The geography of health knowledge/s.

Once knowledge can be analysed in terms of region, domain, implantation, displacement, transposition, one is able to capture the processes by which knowledge functions as a form of power (Foucault 1980, p.69). [We] need an earth-wide network of connections, including the ability to partially translate knowledges among very different – and power differentiated – communities. We need the power of modern critical theories of how meanings and bodies get made, not in order to deny meanings and bodies, but in order to live in meanings and bodies that have a chance for a future (Haraway 1991, p.187). The idea for a conference session on the geography of health knowledges first emerged from shared interests and conversations at the Department of Geography at UCL, in early summer 2002. The practical processes of locating these dialogues within wider academic debates, through organising an AAG conference session in New Orleans for March 2003, involved developed into the forms they take here. Throughout these practical organising processes, the name we have given to this endeavour has shifted, and these slippages have been the subject of debate. On different occasions, both deliberately and inadvertently, we found ourselves writing about the geographies of health knowledges, geographies of health knowledge and the geography of health knowledges. A further level of multiplicity and productivity has been added to our deliberations through the rich theoretical languages emerging in the final versions of following papers. Nevertheless, in ultimately codifying the material presented here in the form of a journal special edition, some kind of closure is necessary around this polyphony. An editorial invites a statement of intent, some kind of accountability, from those who have been acting as professional gatekeepers for this contribution to a growing field of work. In this editorial we thus hope to explain some reasons we felt encouraged to collaborate in developing this special edition, and to highlight some themes elaborated in the papers that follow.