Paper Short Abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic engagement with de-escalation training providers and de-escalation practices in Berlin shelters for unhoused persons, this contribution queries how bodies under stress sense and are sensed through lenses of risk and care.

Paper Abstract:

In many facilities providing health and social welfare services in Germany, de-escalation is trained, mandated and practiced to mitigate the risk of staff injury in cases of aggressive and potentially violent behavior. In this contribution, I examine how the body and the senses are mobilized by de-escalation practitioners in order to recognize danger. To do so, I draw on ethnographic engagement with de-escalation training providers and de-escalation practices in Berlin shelters for unhoused persons.

Fraught with the potential of physical harm, de-escalation is profoundly embodied, with aggression, tension and fear locatable in and expressed through individual bodies. Situations must be assessed every time anew, through what Berring, Hummelvoll et al. (2016) term experiential knowing: “generated in face-to-face meetings in direct encounters.” The body figures in these encounters as a source of knowledge and mode of knowing, grounded in perception and experience. Yet (de-)escalating bodies also figure as bodies under stress, with altered cognitive and sensorial capacities. Trainers often describe these changes in neurophysiological terms, referencing hormones such as adrenaline, and the work that they do in altering alertness, memory, perception and motor skills. Stress in de-escalation lore connotes danger, as it is understood to compromise the capacity for self control and rational thought, but also a condition to be cared for in order to mitigate risk. Thinking bodies as material-semiotic nodes (Haraway 1991), I query how bodies under stress sense and are sensed through the lense of de-escalation efforts amidst questions of securitization, structural violence and multiple care crisis.