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.