Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I explore the impact of Covid-19-related government and private sector response, and the health market on Bangladesh’s public health and primary healthcare in 2020. I analyse how the market and economy of the Covid-19 pandemic negatively affected public health needs and human life.

Paper long abstract:

The global Covid-19 pandemic declaration rapidly influenced global and local healthcare markets. Global pharmaceutical industries acted swiftly to reach the local markets worldwide. Drawing on ethnographic research, in this paper I analyse how the emergence of the Covid-19 crisis intersected with the global and local healthcare markets in 2020 to shape public health governance and affected public health interests, needs and lives in Bangladesh. During the early phase of the crisis, the misuses of administrative power and corruption among public officials, local government representatives, political leaders and bureaucrats became immediately apparent. This fostered a ground of catastrophes in public and private health sectors across the country which exposed some of the fraudulent health care services and drug sales in emergency aid, including illegal marketing of lifesaving medicines, medical equipment and the treatment of Covid-19 disease. Bangladesh state’s dependence on foreign aid and private health corporations along with the prevailing local politics coincided with state restrictions of available local low-cost solutions (e.g. Rapid Antigen test kits, Ivermectin) in combatting the Covid-19 virus. Consequently, health politics, market-based economic approaches and capitalism rendered healthcare for ordinary people expensive and inaccessible. Care seekers were deprived of low-cost technologies and preventive care during the crisis. Engaging the concept of Disaster Capitalism, I argue that the elusive role of the state, the politicised ground of health governance and the medicine market combined with corruption in public and private sectors that ultimately benefitted the private corporations rather than the urgent health needs of Bangladeshis.

Paper short abstract:

Through skillful performance and recreation of normalized Javanese traditional arts practices and rituals, practitioners become endowed with the tradition's delegated power. They wield the Shield of Tradition to obtain more freedom for their communities in times of pandemic restraint and control.

Paper long abstract:

This paper stems from ongoing collaborative ethnography research that involves a PhD candidate from The University of Newcastle working within and with rural communities in Magelang, Indonesia. The project investigates the role of Javanese traditional arts within three selected villages.

Collected ethnographic data suggests that the prevalence and cultural resonance of traditional arts practices within rural Javanese society and politics, allow those able to skillfully perform and recreate the tradition’s normalized practices and related rituals to become ‘endowed with its delegated power’ (Yurchak, 2006).

Traditional arts studios and senior practitioners obtain a sense of freedom by cleverly stepping into zones of delegated power that the tradition has created. Through exploring a variety of events wherein tradition was used to harness increased freedom, the paper will shed light on how, and to what ends, this ‘shield of tradition’ was wielded. Together, these stories will illustrate how in pandemic times of restraint and restriction, the shield of tradition afforded certain villages, namely those with strong traditional arts communities, the opportunity to gather and perform, whilst this was unattainable for other villages.

A close analysis of the ‘spaces occupied or transversed’ (Foucault, 1975) by traditional arts practices in pandemic times, portrays an ever-present complex web of power relationships and looming threats of covid-19 disciplinary action, wherein the tradition was forced to tread during the pandemic. The careful, confident steps of practitioners venturing into these unchartered, yet familiar spaces, sheds unique light on the contemporary position of Javanese traditional arts in Magelang's rural society.