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- Convenors:
-
Patrícia Alves de Matos
(CRIA-ISCTE - Instituto Universitário de Lisboa)
Antonio Maria Pusceddu (Centro em Rede de Investigação em Antropologia (CRIA-ISCTE))
Gerhild Perl (University of Trier)
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- Formats:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Politics and Power
- Sessions:
- Thursday 24 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
Short Abstract:
This panel brings together historical and ethnographic perspectives on the politics of human vulnerability focusing on how different ideologies of care and 'nature' prevent or enhance forms of embodied agency within, beyond and against state regulations.
Long Abstract:
The Covid-19 crisis brought to the forefront the importance of addressing the politics of human vulnerability after the cumulative impact of decades of neoliberal policies, exclusionary migration laws, environmental degradation and aggressive capitalism. The pandemic exposed the centrality of interdependent networks of care giving and receiving in shaping people's capabilities to confront, cope with and recover from health, material, natural and emotional shocks. Nation-states have assumed a dominant role in the management of emergent pandemic-driven vulnerabilities through moral narratives and policies with ambivalent and far-reaching economic, political and social consequences. Taking the pandemic as a point of departure, this panel brings together historical and ethnographic informed perspectives on the politics of human vulnerability focusing on how different ideologies of care and 'nature' prevent or enhance forms of embodied agency within, beyond and against state regulations.
We invite papers addressing: how (and which) popular views of care and 'nature' underlay people's understandings of socio-ecological crisis, vulnerability and healing practices, and how they shape capabilities to cope with and recover from bodily and livelihood disruptions and hazards; and, how regulatory policies and hegemonic classifications contribute to reinforcing the unequal value of bodily vulnerability along the lines of race, class, gender, age and nationality.
This panel will expand current theorisations of the politics of human vulnerability focusing on the intersections of care, nature and the state. In addition, it explores how embodied knowledges, practices and moralities are instrumental for anticipating, coping, resisting and recovering from livelihood disruptions, socio-environmental crisis and health insecurities.
Accepted paper:
Session 1 Thursday 24 June, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
A Covid ethnography from elderly residents' perspective shows how emerging medical ideologies convey bodily discipline and affect interactions between carers and cared ones. Representations and practices of care evolve, as medical pluralism ambiguities seem to drive the politics of vulnerability.
Paper long abstract:
Drawing on fieldwork in a retirement home in Milan, with a double role as a music therapist and a medical anthropologist, this paper discusses not only the ambivalent impact of the societal management of the pandemic on the residents life conditions, as daily routines were subjected to rules and provisions; but also how the discipline of the bodies following the Covid's explosion paved the way for renewed ideologies and politics of care within the context considered.
How did the state of care activities evolved in the last 15 years, and which was it at the pandemic’s outset? How, since February 2020, guests underwent restrictions of human relations, interpersonal communication and social stimuli, by being isolated in their rooms for weeks or months, due to medical, anti-contagion measures? How did care specialists co-endure these waves of limitations with the residents they were individually called to interact with, while such measures increasingly secluded the institution from the outside?
One-on-one interactions showed particular sensorial, nonverbal, embodied characteristics, which accompanied interpersonal horizons of experience and individual perceptions about relationships between professionals and residents to quickly evolve since lockdown began. Months of forced modification in the services output seem to have favoured changes in representations, perceptions, attitudes and practices of care and relationship. Social care co-developed with medical treatments, affecting the elderlies’ personhood, identity and bio-psycho-social health.
Reflections will follow on the role that the discourse of care and the ambiguities of medical pluralism play in the evolution of the politics and concept of vulnerability.