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- Convenors:
-
Nicholas Long
(London School of Economics and Political Science)
CARUL Collective (Various)
Sharyn Davies (Monash University)
Susanna Trnka (University of Auckland)
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- Stream:
- Health, Disease and Wellbeing
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 31 March, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
COVID-19 restrictions have confronted many people with new patterns of dependency and obligation in both their public and domestic lives. How, and to what effect, have they engaged with these? What are the implications of such material for anthropological theorisations of care and responsibility?
Long Abstract:
During the coronavirus pandemic, physical co-presence has become a possible vector of contagion and thus subject to restriction. Such restrictions have had far-reaching effects, disrupting care relations that extend beyond the household, whilst intensifying the pressure to care or be cared for by those with whom one shares a household.
Moreover, restrictions only work if adhered to collectively and are therefore subject to formal, social and internalised policing. Given the coronavirus's invisibility, however, such policing is necessarily mediated by (often contested) social imaginaries that mark certain people and actions as disproportionately 'irresponsible' or as people who 'don't care'. Meanwhile, whilst some citizens can care for each other simply by staying at home, others must provide public care via essential services, despite this potentially putting them and their loved ones at risk.
For many people, the pandemic has thus been characterised by: a) the emergence of novel dependencies and responsibilities; and b) heightened reflexivity regarding their multiple obligations, and the tensions between them.
Welcoming papers from diverse theoretical perspectives, this panel examines how, and to what effect, people have responded to these aspects of life under lockdown. How do they decide between competing responsibilities? How do they distinguish responsibility from sanctimony; care from control; duty from domination? What political and moral subjectivities are arising from their engagement with questions of care, responsibility and dependency? How is this shaping their social relations and wellbeing? And how can such ethnographies of the pandemic contribute to anthropological theorisations of care and responsibility?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 31 March, 2021, -Emily Wentzell (University of Iowa) Ana-Monica Racila (University of Iowa)
Paper short abstract:
Interviews with US COVID-19 vaccine trial participants reveal efforts to provide collective care through individual biological experience. Participants hoped to protect “collective biologies” against harms of individualist pandemic response; family feared adverse effects might hamper caregiving.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines US COVID-19 vaccine trial participants’ use of their individual biologies to provide collective care. “Human subjects” often seek gains from research participation, for themselves and their groups. For example, author 1 previously found that Mexican spouses expected men’s sexual health research participation to positively affect groups ranging from the couple to the national populace. They understood these as “collective biologies;” groups whose members see themselves as bio-socially interrelated, and thus expect their individual, embodied actions to concretely affect other members’ health. Here we investigate how such efforts fare amid widespread refusal of collectivity.
We analyze 31 interviews with Iowan participants in the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine phase III trial. Iowa’s governor has promoted personal responsibility instead of public health measures, exemplifying the role of individualist culture in the failed US pandemic response. Amid unchecked community spread, interviewees hoped their trial participation could protect the health of specific collective biologies. These included families they hoped to protect by possibly reducing their own potential to infect them, and groups characterized by race/ethnicity, age, or sex for whom they hoped to ensure vaccine efficacy and model vaccine acceptance. While interviewees understood trial participation as care, they reported concerns from loved ones that adverse effects might disrupt participants’ daily caregiving duties, rendering participation irresponsible.
These findings show how individuals might use changes in their own biologies – in the form of experimental vaccination – to care for bio-social collectives amid bitter disagreement about the natures of collectivity, responsibility and care.
Lidia Katia C. Manzo (University of Milan (Italy)) Sara Martucci (Mercy College) Alessandra Minello (University of Florence)
Paper short abstract:
The disruption of formal and informal childcare arrangements has intensified working mothers multiple responsibilities during the COVID-19 social restrictions in Italy and US. We also discuss moral subjectivities arising from mothers’ solidarity networks.
Paper long abstract:
Drawing on a comparative virtual ethnography, we explore how the disruption of formal and informal childcare arrangements has intensified working mothers multiple responsibilities during the COVID-19 social restrictions in Italy and US. We also discuss the resources that mothers have mobilized to create a network of social support in the organization of care.
Our study illustrates the centrality of mothers’ moral subjectivities to deal with the pandemic as care leaders. Organic forms of caring emerged to create spaces of solidarity for people to heal, forging emotional ties, awareness, and participation.
Financialized capitalist societies created an institutional basis for new forms of women’s subordination, often silenced in political discourses and maintained in the domestic sphere. More than ever, the pandemic magnified a ‘crisis of care’ that must be understood structurally. We highlight the need for a massive gender-egalitarian reorganization of social-reproductive activities, particularly birthing and raising children, for care duties and moral subjectivities to be more of a central concern.
Lee Gensler (CUNY Graduate Center)
Paper short abstract:
This paper investigates how a facebook group dedicated to science literacy and public health has become a site of conflict around wishing death on those who fail to adhere to Covid-19 guidelines. Who deserves care, and what does it mean when caring comes to justify a disregard for human life?
Paper long abstract:
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, a growing ecosystem of facebook groups has emerged where people come together to vent about government inaction, share screenshots of posts they disagree with, laugh at memes, and ask each other how to stay safe. These groups are explicitly committed to caring deeply about public health and safety and act as semi-public spaces where people perform their identity as good, caring, and science-literate people.
But they are also often sites of conflict over wishing death upon those who fail to adhere to the same standards. Eugenicist fantasies about who the virus will or should kill are a frequent occurrence and require constant policing by moderators and admins within these spaces. They often focus on ideas of IQ, evolution, Darwinism, and the prevailing sense that some people don’t deserve to live or reproduce. As such, they open up questions about how people can weaponize care for one’s own life as a way to justify wishing death on others; how these online spaces enable this discourse; and who, exactly, is empowered to perform indignant disregard for the lives of others.
To answer these questions, I draw on eight months of digital ethnography conducted in one of these groups, where I have taken on the role of moderator, observed the group as it has grown to over 23,00 members, and interviewed the other members of the group’s admin and moderation team.
Eana Meng (Harvard University) Johannes Lenhard (University of Cambridge)
Paper short abstract:
Based on ethnographic observations with several addiction and homeless support organisations during lockdown, we are asking: who is care for and who decides how it can be traded-off?
Paper long abstract:
Covid has had disproportionate influence on the most marginalised populations, including people struggling with substance use and homelessness. Based on several months of fieldwork with substance users and their support organisations during lockdown in the UK, we ask a fundamental question: who is care for and who decides how it can be traded-off?
Lockdown rules were unclear - given the lack of specific government guidelines - particularly in care institutions such as ones for drug users and those experiencing homelessness. Decisions around who can be cared for and who had to be excluded were made in a rushed, instinctive manner. Often, institutions were balancing between ‘care to ensure public health’ and ‘care for those most in need,’ where taking care of the majority meant decidedly not attending to the needs of the individual most in need. With observations from support workers using acupuncture as harm reduction for addiction and from a homeless shelter tasked with housing an influx of people, we will ethnographically examine how competing responsibilities, failure and deservingness tainted decisions mostly in favour of the majority. How did this play out, and what consequences did it have? More generally, what implications did such policies have to make us think about the nature of care?