Paper short abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic research in Yangon, Myanmar, we explore how 'nar lel hmu' (mutual understanding) formulates between medicine retailers; providers; patients; and regulators, enabling public secrets, which in turn are integral to the provision and regulation of medicines in this context.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores how the Myanmar state practices the regulation of 'illegal' and 'legal' transactions of medicines, and the potential implications such practices have for global and national implementation plans to regulate and restrict medicines in Myanmar. Drawing on ethnographic research in Yangon and documentary and media analysis, our findings demonstrate how wider social, political, and structural factors in Myanmar such as the militarisation of healthcare; regulations around taxes; and the onset of neoliberal reforms influence and determine the ways in which medicines move between retailers; providers; patients; and regulators, beyond the narrative of medicine overuse. We show how the Burmese notion of 'nar lel hmu' (mutual understanding) formulates between regulatory bodies; medicine vendors; and their wider networks, permitting so called 'illegal' practices to become accepted public secrets that are integral to the healthcare provision in this context. These findings suggest that the currently growing action against the 'illegal' - such as jail sentences for vendors selling so called 'illegal' medicines, or confiscation and burning of locally unregistered medicines - combined with the global call to reduce medicine use, may exacerbate pressures on such people. These people include individual health providers; patient/ clients; and street-level administrators, who are often already struggling to cope under a precarious healthcare system. 'Nar lel hmu' acts as one coping mechanism, a means to mutually care for one another while enabling each actor to continue performing one's duties whether this involves selling medicines or on the contrary, regulating the sales of such medicines.

Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on the concept of care and its politics as perceived by mothers living with HIV and AIDS in Egypt in the aftermath of 2011. It is an ethnographic portraiture illustrating ways in which my research interlocutors narrated their perceptions and experiences encountering care

Paper long abstract:

"I cannot show that I am depressed.It is a burden to hide my depression; given that I have to take care of my child and make sure he does not feel or see me in suchtired emotional and physical state."(Maha,an interlocutor,2015).This paper focuses on the concept of care and its related politics as perceived by mothers living with HIV and AIDS in Egypt in the aftermath of 2011 revolution.Iwill depict an ethnographic portraiture illustrating ways in which my interlocutors narrated their perceptions and experiences while encountering care. Care is conceptualized as"when someone comes to matter and the corresponding ethics of attending to the other who matters" (Stevenson 2014:P3).I navigate "care" at the juncture point of the intersecting coordinates of the failed promises of health institutions, political unrest, " idealized caricatures of motherhoods"(Downe P 2011:P12),and the " lines of flight" (Guattari 2015) that mothers deploy and innovate in their everyday to reconfigure care.The paper is part of a more detailed ethnographic research that was conducted from spring 2014 to spring 2015, to explore how my interlocutors perceived their individual experiences of living with HIV during the social and political context of Egypt post 2011. I situated the stories of the research interlocutors within the interlinked discourses of power and authorities such as the medical, the social, the religious, the economic, and the political. It was conducted in Greater Cairo and the interlocutors were mothers living with HIV in their mid-thirties.

Paper short abstract:

Stigma and isolation are common barriers to care for adolescents living with HIV and require understanding care beyond biomedical healthcare. We use participatory spatial research to draw out the spaces, systems and practices of care adolescents in Urban South Africa employ while living with HIV.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, we make the case for broader conceptions of 'care' in supporting the wellbeing of adolescents living with HIV in urban South Africa. Arguably, the ability to live healthily and happily with HIV is driven by a system of social, political, environmental, psychological and economic challenges, suggesting approaches to care should go beyond biomedical treatment. We focus on adolescents in this context because of their vulnerability (facing a high burden of illness and associated high levels of stigma) and because of their creativity in shaping solutions.

Through long-term engagement and participatory spatial research with the adolescent mentors of the Khuluma project (an anonymous peer-to-peer text message support system for adolescents undergoing HIV treatment), we developed insights on their experiences and spatial practices of care. This project has cultivated a virtual space of care, a social space free of stigma, addressing feelings of isolation associated with living with HIV. The concept of spaces and systems of care arose from the findings that the formal healthcare system is a source of negative feelings, a lack of care. We found that 'spaces of care' are cultivated through use, and the spaces adolescents seek out are not dictated only by physical design properties. Spaces of support, privacy, connection, creativity, empowerment and freedom are spaces of care, relying on a conceptualisation of care as a social, creative and spatial practice. Through these findings we expand on what a system of health and care means for adolescents living with HIV in urban/semi-urban settings.

Paper short abstract:

The article discusses a performative relation between well-being, movement and space by developing a sustained encounter with the cartographic practice of Fernand Deligny.

Paper long abstract:

In 1967, after working with Jean Oury and Félix Guattari at the clinic La Borde, Fernand Deligny establishes a place of co-living, receiving mute children, diagnosed with infantile autism in the rural Cévennes in southern France: children, labelled as unbearable, highly psychotic and incurable.

Assembling philosophical, anthropological and artistic perspectives, Deligny's explores a mode of living together that respects the singularity of each individual »outside of what functions in the symbolic mode« (Deligny, 2015: 206). Deligny's work can be situated at the intersection of (1) a critique of the psychiatric dispositif, centred on knowing and curing the pathological and (2) a search for an associated milieu of the common that is constituted as resonance of gestures: those of the children and those of the adults who take care of them. In order to explore a common milieu where everyone can exercise her/his own normativity, Deligny develops an experimental cartographic practice: He draws maps of the children's drifting movements (dérives) within space, of perceptions and gestures such as cooking or cleaning the dishes.

The article examines how Deligny's cartography explores a radical counter architecture of co-living, an open milieu, structured along movements between places of attractions. I shall argue that

Deligny's cartographic practice develops a political proposal as a ›politics of the common‹ that

encounters the common not as given share but as pathic individuation of a network of acts.

Deligny, Fernand (2015) The Arachnean and other texts. Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing.

Paper short abstract:

This paper inquires about the ambiguous notion of toxicity through the archaeological evidence of arsenic-copper producers during the Early Bronze Age in Anatolia. It is based on analyses of prehistoric material complemented with socio-cultural anthropological contextualization and interpretation.

Paper long abstract:

Metal smelting, which during the 5th millennium BCE originated in the Balkans, Taurus and the Zagros Mountains, later spread to Western Anatolia. Within the latter region, archaeologists recently excavated a metal smelting village dating to the Early Bronze Age (3,000-2700 BCE). The site of Çukuriçi Höyük has been identified as the intentional co-smelting site for the production of arsenic-copper tools and weapons. Arsenic (As), naturally occurs in combination with sulfur and metals. Today, arsenic poisoning is a medical condition that occurs due to the elevated levels of arsenic in the body and arsenic toxicity is a global health problem affecting many millions of people. In contrast to today's global awareness of arsenic toxicity, a radically different perception of arsenic can be understood from the archaeological record. Dwellers at Çukuriçi Höyük smelted arsenic copper within households, in the ovens that were simultaneously used for cooking. If arsenic posed risk both during the Bronze Age and today, then this case study showcases that toxicity can be locally and historically perceived radically different than today. Through the contextualization of archaeological data, this paper highlights the everyday lived experiences of these toxic flows from the anthropological perspectives. By analyzing arsenic toxicity within domestic spaces reflected in material data, the paper showcases how and why people dwelled within toxic households during the Early Bronze Age in Western Anatolia.