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Paisajes activos para sobrevivir al capitalismo > Público

[VERSIÓN CORREGIDA, PUBLICADO ORIGINALMENTE EN PÚBLICO, 25/04/2022]

¿Cómo hacer posible la vida en las ruinas del capitalismo? Aunque en los tiempos devastadores que corren llevamos a rastras hasta nuestras hipérboles, esa es la pregunta que vertebra el libro La seta del fin del mundo: Sobre la posibilidad de la vida en las ruinas capitalistas de la antropóloga Anna Tsing. Un relato que captura el espíritu atormentado de una época donde el crecimiento y el progreso como los conocíamos han mostrado su cara más aciaga y tenebrosa. Pensado y escrito desde una sensibilidad etnográfica atenta a la complejidad de nuestro presente en llamas, recabando materiales e historias diversos, La seta del fin del mundo no es, pues, ni un recetario de soluciones baratas ni un ensayo que abrace el dulce láudano del apocalipsis.

Publicado originalmente en 2015 en Estados Unidos, la cuidada edición reciente de Capitán Swing es un artefacto tan embriagador (buen papel, imágenes en alta definición, letra legible, cartoné con altorrelieve, manejable y a precio asequible) y complejo como el original. Su gran hallazgo, también su elección más desconcertante, es el lugar desde el que indaga. A partir de un trabajo etnográfico de equipo realizado entre 2004 y 2011 en diversos lugares de la costa oeste de EE.UU., Japón, China y Finlandia, el libro analiza los complejos nudos entre capitalismo y ecología.

Tsing traza con gran detalle las cadenas globales de recolección, venta, estudio científico y experimentos en silvicultura para intentar cultivar, sin éxito, una rara seta que desata pasiones desenfrenadas en Japón: el matsutake, usado comúnmente como regalo o bien de lujo. Su interés por practicar una antropología de las relaciones interespecíficas en el capitalismo avanzado le lleva a desplegar un aparataje metodológico que privilegia unas “artes de la observación” para hacernos sensibles al funcionamiento de lo que llama “conjuntos polifónicos”: patchworks plagados de fricciones, antes que tejidos homogéneos, de los que el mejor ejemplo serían las relaciones interespecíficas de las que el matsutake pende. De hecho, como cuenta Tsing, el matsutake no es sólo un bien de lujo para los japoneses: un producto que condensa la nostalgia del otoño perdido y la vida de aldea, vector de la seriedad de las relaciones que se marcan con su regalo. Es, también, una forma de emergencia y supervivencia en la ruina forestal, en al menos dos sentidos, contenidos en las partes II y III del libro.

La parte II es un breve tratado de antropología económica que estudia el capitalismo de cadenas de suministro. Aquí se narra el proceso de lo que Tsing llama “acumulación de rescate”: los complejos procesos de creación de valor (como bien de regalo o de lujo) de una seta no cultivable, que crece donde nadie se la espera en antiguos bosques industriales depredados; una seta recolectada por diferentes agentes (nómadas, libertarios y migrantes) que viven “en los propios límites del capitalismo” (p.377), esto es, ni dentro ni fuera del mismo. Una cadena de creación de valor que tiene por origen una emergencia extraña de la vida, una aparición cuando todo parece perdido, en el otoño de nuestras ideas de progreso.

La parte III es un estudio de las complejas relaciones natura-culturales e interespecíficas en las que emerge el matsutake. Un relato que, antes que poner en el centro a al matsutake como especie, toma como unidad de análisis al “holobionte” del que es parte, así como sus relaciones de “simbiopoiesis”: esto es, la co-evolución y relaciones simbióticas, desde lo parasitario al apoyo mutuo, entre diferentes especies. En particular, el análisis se centra en explorar las “perturbaciones” y “diseños involuntarios” en la gestión forestal que permitieron y permiten la emergencia no diseñada del matsutake, vinculada a determinados árboles con los que co-evoluciona. Esta parte contiene, asimismo, un detallado análisis y loa del trabajo cuasi-activista de campesinos, científicos o gestores forestales implicados en la defensa del satoyama japonés, un territorio intersticial entre el bosque y el cultivo. Un trabajo de recuperación de ciertas lindes entre lo urbano y lo rural, que busca hacer viable una economía y modos de relación con el bosque alternativos. Una formación interespecífica o, mejor, un “paisaje activo” que opera, en el relato de la autora, como una suerte de “antiplantación”.

