Paper Short Abstract:

My paper aims at addressing questions related to the links between the difficulties and challenges encountered by ethnologists and anthropologists nowadays and mental health in specific post-covid crisis, in conflictual times, as well as under the pressure of neoliberal academia requirements.

Paper Abstract:

My paper aims at addressing questions related to the links between the difficulties and challenges encountered by ethnologists and anthropologists nowadays, and mental health, in specific post-covid crisis, conflictual times, as well as under the pressure of neoliberal academia requirements and debatable competitive frames.

Mainly, I attempt to focus on the case of ethologists and anthropologists working in Cluj-Napoca (Romania), part of them in a research institute, the other one at the University, documenting the main professional problems they face at present, as well as the ways their mental health is affected in and by recent micro and macro contexts (the new academic demands, their inadequacies, the new political, economic, social contexts characterised by uncertainty and unrest).

My intention is also to underline and assess how the interviewed ethologists/anthropologists’ entire perspectives on fieldwork, work motivations, ethics, habits, flow have been reshaped in these turbulent times, what kind of crises have been triggered by all these changes produced in a relatively short period of time, and how all these challenged mental health.

Specifically, through in depth interviews, as well as life histories, I also attempt to investigate the current meanings of competitions, newly created solidarities, the power relations as they are redefined in the framework of the focused on institutions.

Meanwhile, valuing the interviewees' narratives, I aim at approaching the specific dynamics of New Normal, Great Resignation and Quiet Quitting as concepts but also as social/cultural realities.