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- Convenors:
-
Letizia Bonanno
(University of Vienna)
Ahmad Moradi (Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO))
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- Discussant:
-
Tatjana Thelen
(University of Vienna)
- Formats:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Health and Medicine
- Start time:
- 19 June, 2021 at
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
The panel explores how rules and their transgressions shape relations of care.Given the substantial opacity of care as an array of practices, expectations and moral imageries, we draw attention to the ways in which relations of care are entangled with forms of violence and acts of transgression.
Long Abstract:
This panel explores how rules and their transgressions shape relations of care.Given the opacity of care as an array of practices, expectations and moral imageries, we want to draw attention to the ways in which relations of care are entangled with forms of violence and acts of transgression.Anthropological scholarship describes care either as a moral good or services which can be paid for, as well as practices that create intimate relationships and uncanny forms of dependency.Care seems to also imply rules which dictate how, when and where care can be sought for, provided and enacted, granted and denied.Relationships created through care follow interpersonal and institutional rules whose transgression can influence collective and individual experiences of care, fraught with varying degrees of violence.However not all transgressions of rules are violating; they may even be generative of care relations. As humanitarian studies point out, provisioning care to undocumented migrants often entails the transgression of state regulations.Similarly many self-organised medical initiatives which have spread across Europe delve in an ambiguous domain where the boundaries between formality and informality, legality and illegality dramatically blur. In other contexts, transgressing rigid bureaucratic rules is seen as gestures of care by disabled war veterans.
We thus want to explore the role everyday transgressions of rules plays in arrangements of care relations.Can an act of care entail transgression or being in itself an act of transgression?How could transgression of rules become generative of care relations?How does ethnographic research offer challenging insights on care and violence as intertwined phenomena?
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
The paper investigates the undesired transgressing of boundaries protecting intimacy and autonomy in situations of care, leading to violation of privacy, abuse of power and intensification of suffering.
Paper long abstract:
The term ‘transgression’ has acquired a negative meaning (wrongdoing, misbehaviour, breaking rules) but the original Latin verb from which it is derived, 'transgredior', literally means ‘to cross’. This could refer to a river, mountains, a border or boundary, etc. To go beyond a generally accepted boundary is not necessarily a wrong thing to do. Care-giving is an insightful example of the various and ambiguous meanings that ‘transgression’ can have. Crossing the normal demarcation line that protects a person’s privacy and independence is accepted as a necessity in caring for people who depend on help. Children, sick people, elderly must sacrifice part of their privacy and allow care-givers to enter their domain of privacy and bodily intimacy and to take over part of their decision power. ‘Successful ageing’, for example, implies accepting these transgressions without resistance or bitterness. How far and how deep these transgressions reach should be mutually agreed upon by care-giver and –receiver. When the care-giver goes beyond this new defined boundary, transgression does indeed become misbehaviour and, in its most extreme case, tyranny. This paper investigates the undesired transgressing of rules protecting intimacy and autonomy of patients and older people in situations of care, leading to violation of privacy, abuse of power and intensification of suffering. The ethnographic ‘data’ for the paper are derived from literary sources (novels), films and (auto)biographical accounts of derailed care.
Paper short abstract:
This paper traces how disregard of conventional engagement rules drives a young woman into an undesired marriage and entails the acceptance of physical abuse as an exit strategy. It provides insights on the entanglements of care, dependency, and violence while (un)doing kinship relations.
Paper long abstract:
Intergenerational relations are often characterized by specific rules of conduct and care obligations. In Tajikistan, one of the five post-soviet Central Asian republics, parents are expected to emotionally and physically provide for their children, enable a good education, and assist in founding an own family, which includes partner choice and coverage of wedding expenses. Children on their part should respect their parents, obey their wishes, and care for them in old age. While the actual marriage practices often work around the normative rules so as to accommodate children’s opinions into matrimonial decisions, disregard of their wishes occurs and can prompt bodily harm of the bride or groom. Focusing on an undesired marriage of a young woman, this paper traces how the negligence of conventional engagement rules, the need to protect a family’s reputation, and the importance of kinship ties as a source of care motivates the bride to initially submit to local customs and induce a divorce later in time by refusing matrimonial intercourse and accepting physical abuse. The case study offers insights on the entanglements of care, dependency, and sexual violence while (un)doing kinship relations and discusses how the transgression of rules can be an act of self-care as well as generate uncanny forms of care. The paper is based on eleven months of stationary fieldwork in a provincial town in Tajikistan on women’s life courses and the re-organization or public and private care arrangements.