Lo que conecta ambas partes es la descripción de la precariedad existencial causada por la depredación planetaria antropogénica y, particularmente, capitalista (lo que se conoce comúnmente como la era geológica del Antropoceno). Y, más aún, el intento por mostrar distintos relatos que puedan inspirar otros paisajes activos que la sobrevivan. En ese sentido, La seta del fin del mundo desafía las historias lineales del progreso, así como los relatos conservacionistas simplistas. Parte de su complejidad radica en que sus historias crecen como las setas, alumbrando distintas “parcelas” o “retales” (patches) de los efectos interconectados, pero no unitarios de eso que llamamos el Antropoceno.

El resultado, por tanto, no es una oda a lo pre-industrial, el retorno a la naturaleza prístina y originaria, o el neo-ruralismo. Más bien la propuesta que nos hace Tsing es explorar qué capacidades de acción pueden hacerse existir en complejas situaciones ecológicas. Situaciones donde se mezclan los efectos de perturbación industrial, así como los resurgimientos simbióticos que habilitan posibles respuestas. Situaciones donde la agencia humana (a través de, por ejemplo, el cuidado, limpieza y uso del bosque) puede tener un papel relevante, pero no único. Como apunta Tsing:

“Los bosques campesinos de roble y pino han formado remolinos de estabilidad y convivencia. Pero a menudo tienen origen en grandes cataclismos, como la deforestación que acompaña a la industrialización nacional. Son pequeños remolinos de vidas interconectadas dentro de grandes corrientes de perturbación: seguramente, constituyen un buen lugar para reflexionar sobre el talento humano para poner remedio a las cosas. Pero también existe la perspectiva del bosque” (p.262)

En su “antifinal” el libro hace un enérgico alegato en favor de la ciencia abierta, abogando por la necesidad de abrir la producción del conocimiento a una multitud de colaboraciones “fúngicas” o rizomáticas (como las setas mismas), entre saberes académicos y populares. Esto es, la creación de un “paisaje activo” que permita el cultivo de saberes y prácticas no instrumentales: como el trabajo sin garantías de los bosques, con su paciencia y tiempos extraños, así como las relaciones interespecíficas a las que invita. Relaciones que a veces “no surgen gracias a los planes humanos, sino a pesar de ellos” (p.363) y que requieren ir más allá de soluciones utópicas prefabricadas o multiuso. A pesar de su compleja factura (es indudablemente un libro académico, denso y erudito) y su radical concreción en torno al matsutake, el libro nos invita a prestar atención a las complejas relaciones entre naturaleza y cultura.

Y es ahí donde el libro, en su vertiente más poética, nos sugiere rearmar nuestra imaginación ante las crisis en curso. ¿Quizá podamos inspirarnos en los valores ecológicos de las setas, así como en los proyectos de ciencia activista que el libro relata, como complejas formas de construir paisajes activos más vivibles y plurales? Donde la precariedad impera, quizá no nos quede más remedio que intentar armar muchas formas de relación fúngicas, pensando e interviniendo, desde nuestras parcelas, entornos y territorios, en los desastres en curso, aunque eso no sea garantía de nada. ¿Seremos capaces de crear paisajes activos, de muchos tipos, para sobrevivir al capitalismo y su destrucción planetaria?

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events multimodal publications

Anthropology beyond text? Experiments, devices and platforms of multimodal ethnographic practice

Last July (22-23.07.2021) the Stadtlabor for Multimodal Anthropology of the HU Berlin hosted a workshop where we invited a wide variety of colleagues working in Germany, Austria and Switzerland (D-A-CH) to share and discuss their approaches to more-than-textual ethnographic practice.

The event–called “Anthropology beyond text? Experiments, devices and platforms of multimodal ethnographic practice”–took place on Zoom, and in the spirit of thinking more in depth how to value and evaluate multimodal projects, we recorded the conversation to think whether we could find a way of creating a good-enough summary that might allow us to continue thinking and discussing about it.

After different attempts, and thanks to the good work of Nelson Ari Wilhelm, we’re sharing it with the aim of fostering the expansion of such a conversation.

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caring infrastructures experimental collaborations intravention materials more-than-human multimodal publications re-learning design techniques & ways of doing urban and personal devices

Anthropology as a Careful Design Practice?

