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- Convenors:
-
Kaue Felipe Nogarotto Crima Bellini
(University of Basel)
Claudine Rakotomanana (University of Basel)
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Short Abstract:
After the Covid-19 pandemic, Migrants and LGBTQIA+ bodies became further targeted for marginalization and exclusion. This panel aims to gather studies that analyze and engage in methodological, epistemic, and material responses to the narratives and biotechnologies of control around on such groups.
Long Abstract:
During the Covid-19 pandemic, various political leaders used prejudicial discourse to point out an alleged correlation between certain marginalized groups and the spreading of the pandemic. In some cases, stopping the widespread Covid-19 infections was used together with political regime agendas. For example, with the strengthening of borders and nationalistic discourse, minorities such as migrants became even more vulnerable to the virus, violence, and other forms of precarity. Judith Butler´s Frames of War (2009) compellingly presents the notion of schemas of intelligibility that delegitimatize the lives or deaths of some bodies. In what relates to Covid-19, the deadliness of the virus infection was denied or underestimated by many. From Antivax movements and right-wing agents to neo-Pentecostal radicals, the conservative discourses and manifestations aim to answer distress during these times. Embroidered in this complex network of glocal precarity lies a multitude of relations, human and non-human, classist, racial, sexual, moral, and gendered, to name but a few. This panel intends to gather an anthropological constellation of works that deal with the intricacy of the present times and aims to understand how/why the relations above occur. How is the challenging stigma on vulnerable people worsened over the last two years, and how is it related to Covid-19? In terms of anthropological research geared towards marginalized people, how did the pandemic flop the course of research practices and resilience? Talking about the response and reaction to the global pandemic, how has the researcher's question of access been shaped lately?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 12 April, 2023, -Paper short abstract:
This study aims to understand the health seeking behaviour of Bangladeshi migrants for their treatment of mental illness in the UK. The findings of this study demonstrated that health seeking behaviour is diversified.
Paper long abstract:
The focus of this study is to understand how Bangladeshi migrants seek treatment for mental illness in Eastbourne, UK. Data of this study was collected virtually by online semi-structured interviews using Facebook messenger and What's App video calls. Bangladeshi migrants came in the UK voluntarily for economic or family reasons and their descendants continued to live in the UK. The practice of medical pluralism transfers from Bangladesh to the UK through first generation. This kind of medical pluralism transfers again from first generation to second-generation. Although first and second-generation Bangladeshi migrants are accepting UK psychiatric care, they also practice traditional healing simultaneously which is a common practice in their country of origin especially in the case of mental illnesses. This article argued that the health-seeking behaviour is not strictly biomedical; it is in many ways religious or to some extent social what first and second-generation Bangladeshi migrants practice for their treatment of mental illness. This article also demonstrated that Bangladeshi migrants seek diversified ways of treatment for their mental illness as they cannot rely on single way of treatment pattern in this unwell world.
Key Words: Bangladeshi migrants, mental illness, first generation, second-generation, medical pluralism
Paper short abstract:
In this paper, I draw from my (auto)ethnographic fieldwork during and after the Covid-19 lockdown in queer-feminist self-defense groups, in order to reflect on what it means to do anthropology as an observant participant, as part of a community formed by shared embodied vulnerability.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper, I propose an embodied approach to anthropological work in a field traversed by violence, by drawing from preliminary findings of my (auto)ethnography in queer-feminist self-defense in Greece. My ethnography explores how diverse online and offline practices of survival are built in communities formed by common embodied experiences of SGBV (Sexual and Gender-Based Violence). I follow a conceptualisation of self-defense as a subaltern practice, through which queer and femme bodies train to appropriate the violence that constructs them, when learning the language of violence becomes the only available choice. Carrying out this research during and after the Covid-19 lockdown posed questions by those who are not safe at home, on how the unequally distributed vulnerability intensifies the violence experienced by confined bodies, driving them to seek networks of community regardless of geographical location. Excerpts of my autoethnography diary are used here to write a “somatopolitical fiction” (Preciado 2008), examining the ways with which violence, confinement and resistance become inscribed on my body and bodies like mine. With this, I seek to question what it means to do anthropology as part of a community formed by shared embodied vulnerability. I aim to reflect on the practice of anthropology as situated knowledge; to critically ask “with whose blood are my eyes crafted” (Haraway 1998), when my own “observant participation” (Campbell & Lassiter 2015) as a trans*/researcher positions me both within but also at the margins of a field embedded in violence.
Paper short abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on many different communities, including the LGBTQIA+ populations. This paper will explore how inequalities have increased for the Brazilian Queer population during the pandemic, focusing on the ABABA-related consequences.
Paper long abstract:
In addition to the economic impact of the pandemic, the LGBTQIA+ population has also faced significant health disparities during the pandemic. One primary concern is the unequal access to healthcare for Queer individuals, which the pandemic has exacerbated. Furthermore, the pandemic has also highlighted the significant mental health challenges faced by the LGBTQIA+ population. Many Queer individuals have experienced increased levels of stress, anxiety, and depression during the pandemic, due to isolation, social stigma, and discrimination (National LGBT Health Education Center, 2021). This has been compounded by the lack of access to mental health services, particularly for uninsured people who face barriers to care due to their sexual orientation or gender identity.
This paper will discuss the Brazilian case, with former president Bolsonaro as a medium for strengthening anti-science discourse during the pandemic. If (1) part of psychology's potency rests on the premise that it is a practice guided by scientific theory, (2) psychology aims to establish itself as a space of care and amplification of visibility for LGBTQIA+ people, and (3) non-scientific discourses have gained traction through sensationalist social media advertising as a faster and more efficient alternative to psychological science. So, the anti-science discourse and measures articulated by the Bolsonaro government may have operated, in the field of psychological science, to weaken the possibility that the application of scientific psychology acts to construct strategies to prevent the precarization of LGBTQIA+ lives.