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SUMMARY:Expertise\, endorsement and enlightenment: the trials and tribulat
 ions of health foods in late eighteenth-century Paris - Emma Spary (Facult
 y of History)
DTSTART:20110512T153000Z
DTEND:20110512T170000Z
UID:TALK30721@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Nicky Reeves
DESCRIPTION:In this paper I will extend a discussion over expertise that h
 as recently engaged both historians and sociologists of knowledge to a sli
 ghtly unlikely topic: health foods. Drawing upon the institutional trials 
 of food products marketed in eighteenth-century Paris for their health-giv
 ing properties\, I will consider how and why producers of these specialise
 d foods laid claim to scientific and medical enlightenment on their own be
 half\, and why they courted endorsements from the royal\, scientific and m
 edical institutions in the French capital. Considering Paris's Société R
 oyale de Médecine (1776–1793) in particular\, the paper will explore th
 e ways in which the endorsement process affirmed\, but also potentially co
 mpromised\, the public authority of such institutions. As the Société la
 id claim to the role of neutral arbiter of natural knowledge\, it increasi
 ngly needed to distance its official pronouncements about food products fr
 om established practices of endorsement. The views of entrepreneurs about 
 the public role of this and other royal institutions\, on the other hand\,
  were very different. The construction of scientific and medical expertise
  within the public domain was thus\, as Thomas Broman has shown\, a comple
 x process involving several different categories of actors\, each of which
  produced its own configuration of the relationships between institutions\
 , experts\, producers and consumers.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 2\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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