As part of the celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the Zeitschrift für Ethnologie (Journal of the DGSKA – German Association for Social and Cultural Anthropology) Kristina Mashimi, Thomas Stodulka, Hansjörg Dilger, Anita vonPoser, Dominik Mattes and Birgitt Röttger-Rössler curated a plenary in the DGSKA 2019 in Konstanz titled ‘Envisioning Anthropological Futures‘ in which I had the honour to join a conversation with inspiring colleagues Janina Kehr, Sandra Calkins, and Michaela Haug.

Later, our contributions compiled into a manuscript for a special section of the ZfE that has recently appeared as part of the Zeitschrift für Ethnologie/Journal of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 145 – 2020, 1.


As the editors argue in their introduction:

“The contributions in this special section discuss the challenges, tensions, and prospects of doing anthropology today: How do we position ourselves as anthropologists in a time that is marked by the rise of populist and fascist movements, climate crisis, and related environmental disasters? How do we respond to highly unequal processes of social inclusion and exclusion? How can we not only describe but also contribute to an imagination of the horizons of possibility amidst capitalist ruins (Tsing 2015)? Or in other words: What is the role of anthropology in not only representing but maybe also envisioning and shaping alternative futures? Although anthropology has been entangled with geopolitical issues ever since its inception, our current “troubled times” (Stoller 2017) have brought the political back to center stage within the discipline (Postero and Elinoff 2019). They have also provoked many anthropologists to rethink the conventional descriptive or critical practices of our field and to reflect on new ways of engaged and activist anthropology (Low and Merry 2010; Huschke 2015) – or in other words, on the role of anthropology in carving out and shaping spaces that offer alternatives to dominant socio-economic arrangements, characterized by growing inequalities” (p.15)


Kristina Mashimi, Thomas Stodulka, Hansjörg Dilger, and Anita von Poser (2020) Introduction: Envisioning Anthropological Futures (and Provincializing their Origins)

In my contribution, I speculate on the possible futures for anthropological practice that might open up when, rather than studying or collaborating in corporate or professional design activities, we undertake anthropology as a careful design practice: to envision a future – for anthropology and beyond – there is perhaps no other way than to pry open the un- certain, but also deeply asymmetric and expertocratic conditions of the present. For this, we may need to place at the very core of our anthropological endeavours a critical desire to design conditions for opening up to a plurality of knowledge platforms, so as to heighten our joint arts of learning how to know and live with one another. A careful practice to undo the conditions of those whose actions have the potential to be harmful. Drawing from this, and if anthropology wants to contribute to more careful modes of togetherness, so that diverging and plural worlds can thrive, perhaps we need to envision ways of engaging with design, not just through superbly written stories with a critical or conceptual twist, but also learning to affect it ‘from within’ its own practices.

My appreciation goes to the editors for their kind invitation, and for pushing me to clarify my arguments. Many thanks to Ignacio Farías and Ester Gisbert for the mutual inspiration in envisioning pedagogic avenues for anthropology to be relevant in architectural worlds. Also, thanks to Francisco Martínez, Daniela Rosner and Janina Kehr, who commented on versions of the manuscript at various stages.

Anthropology as a Careful Design Practice?

How can we envision the future of anthropology in the present times of crisis, when the social as we knew it, and the conventional descriptive and critical practices of our discipline may no longer be adequate? Here I tentatively draw on work at the crossroads of design, where the future can be reclaimed as a disciplinary concern for anthropology. Design has recently become a significant source of methodological and political inspiration for our discipline to take part in the materialisation of alternative forms of world-making. Yet, as design is not a unitary field, I will particularly dwell on how I have re-learnt and experimented with what being an anthropologist might mean in encounters with urban accessibility design activism. In these careful explorations I have found not only an inspiring field of inquiry within knowledge politics, but also a relevant domain for interventions seeking to create technical democracy. Describing a particular case of how I became ‘activated’ by this design activism – drawing inspiration from their practices for teaching future architects – I speculate on the possible futures for anthropological practice that might open up when, rather than studying or collaborating in corporate or professional design activities, we undertake anthropology as a careful design practice.

Recommended citation: Criado, T.S. (2021). Anthropology as a Careful Design Practice? Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 145 (2020): 47–70 | PDF

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city-making more-than-human publications techniques & ways of doing uncommoning urban and personal devices

Uncommoning the city | Hacer la ciudad poco común

Guillermo Fernández-Abascal and Urtzi Grau recently edited the bilingual compilation Coches, humanos y bordillos, aprendiendo a vivir juntos | Learning to Live Together: Cars, Humans, and Kerbs in Solidarity, which has just been published by Bartlebooth. A volume on the conflicts and possibilities of new more or less digital forms of city-making and urban life.

