• Liv Eidsmo
• Karen Vallgårda

Bloom Festival.