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- Convenors:
-
Janina Kehr
(University of Vienna)
Fanny Chabrol (IRD Université Paris Cité)
- Discussant:
-
Paul Wenzel Geissler
(University of Oslo)
- Location:
- JUB-G36
- Start time:
- 11 September, 2015 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
In tracing moral attachments, emotional frustrations and collective mobilisations we wish to interrogate citizens' affective attachments to a right to health and the political innovations it engenders
Long Abstract:
What does the Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa of the 1990's has in common with recent strikes of health care workers in Spain? What links USA's introduction of « Obamacare » with Brazil's existing public health care system ? As different as these examples may seem, all exemplify what one could describe as a political desire for medical belonging or "health citizenship". The panel « Health Affects. Medical Belongings across the Globe » wishes to take the analysis of health citizenships in a new direction, in focussing not only on the political or legal dimension of « a right to health » -inscribed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights after WWII - but also on its affective one. How do moral and emotional claims have shaped and shape public health politics around the world ? Which « affect economies » (Adams 2012) emerge ? How are the « affective attachments » (Berlant 2011) to health care interiorised and materialised differently and unequally across the globe today? Which circulation of ideas, actors and objects between the North and the South, and the East and the West does a "right to health" enable or impede? In tracing the moral attachments, emotional frustrations and collective mobilisations of a right to health - this productive and precarious utopia - we wish to interrogate the history and present of citizens' affective attachments to it and the political innovations it engenders.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Janina Kehr (University of Vienna)
Paper short abstract:
In my paper, I will demonstrate which social, political and affective attachments to the NHS materialise today. The larger aim of the paper is to develop an ethnographic theory of affective biopolitics.
Paper long abstract:
Laurent Berlant argues that one attaches to the world not in the mode of either decision or emotion, but that one is thrown into "architectures of trust". How can one transpose her definition of attachment to the domain of health architecture and infrastructure in a historical moment where such architectures are profoundly transformed through privatisations and measures of austerity? In my paper, I will attempt to show how citizens in the UK attach to « their » trusted National Health Service (NHS) and defend it against privatisation and budget cuts. By articulating an analysis of the collective memory of the NHS as it is represented in contemporary films, TV series and theatre plays with an ethnographic investigation of current social movements and their affective politics, I will demonstrate which social, political and affective attachments to the NHS materialise today. The larger aim of the paper is to develop an ethnographic theory of affective biopolitics, to better understand what kind of health care different people desire today, for which reasons and with which means they intend to achieve it.
Fanny Chabrol (IRD Université Paris Cité)
Paper short abstract:
In this presentation I wish to reflect on two distinct research experiences dealing with medical belongings, the hospital and the State across the Globe.
Paper long abstract:
In this presentation I wish to reflect on two distinct research experiences dealing with medical belongings, the hospital and the State across the Globe: a long term fieldwork in Yaoundé central hospital (Cameroon), one of biggest and oldest in the city and a short "encounter" with the closed iconic Charity hospital in New Orleans, United States, a hospital with a record of caring for the poor and the uninsured that was closed just a few weeks after hurricane after Katrina. I want to explore whether it is possible to think what the hospital represents for the inhabitants of Yaoundé, in terms of negative experiences, anger and death together with the deep affective attachment connected to the Charity hospital in New Orleans that stopped operated ten years ago. Both are public hospitals that originally had a mission to care for the poorer in the city and are intrinsically connected to their social and political role for the city and the society. But they today exist in different ways, their promise and remembering, the projects attached to them. These two hospitals allow us to reflect on specific periods and ruptures of the promise of affordable and equitable healthcare.
Birgitte Bruun (University of Copenhagen)
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses the apparent paradox that people - whether they live in Lusaka or Copenhagen - feel more cared for as study subjects in medical research projects than as patients or clients in a public health care system.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores surprising affective commonalities in trial sociality that emerge underneath the obvious political-economic differences between Zambia and Denmark. Zambia: What begins as a possibility for well-connected, but poor and marginalized people in Lusaka to become attached to a rather vague, but obviously resourceful (medical research) project often develops into a feeling of being genuinely cared for. Study subjects’ attachment to the project is not just about access to free medicines, but about being included, encouraged and taken care of. This feeling cared for unfolds in relations with project staff, but also to a certain extent in images of the organization behind the individual research projects. This feeling cared for stands in rather stark contrast to people’s access to care in the public and private health care system in Zambia. Denmark: What begins as a possibility for people in the increasingly downsizing welfare state to learn more about their own health in a medical research project often turns into a surprisingly pleasurable experience. In spite of painful research procedures this becomes possible because of research staffs’ attention, encouragement, and care that is often extended beyond the projects’ research interests. Study subjects often contrast this attention and care to the limited time allocated for them as patients consulting their general practitioner in Denmark. In both Lusaka and Copenhagen study subjects may try to extend their relation to the research staff/organisation beyond the individual and time-limited research projects. Focusing on these unexpected commonalities in the experience of study subjects from an African slum and a Scandinavian welfare state the paper will close with reflections on the potentials for political action in the paradox that people feel more cared for in medical research projects than in the public health care system, and ponder why this potential has not yet been activated.