Contribuciones de / Contributions by Ibiye Camp, Brendan Cormier, Noortje Marres, Hamish McIntosh, Simone C. Niquille / Technoflesh, Marina Otero Verzier, Tomás Sánchez Criado, Brenton Alexander Smith, Lara Lesmes + Fredrik Hellberg (Space Popular), Liam Young.

[ES] Viviremos todos juntos, eso es inevitable. Pero la llegada de los vehículos autónomos al entorno urbano plantea otra cuestión urgente: ¿cómo se integrarán estos coches sin conductor en la vida cotidiana? Las industrias tecnológicas y del automóvil que desarrollan estos vehículos también están diseñando el futuro de nuestras ciudades. Sus visiones muestran calles que incorporan tecnologías autónomas y donde los humanos deambulan, despreocupados, por un espacio público donde máquinas automatizadas circulan a alta velocidad. Estas visiones se proyectan en un tiempo lejano, y al hacerlo, ignoran las cuestiones que la llegada de estos vehículos plantean en el futuro inmediato.

En respuesta a tal descuido, este ensayo, y las reflexiones que lo acompañan, exploran los conflictos inminentes asociados a esta tecnología y como estos transformaran nuestras calles, con una hipótesis en mente: el despliegue de la tecnología sin conductor, rápida y disruptiva, no conlleva una solución urbana integrada, más bien plantea preguntas y exige imaginar como responderlas. Este libro identifica algunas, responde a otras y, sobre todo, imagina cómo humanos y maquinas podrán influir en las decisiones sobre el ecosistema urbano, colectivamente.

[EN] We are on the verge of sharing our cities with autonomous vehicles. Recent developments in driverless technologies are having an impact on our urban environment, raising questions about how self-driving vehicles could be integrated into our daily lives. Automotive and technological industries are not only developing the vehicles but also envisioning the future of our cities, a future where streets have seamlessly integrated driverless technologies and humans wander about, unconcerned by the presence of new automated machines circulating at high speeds through public space. These visions skip to a distant time and ignore the issues that these vehicles raise in the immediate future.

In response to such an oversight, this essay and the accompanying meditations explore the conflicts soon to be unleashed by this new technology and the transformation of our streets it will trigger. The current implementations of driverless technology, which are fast and disruptive, do not suggest an eventual integrated urban solution. Yet this book allows us to imagine how humans and cars might collectively influence the urban environment.

In my contribution to the volume I share a provocation on the project of urban unification of ‘smart city’ initiatives: What if rather than trying to contribute to urban unity, contemporary urban planners and designers relearnt, through different techniques and procedures (algorithmic, sensor-based, DIY or otherwise), to be affected by an uncommon city? In other words, the processes whereby cities are treated not as places of homogeneity but of divergence.

Published as Criado, T.S. (2021). Uncommoning the city | Hacer la ciudad poco común. In G. Fernández-Abascal & U. Grau (Eds.), Aprendiendo a vivir juntos: Solidaridad entre humanos, coches y bordillos / Learning to Live Together: Cars, Humans, and Kerbs in Solidarity (pp. 123-130). A Coruña: Bartlebooth | PDF EN & PDF ES

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caring infrastructures concepts formats objects of care and care practices older people participatory & collaborative design of care infrastructures personal autonomy publications security & location sociality & isolation techniques & ways of doing

Civilising technologies for an ageing society? The performativity of participatory methods in Socio-gerontechnology

For the past couple of years Alexander Peine, Barbara L. Marshall, Wendy Martin and Louis Neven have been editing the book Socio-Gerontechnology. Interdisciplinary Critical Studies of Ageing and Technology. Its main aim is to outline a new academic field called “socio-gerontechnology.” As they state:

the book explores how ageing and technology are already interconnected and constantly being intertwined in Western societies. Topics addressed cover a broad variety of socio-material domains, including care robots, the use of social media, ageing-in-place technologies, the performativity of user involvement and public consultations, dementia care and many others. Together, they provide a unique understanding of ageing and technology from a social sciences and humanities perspective and contribute to the development of new ontologies, methodologies and theories that might serve as both critique of and inspiration for policy and design.

In all likelihood the book will turn into the ultimate compilation of works at the crossroads of Ageing Studies and STS.

With my long-time friend and colleague Daniel López we’ve had the immense luck to take part writing one of the chapters (our thanks to the editors for the invitation, and for their insights in the writing process).

