Symposium: Making medicine in austere times. Materialities, moralities and policies of care

Medical Anthropology Switzerland (MAS)

The financial crisis of 2008 and the austerity policies implemented as a response had severe consequences on peoples’ health and practices of care. Health systems based on principles of social welfare and universal access are increasingly considered “unsustainable”. In contexts of scarce resources and increasing state debts, new ways of prioritization and triage emerge. And yet, scarcity is not a new question of the 21st century. In many parts of the world, particularly the so-called Global South, limited means as well as structural shortages have been a permanent feature of healthcare since the 1980s. What seems to be relatively new though, are policies, practices and experiences of scarcity and austerity that converge across the global North and South. We wish to link the materialities of everyday healthcare in economically austere times with the moral visions, societal values, and policy approaches that influence how medicine and healthcare are conceived and practiced in different locations today. We want to debate the highly controversial nature of austerity and scarcity policies, and inquire about their deep entanglement in moral, political and economic debates on what constitutes the “right” or “just” measure of spending, redistributing and consuming care.

The symposium will explore three main issues:
Experiences and embodiments: How do social actors or institutions
cope with and experience the lack of resources?
How do contexts of scarcity prompt them to create or to reflect
on new forms of care? How to understand new forms of
solidarity, care and humanitarian interventions in austere
times?
Locations and circulations: How do austerity measures, interventions
and resistances circulate across the Global South
and North, in times where a global neoliberal economy
imperative prevails? In which ways can a look at circulations
help to provincialize austerity while acknowledging its global
scope?
Temporalities and meanings: What does austerity mean
within various temporal contexts worldwide? What are the
differences and similarities between structural adjustment
policies of the 1980s in the Global South and current austerity
measures?

You are welcome to register for the event until 3 June, by sending an email to symposium2019@cluttermedicalanthropology.ch

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