Ways of healing: exploring more-than-biomedical cures as emancipatory and biopolitical knowledges-practices

Healing is loosely defined as the process(es) of becoming well. Despite its all-embracing multispecies quality, social and scientific significance(s) across spaces, times and cultures, there is a lacuna concerning critical ontological and epistemological frameworks of healing, particularly in the areas of Science and Technology Studies (STS), feminist theory and body studies. As an initial attempt to approach these questions and limitations, we organised the open panel Ways of healing as part of the Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S) 2021 Annual Meeting. The panel engaged with local, traditional, and profane healing knowledge-practices as relational and sustainable healthcare approaches as well as biopolitical tools of neoliberal (individual) responsibilisation. By focusing on how to analyse, establish and build on ‘good relations’ between (1) traditional health cultures and biomedicine, and (2) lay and professional expertise, this conference report addresses pluralistic ways of healing in unequal and uncertain worlds.