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- Convenors:
-
Carmen Rial
(Federal University of Santa Catarina)
Cornelia Eckert (UFRGS - Brazil)
- Stream:
- Relational movements: Crossroads, Places and Violences/Mouvements relationnels: Carrefours, Lieux et Violences
- Location:
- MNT 202
- Start time:
- 3 May, 2017 at
Time zone: America/New_York
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
Security is not only inscribed in militarized borders, or in political and spatial restrictions of public space, but also penetrates the domestic realm of home. This panel focuses on the various mechanisms deployed to control and assure security, and on how security is perceived and lived spatially.
Long Abstract:
In recent years, border controls, counter-terrorism apparatuses, identification systems, camera-surveillance, internet hackers and insecurity in other "security-scapes" have raised growing interest among politicians, police forces, the media and, of course, researchers from different disciplinary backgrounds and countries, resulting in dissimilar narratives. What are the characteristics of the mechanisms currently envisaged or applied? How they are lived and perceived? What are the unintended adverse consequences of the introduction of surveillance systems, and their side effects? Do they restrain freedom and create insecurity? Can they be characterized as disciplinary - or bio-politic - power? The panel is looking for ethnographic investigations of controlled spaces at militarized borders, in urban public spaces (roads, neighborhoods, buildings, sports arenas, airports…), in the domestic realm of the home, as well as analyses of narratives concerning the actual surveillance systems and futuristic technologies.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
“Exit-seeking” among residents on secure long-term care units is constructed as a problematic behaviour. This paper critically examines the meaning of movement in long-term care and the emergent discourse of environmental interventions that conceal, distract, and divert residents from exit points.
Paper long abstract:
Quality of life for residents with dementia in long-term care is a growing concern for researchers. Attention is turning increasingly to the impact of the institutional environment on residents' experience of themselves and others in space. Directed by the discourse of medicalized health and safety, "exit-seeking" among residents is considered a problematic behaviour on secure units. In the past, the recommended interventions included adding objects that dissuaded people away from the door, such as stop signs, mirrors, dark spiral-patterned carpet, and grid lines taped in front of doors (Chafetz, 1990; Jones & van der Eerden, 2008). New interventions focus on the concealment of exit-points. An increasingly preferred strategy is the illusion mural, or a trompe l'oeil, painted across a wall and doorway to disguise the exit door and reduce residents' exit attempts. Research on these environmental interventions has focused on an empirical discourse about efficacy, reporting primarily the outcome measures of reduced exit-seeking behaviour, or the arrest of movement in a particular direction. Missing from these research accounts is any critical discussion about "environmental interventions" in terms the language of "distraction," "diversion," "illusion," or "concealment" in the context of spaces of dementia care. Also missing are ethnographic accounts about the experience of the installation of a mural from the residents' perspective. This paper will draw upon ethnographic data to critically investigate institutional understanding and intervention of movement among people living with dementia on a secure long-term care unit.
Paper short abstract:
This paper part of an ethnographic research in Porto Alegre (Brazil). The research addresses the issue of culture of fear and crisis in the daily life of people.
Paper long abstract:
Through an anthropological study in Porto Alegre (Brazil) this paper explain our ethnography about the multiple forms negotiations living in the city from the feelings of fear, insecurity, anxiety, etc but also the forms of sociability and multiple interactions.
We observe the specific facts and the daily practices of urban groups in order to know the meaning associated with the flow of experience and everyday interactions and specific situations structured by a sense of temporal sorts of social subjects. We analyze Porto Alegre as a backdrop threatened by crises, violence, fragmentation, etc. For us the concept of crisis and fear as "value" and the presence of meanings in multiple ways to interact and socialize, present in living in an urban world, seized on behalf of the inhabitants as chaotic, insecure and threatening. We want to show the images of the rhythms of lived events and interpreting devices, narratives of collective memories about the complexity of situations experienced. We build life trajectories from the biographical narratives of middle segments inhabitants in the city of Porto Alegre and we bring storys of ethnography events from observation forms of everyday interaction.