The Workshop

Stress is omnipresent in the contemporary, fast-paced, ‘modern’ European and North American socie-ties; everybody talks about being ‘stressed’, especially when discussing one’s working conditions. With glo-balisation, Western work regimes are spreading into virtually every region of the world including the Asian growth economies. But does ‘stress’ travel along and, if so, what shape does it take in different socio-cultu-ral contexts?

The workshop ‘The Culture of Stress’ presents diffe-rent epidemiological, historical and anthropological answers to this question and it scrutinises the poten-tial of interdisciplinary research combining biomedical approaches and the humanities.

Invited speakers: Richard Wilkinson (University of Nottingham, UK) Allan Young (McGill University, Canada)Dominique Behague (LSHTM, UK) Rita Yusuf (Independent University of Bangladesh) William Dressler (The University of Alabama, USA)

Picture: Kristin Herrmann, Visualising Stress EffectsPicture: Kristin Herrmann, Visualising Stress Effects

Organizers: Adrian Loerbroks, Christian Strümpell, Hasan Ashraf Venue: Room 212, Karl Jaspers Centre

Workshop, Heidelberg, May 22-23, 2012The Culture of Stress

ADMISSION FREE

The Project

The concept of ‛stress’ emerged in Western medical discour-se not even a century ago and was associated with a mo-dern, urban-industrial fast-paced work- and life-style. Soon after World War II ‛stress’ turned into the dominant issue in professional and lay discourse on the predicament of mo-dern success-oriented societies, and triggered a growing demand for ‛stress-relieving’ techniques and products. With (neoliberal) globalisation this Western life-style is spreading across the globe, especially into the Asian growth econo-mies, and so is – allegedly – the Western concept ‛stress’. At the same time, Asian meditation techniques are advertised as traditional Eastern remedies for ‛stressed’ Westerners. Our project adopts an interdisciplinary approach combining historical, anthropological and epidemiological (biomedical/statistical) methodologies to study the processes underlying the transcultural flow of stress and stress relief techniques between Europe and Asia.

Prof Dr. Joachim E. Fischer, is the Director of the Mannheim Institute of Public Health, Social and Preventive Medicine, Heidelberg University. His research focus is on Occupa-tional Health and Public Health.

Prof. Dr. med. Wolfgang U. Eckart is Chair of the Institute for the History and Ethics of Medicine, Heidelberg University and his interest areas are Modern History of Medi-cine, History of War and Medicine, Medicine and National Socialism, Medical Ethics.

Prof. Dr. William S. Sax is the Head of theDepartment of Anthropology, South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University. His research foci are Ethnography of India, Anthropology of Religion, Medical Anthropo-logy and Western Himalayas

Project Members

Hasan Ashraf is writing his doctoral thesis on ‛Transnational industrialisation and ge-nesis of stress among the female garment factory workers in Bangladesh’. He holds an Master degree in Anthropology.

Adrian Loerbroks is an epidemiologist (MSc, PhD) and health scientist (MSc). He leads a junior research group at the Mannheim Ins-titute of Public Health, Heidelberg Universi-ty. His main research focus is on psychoso-cial determinants of health and disease.

Saskia Rohmer is writing her doctoral thesis on ‛Stress: The history of a western concept and its flow to South Asia’. She holds an MA in History and Anthropology.

Nike-Ann Schröder is currently working on her PhD thesis ‛Tibetan Buddhist meditati-on of gcod as a practice and ritual healing approach in local and transcultural con-texts’. She holds an MA in Tibetology and Educational Studies.

Maria Steinisch is a medical doctor writing her doctoral thesis on ‛Epidemiological per-spectives on work stress in a readymade garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh’. She also holds a degree in Anthropology and is interested in Cultural Psychiatry.

Christian Strümpell is a research associate at the Department of Anthropology, South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University. His re-search interests are in Economic, Political and Medical Anthropology. He is currently writing his postdoctoral thesis on industrial labour in India and Bangladesh.

