Soin, Sens et Santé —An International Journal of the Health Humanities is the leading French journal of the medical and health humanities. It publishes original scientific research texts in French and English, with a uni- or multidisciplinary approach. An anonymous peer review process evaluates articles. The journal is published annualy.
The journal is an offshoot of the International Medical Humanities Research Network accredited by the CNRS, which brought together twelve universities in France, Europe, and the rest of the world. It aims to enhance the visibility and attractiveness of medical and health humanities (irn-medical-humanities.org).
Soin, Sens et Santé is affiliated with Sorbonne Nouvelle and hosted by the PREO journal incubator.
It also benefits from logistical and financial support from the Institut des humanités en médecine (IHM) at the University of Lausanne and the Centre hospitalier universitaire vaudois (CHUV), as well as from UMR7172 THALIM (jointly affiliated to Sorbonne Nouvelle University, CNRS, and Ecole Normale Supérieure - PSL).
First Editorial of the Journal
Soin, Sens et Santé aims to provide a forum for scientific publication in the fields of medical and health humanities. More specifically, it purports to set in dialogue various research strands in a field whose boundaries are at once hazy, contested and shifting, but whose momentum is evidenced by the transformations of human healthcare and the multiples issues that impact it.
Though Soin, Sens et Santé neither relies on a pre-established definition of medical humanities nor intends to provide one, it nonetheless wishes to give pride of place to interdisciplinary studies that have been inspired by it.
Because philosophy, social sciences, anthropology, history, law, economics, political science, geography, ecology, or research into literature and the arts address issues relating to care, medicine and health, in their multi-faceted theoretical and problematical aspects, this journal aims to provide them with an arena for open-minded, benevolent and creative debate.
Only through the creation of such a flexible space for publication and interdisciplinary dialogue – encompassing methods and their epistemological basis, as well as their impacts – will health humanities become part and parcel of the French-speaking scientific landscape, and pave the way for a resolutely interdisciplinary approach.
One last word deserves special attention : French, as Soin, Sens et Santé purports to make sure that research in medical humanities can thrive as much within the confines of France as without. In particular, the journal aims to provide a range of vocabulary and critical apparatus that can contain the field without stifling its development In that respect, the translation of foundational or recently-published texts in English will feature prominently.
On the other hand, when it comes to paving the way for the field. Soin, Sens et Santé has set itself other goals.
Among the many underlying characteristics, the detailed and place-based examination of clinical encounters, care practice and health technologies will find its way into the journal. Among other things, this will be achieved in the light of the still-rising critical health humanities and, as a consequence, other areas of reflection and approaches, such as disability studies, the decolonisation of knowledge and health practices, global health, or One Health, and their many repercussions. She- or he-patients, female or male users of healthcare systems, and more broadly speaking people with illness, will see their trajectories, their experiences and those of their people brought into sharper focus.
We also want the journal to be a place for (sometimes sharp, sometimes painful) questioning and debate on the preventive and therapeutic functions of works in the medical humanities, or the nature and degree of commitment, or even activism that this is likely to entail, particularly in the face of health inequalities and social injustices, as well as ethical shortcomings in research and care.
With these aspirations in mind, the journal promises to encourage the dissemination of work by early-career women and men researchers as well as texts on emerging themes and practices (including though not limited to posthumanism, ecofeminism, or action research) and/or with an eye to formats for disseminating individual and collective research (blogs, podcasts, graphic productions, exhibitions, etc.).
These days, new training and research initiatives are springing up in universities and hospitals, but also outside them, in the French-speaking world and beyond. They broaden the scope of medical and health humanities and enable collaboration between medical and care teams, or teams from the humanities and social sciences, as well as public health, epidemiology and health economics specialists. They open up new areas for reflection, creation, collaboration and the dissemination of kinds of knowledge which 3S would like to encourage people to ponder on.
The journal will regularly invite guest editors to monitor thematic issues, and will host peer-learning activities or collect user feedback about research, interdisciplinary projects or knowledge transfer, primarily from research to teaching. It will also publish non-fiction book reviews, and be home to some of the alternative dissemination formats previously mentioned. Scientific mediation, whatever form it takes, is indeed one of the instruments the journal intends to pay attention to.
The magazine's publication programme reflects this open-minded stance, sensitiveness to debate and plurality of viewpoints. The first issue, taking a literary angle, focuses on the question of diagnosis as fiction. The second one will, through a resolutely multidisciplinary approach, look at the connections between food and health.