Looking back at our involvement in the EFORTT project, our contribution is titled:

Civilising technologies for an ageing society? The performativity of participatory methods in Socio-gerontechnology

Given the importance of participatory methods in gerontechnology – especially to prevent the uncritical reproduction of discriminatory imaginaries in technological development – the lack of appreciation of how these methods can contribute to socio-material configurations of age and technology is striking. Inspired by the semiotic-material study of methods, this chapter provides a detailed account of how participation and public engagement were performed in a project on telecare both authors were involved in between 2008 and 2011. We show how the ‘civilising’ endeavour of this project was undertaken through the creation of two different instances of participation: in the first, representatives, experts and policymakers were enacted as stakeholders, in the second, end-users (older people and caregivers) were enacted as concerned citizens with telecare as a public issue. In foregrounding the realities enacted in the performance of these methods we emphasise, in conclusion, the need to address the materialisations of later life and technology, which these participatory methods help bring to the fore in Socio-gerontechnological developments.

Published as López Gómez, D. & Criado, T.S. (2021). Civilising technologies for an ageing society? The performativity of participatory methods in Socio-gerontechnology. In A. Peine, B.L. Marshall, W. Martin and L. Neven (Eds.), Socio-Gerontechnology. Interdisciplinary Critical Studies of Ageing and Technology (pp. 85-98). London: Routledge | PDF

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animal therapy caring infrastructures functional diversity & disability rights more-than-human publications technical aids techniques & ways of doing urban and personal devices

Ensamblajes peatonales: Los andares a ciegas como prácticas tecno-sensoriales | Pedestrian assemblages: Blind people’s walks as techno-sensory practices

Nuevo artículo publicado en AIBR, Revista de Antropología Iberoamericana junto a Marcos Cereceda.

New article published on AIBR, Iberoamerican Anthropology Journal with Marcos Cereceda.

Ensamblajes peatonales: Los andares a ciegas como prácticas tecno-sensoriales | Pedestrian assemblages: Blind people’s walks as techno-sensory practices

Resumen

¿Cómo andan y cruzan las calles las personas ciegas? Esa es la pregunta, solo aparentemente sencilla, que hemos abordado a partir de un estudio etnográfico en la encrucijada de la Antropología Sensorial y los Estudios de Ciencia y Tecnología (STS) realizado en los últimos seis años en la ciudad de Barcelona. En él hemos seguido a diferentes activistas por los derechos de la diversidad visual en su cotidianidad, así como en sus trabajos de politización de las infraestructuras urbanas. A partir de una atención a la agencia múltiple y distribuida que equipa e in/habilita modos de desplazarse por la ciudad, esta pregunta nos permite describir la complejidad corporal, social, material y técnica que encierra este vulgar acto cotidiano. Nuestra indagación gira en torno a dos elementos principales: (a) la descripción de prácticas sensoriales para caminar a ciegas y (b) la descripción y examen del papel que juegan conjuntos de elementos no-humanos (animales y tecnológicos) que conforman el «equipamiento» para andar a ciegas. Profundizando el giro material y corporal de la antropología urbana sobre las realidades y prácticas de los peatones, transeúntes o flâneurs, en el presente trabajo queremos resaltar la importancia de prestar atención a los ensamblajes peatonales y las prácticas tecno-sensoriales que habilitan particulares desplazamientos: unos ensamblajes que en lugar de una ciudad hecha para el encuentro indiferente entre distintos sujetos, nos muestran una ecología compleja de soportes y acompañamientos para acoger la diversidad corporal.

Abstract

How do blind people walk and cross the streets? This has been the guiding question, only simple at first glance, of our ethnographic study at the crossroads of Sensory Anthropology and Science and Technology Studies (STS), undertaken in the last six years in the city of Barcelona. In it we have followed different activists for the rights of people with “visual diversity” in their everyday urban displacements, and in their politicizations of urban infrastructures. Paying attention to the multiple and distributed agency that equips and dis/ables modes of moving about in the city, this question allows a description of the embodied, social, material and technical complexity that this mundane act entails. Our inquiry foregrounds two main elements: (a) the description of the sensory practices unfolded in blind walks; and (b) the description and close examination of the role played by non-human actors — animals and technologies — which constitute the “equipment” to walk as a blind person. Deepening urban anthropology’s material and embodied turn to the understanding of the circumstances of pedestrians, the present work wishes to highlight the relevance of considering pedestrian assemblages and the techno-sensory practices enabling particular types of displacements. A description around assemblages allows us to unfold a description of the city not as a place for the indifferent encounter of abled subjects, but as a complex ecology of supports and accompaniments to host bodily diversity.