Paper short abstract:
In a context were people are separated by varying legal rights and systems of care designed to separate, such as border-crossers and citizens, thinking-with and caring-with become acts of transgression of biopolitical difference, enacting equality in action by creating communities of mutual care.
Paper long abstract:
Care provision for people crossing into Greece to seek asylum in 2015, was initially a manifestation of spontaneous acts of care; a fisherman jumping in the water to pull someone to shore from a capsized dingy, or a group of older women providing ‘care as usual’ by holding a migrant baby whilst their mother was putting clothes out to dry in the public space. The subsequent humanitarianization-securitisation of the border space transformed spontaneous care responses into acts of systemic transgression, as saving people from drowning or giving someone a lift from the shore to the nearest town became liable of smuggling. Beyond defining an ‘object of care’ for the humanitarian apparatus, cutting contact between society and border-crossers was necessary to transform non-citizens into a biopolitical ‘other’, as acts of social caring kept re-humanizing them in action. Continuing to offer support to people no longer on the move as an EU citizen subsequently became a political act, enacting a moral and political imaginary of equality in difference. At the same time, caring as an emotional disposition within the prescribed distance of the humanitarian relation, equally managed to transgress the provider-recipient dynamic, transforming it into relations of mutual care. Drawing from a number of ethnographic examples from the humanitarian and the self-organised solidarity milieu, the proposed paper discusses how different acts of caring derived from thinking-with (Puig de la Bellacasa 2012) non-citizens manage to dissolve biopolitical difference by creating networks based on shared relational care that transgress cultural, positional and physical borders.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores how staff in UK learning disability support settings transgress rules, or not, around professional boundaries to engage emotionally with the people they support; individuals whose lives can be emotionally impoverished and for whom staff are often their main human contact.
Paper long abstract:
This paper discusses findings from an ethnographic study of care giving in UK learning disability support settings. Specifically, it focuses on professional boundaries and how these were enacted both organisationally and by individuals. This paper presents ethnographic vignettes describing occasions when support staff were confronted with the decision of whether to transgress rules around professional boundaries to engage emotionally with the people they support; for example, whether to accept invitations to be hugged or whether they would quickly move away their hand when someone with a learning disability would try to hold it. Professional boundaries are put in place in support settings to safeguard both people with learning disabilities and their staff from harm. However, my research has shown that these boundaries can also have the unintended consequence of depriving people receiving support from meaningful emotional connections with others around them (Banks, 2020). This is because for many people with learning disabilities in full time support settings, staff can often be their primary – if not only – source of daily human contact. Approaches aimed at protecting people from harm are both understandable and important, but feeling emotionally connected to others is a vital aspect of the human experience and so to deny people of this is to deny them experiences and interactions that make up so much of the lives of many people without learning disabilities. Yet, is it possible to safely and transparently incorporate these important emotional connections into the everyday practice of learning disability support?
Paper short abstract:
Drugs are an item of deviance and transgression; taking care of ‘addicts’ with for instance harm reduction is hence (still) a disputed kind of care. In this paper, we analyze how measures taken during the COVID-19 pandemic further intensified the blurry lines between care and coercion.
Paper long abstract:
Drugs are quintessentially an item of deviance and transgression; taking care of ‘addicts’ is, as a result, (still) a disputed kind of care. What does the right care look like that is not encouraging the addiction? While many systems still largely enact punitive and prosecutorial measures, others have moved in the direction of harm reduction. The latter set of practices, ranging from needle and syringe exchanges and acupuncture to safe injection facilities and methadone programmes, admits the ‘addicted person’ into a supposed care environment. But only in its most extreme forms (namely, safe injection sites) are substances allowed in. In all other cases, care fundamentally includes transgressing boundaries. In our research, we ask, how is this relationship further complicated by the arrival of COVID-19? Based on ethnographic fieldwork during the lockdown phase of the pandemic in the United Kingdom in various homelessness institutions, we analyze the ways in which care for people struggling with addiction was increasingly made transgressive. Institutions and people constantly grappled with the blurry ethical, legal, and moral boundaries between care and coercion; how to weigh caring for the majority of inhabitants with the needs of the minority (of the substance user who needed to go out regularly?) Can eviction of the rule-breaker in favour of non-drug users be understood as care? Where does the duty of care lay, and how do measures taken in the name of care be further punitive and perpetuate stigma? Ultimately, how do we define care and whom does it serve?