The Project Coordinators

Programme Day 2

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Session E Chair: Wolfgang Eckart

09:00 – 10:30 Keynote: Allan Young Stress, traumatic stress and the culture of resilience

10:30 – 10:45 Coffee Break

Session F Chair: Adrian Loerbroks

10:45 – 11:30 Dominique Behague: Teen technoscience and the angu- ish of ‛making up’ teen mothers in Southern Brazil

11:30 – 12:15 Nike-Ann Schröder: Learning resilience?!

12:15 – 12:25 Coffee Break

Session G Chair: Adrian Loerbroks, Christian Strümpell

12:25 – 13:15 Final discussion William Sax, Wolfgang Eckart, Joachim Fischer (Discussants)

13:15 – 14:30 Lunch Break at Café Rossi, Rohrbacher Straße 4

Programme Day 1

Tuesday, May 22, 2012 09:00 -09:30 Registration09:30 - 09:45 Welcome and Introduction

Session A Chair: William Sax09:45 - 11:15 Keynote: Richard Wilkinson: Inequality: the enemy between us?

11:15 - 11:30 Coffee Break

Session B Chair: Christian Strümpell11:30 - 12:15 Hasan Ashraf: Bangladesh’s global garment factories and the political economy of ‛stress’

12:15 - 13:00 Rita Yusuf, Maria Steinisch, Adrian Loerbroks: Stress and health in Asia: epidemiological perspectives

13:00 - 14:00 Lunch Break at restaurant La Vite, Bergheimer Straße 23

Session C Chair: Harald Fuess14:00 - 14:45 Saskia Rohmer: Culture and ‛insanity’: theories of stress in the late 19th and early 20th century

14:45 – 15:30 Wolfgang Eckart: Maltreated bodies and harrowed souls: stress and trauma during and after the Great War

15:30 – 16:00 Coffee Break

Session D Chair: Joachim Fischer16:00 – 16:45 William Dressler: Culture and the stress process

16:45 – 17:30 Christian Strümpell: ‛Stress’ and social capital in Bangladesh’s steel factories

19:30 Dinner at restaurant Kurpfälzisches Museum, Hauptstrasse 97

Contact

Project C5: Stress and Stress-ReliefCluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe”Karl Jaspers Centre, Voßstr. 2 69115 Heidelberg, GermanyPhone: +49 (0) 6221 54 4314Email: ashraf@asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.dehttp://www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de/en/c5

This workshop is funded by the Cluster of Excellence and organised by Project C5 “Stress and Stress-Relief”

The Cluster “Asia and Europe”

The Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context” is an interdisciplinary network of researchers at Heidelberg University. The Cluster was established in October 2007 as part of the Excellence Initiative, which was launched by the German states and the federal government. It is supervised by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the German Science Council (Wissenschaftsrat). Today, the Cluster has about 200 researchers, who examine processes of cultural exchange between Asia and Europe. In parti-cular, they analyse the shifting asymmetries in cultu-ral, social and political flows. Their work probes issues relevant to contemporary concerns about globalisati-on by investigating into the cultural transfer of ideas, knowledge and commodities.

How to find us: The Cluster is located at the Karl Jaspers Centre for Advanced Transcultural Studies, Voßstraße 2, Heidelberg, Germany.

To reach us from Heidelberg Main Station, take bu-ses no. 32 (direction “Universitätsplatz”), 33 (direc-tion “Ziegelhausen”), 34 (direction “Wilhelmsfeld”) or 735 (direction “Eiterbach”), or trams no. 5 (direction “Schriesheim”) or 21 (direction “Handschuhsheim”). Get off at the stations “Thibautstraße” or “Bismarck-platz”. From there, it is just a few minutes’ walk to the Karl Jaspers Centre.

Picture: Kristin Herrmann, Visualising Stress Effects