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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:
- Thursday 1 April, -
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 Thursday 1 April, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
The project explores the affective dimensions of everyday moral dilemmas and ethical practices among caregivers who have been discouraged to touch and visit their loved ones which are the most fundamental ways of caring for those affected at homes and in care homes since the pandemic outbroke.
Paper long abstract:
The project explores the affective dimensions of everyday moral dilemmas and ethical practices among caregivers who have been discouraged to touch, kiss, hug, and visit their loved ones which are the most fundamental ways of caring and loving for those affected at homes and in care homes since the pandemic outbroke. Living under such a condition of extraordinary crisis, various feelings, emotions, moods, and imaginations are often exposed and play an important role in the process of everyday ethical decision-making and becoming ethical. Nevertheless, there are neither generally accepted moral and ethical theories of these affective, embodied, and material practices nor social scientific methods of these bodily transformations. By inviting them to a collaborative mobile (digital) and mapping project, I capture transformative affective-discursive ethical practices, revealing the moral and ethical assemblage and highlighting the possibility of dwelling with their loved one at a distance and at home.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the effects of life under lockdown for hijras, a 'third' gender community in India who despite being branded as carriers of the coronavirus found ways to reaffirm their positive contributions to the wider society by distributing face masks and food, crossing boundaries of care.
Paper long abstract:
On 25 March 2020, India put its population of 1.38 billion under lockdown to curb community transmission of Covid-19, giving a little under four hours' notice. This sudden announcement was not taken well by many vulnerable groups, including migrant workers, daily wagers including sex workers, and the hijras, a third-gender community in India. Members of the hijra community typically earn money by asking for voluntary donations in exchange for their blessings. Some hijras also beg at traffic intersections and on public transportation, or solicit sex in public cruising areas. These ways of self-employment are the opposite of "social distancing," a public hygiene practice the Indian government adopted in its fight against the global pandemic. As a result, these options were no longer available to the hijras as primary sources of livelihood. Compounding this predicament, there were other significant social and cultural implications of the lockdown. As fear became a breeding ground for hate, there was an increase in transphobic misinformation and "fake news" targeting the hijra community branding them as carriers of the coronavirus, including public calls to beat them. Despite these troubling circumstances, some hijras found ways to reaffirm their positive contributions to the wider society by distributing food and face masks to the public because the hijras believe that it is their moral duty to take care of their caretakers. This paper will highlight the tensions between hijras and the general public heightened during the pandemic and what impact it has on the social relations between them.
Paper short abstract:
Through a combination of digital ethnography and critical discourse analysis of media sources, this paper examines how the needs of disabled children have been discussed and responded to by their caregivers, educators, international organizations and the Indian state during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Paper long abstract:
Prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic, children have been widely written about as the future of the nation and a significant source of potential for economic growth in India. Amidst these normative framings, disabled children are often described as inhabiting atypical childhoods, a construction which further obscures their lived realities. Disabled children have been relegated to the margins of state care, coming to be constructed as burdensome and vulnerable when their bodies do not conform to ideals of self-reliant, independent citizens under the logics of neoliberal ableism. Bringing scholarship from the anthropology of childhood to bear on media representations of state care during the pandemic, this paper argues that care for children’s needs has been described by the media and provided by the state through three primary lenses -- first, physical care for the needs of bodies that are seen as excessive and therefore requiring exceptional kinds of care. Second, material care for children’s needs has been discussed through the lens of schooling, where neoliberal, ableist logics emerge in the form of concerns around the loss of learning that children are experiencing during this time. Finally, during the pandemic, responsibility for the management of disabled children’s purportedly excessive needs has been a source of contention between parents and educators. Through a combination of digital ethnography and critical discourse analysis of media sources, this paper will discuss how children’s bodies and needs have been explicitly discursively constructed as excessive by implicitly drawing upon neoliberal, ableist logics of loss and productivity.
Paper short abstract:
COVID-19 restrictions have disrupted established traditions of caring for the deceased and the bereaved in Aotearoa. Innovations and exemptions allowed communities to adapt during the pandemic, but also led to longstanding ‘responsibilities’ associated with death and funerals being reassessed.
Paper long abstract:
At the height of Aotearoa’s lockdown in March-April 2020, funerals and tangihanga were banned altogether, before having their numbers capped at 10 during ‘Level 3’. Religious leaders, community leaders, and individuals thus had to devise alternative ways of discharging their responsibilities to the deceased and those who were grieving. This could involve developing innovative new substitutes for established practices. It could also involve suspending certain duties and obligations, in what we refer to as a ‘COVID exemption’.
While ‘COVID exemptions’ were sometimes undertaken with sadness – as well as anger regarding the lack of consultation before restrictions were imposed – there was widespread recognition that they were necessary to safeguard public health. Many respondents took pride in their traditions’ adaptability and in their communities’ active participation in responding to COVID-19.
For some, however, the ‘COVID exemption’ also led to critical reassessment of longstanding obligations. ‘Restricted’ funerals presented distinct opportunities: from the sense of personal intimacy associated with a small service, to relief at being spared the burdensome costs of a traditional funeral. Indeed, because of the way it had reframed apparent cultural responsibilities as profligacy, some even came to view the pandemic as ‘an Act of God’.
COVID-19 funerary restrictions thus confronted people with complex tensions between the social facts of established ‘responsibilities’, and ‘responsibility’ as an ethic of ‘response’ to a dynamic world. ’ We consider the implications of these tensions both for cultural practice following the coronavirus’s elimination from Aotearoa, and for anthropological theories of responsibility and care.