Recommended citation: Cereceda, M. & Criado, T.S. (2021) Ensamblajes peatonales: Los andares a ciegas como prácticas tecno-sensoriales | Pedestrian assemblages: Blind people’s walks as techno-sensory practices. AIBR. Revista de Antropología Iberoamericana, 16(1), 165 – 190 | PDF (Español) · PDF (English)

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experimental collaborations intravention publications

Acompañantes epistémicos: la invención de la colaboración etnográfica

Acaba de ver la luz el interesante proyecto de libro Investigaciones en movimiento: Etnografías colaborativas, feministas y decoloniales, editado por Aurora Álvarez Veinguer, Alberto Arribas Lozano y Gunther Dietz (Buenos Aires, CLACSO, 2020). El libro descargarse en PDF libremente.

Este libro pone en conversación un conjunto de etnografías colaborativas, decoloniales, feministas y de IAP que comparten el deseo de producir otros conocimientos y producir conocimientos de otros modos. Las experiencias aquí reunidas nos invitan a repensarnos como investigadoras/es, a redefinir el sentido de nuestros proyectos y los procedimientos metodológicos concretos a partir de los que desarrollamos nuestro trabajo, y también a transformar las relaciones que establecemos con las personas con quienes colaboramos. Es una caja de herramientas que busca ampliar el campo de lo posible y lo pensable en investigación.

Junto con Adolfo Estalella colaboramos en el volumen con un capítulo sobre la invención etnográfica. Gracias a l*s editor*s por la generosa invitación a contribuir en este libro y, muy especialmente, a Alberto Arribas por su generosa lectura y enriquecedores comentarios.

Acompañantes epistémicos: la invención de la colaboración etnográfica

Este capítulo explora la relación que existe entre colaboración e invención en la etnografía para argumentar que la colaboración etnográfica se puede conceptualizar como un efecto de la inventiva en el trabajo de campo. Sabemos que nuestros trabajos de campo son siempre más complejos de lo que el método propone y describe y que nuestras etnografías están a menudo cargadas de improvisación, creatividad e inventiva. Creemos que examinar la inventiva que muy a menudo atraviesa las relaciones de campo puede arrojar luz sobre los modos de colaboración que muchos sitios de la contemporaneidad demandan. Más importante aún, al invocar la inventiva etnográfica como un elemento central de nuestro trabajo de campo queremos hacer visible toda una serie de prácticas, técnicas y gestos relevantes que a menudo son ignorados o invisibilizados cuando planteamos que la colaboración es el producto del método. Nuestro argumento, por lo tanto, problematiza una manera habitual de pensar la colaboración como el efecto de ciertas premisas metodológicas y sugiere conceptualizar y describir la colaboración como el efecto de la inventiva etnográfica desplegada en el trabajo de campo.

Publicado como Estalella, A. & Sánchez Criado, T. (2020). Acompañantes epistémicos: la invención de la colaboración etnográfica. In A. Álvarez Veinguer, A. Arribas Lozano & G. Dietz (Eds.), Investigaciones en movimiento: etnografías colaborativas, feministas y decoloniales (pp.145-179). Buenos Aires: CLACSO | PDF

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caring infrastructures ethics ethics, politics and economy of care more-than-human objects of care and care practices politics and economy of care publications techniques & ways of doing urban and personal devices

Care in Trouble: Ecologies of Support from Below and Beyond

In 2018-2019, my colleague Vincent Duclos and I worked on different versions of an essay that was given green light by the Medical Anthropology Quarterly last August and has now been included in the 34(2) issue. It was a hard process, but also a wonderful occasion to learn from the inspiring work of many colleagues and a joyful opportunity to experiment together with a conceptual writing repertoire.

Titled “Care in Trouble: Ecologies of Support from Below and Beyond” the article wishes to map out how care has proliferated as an analytical and technical term aimed at capturing a vast array of practices, conditions, and sentiments. As we argue in our exploratory orienting essay–rather than a deep dive ethnography–care seems to have also expanded to many other reproductive domains of life, where it has been mobilized as a conceptual lens that affords privileged access to the human condition.

This essay is premised on the conviction that, in spite of and perhaps also because of its rising popularity, the analytics of care is in trouble. Drawing inspiration from STS, “new materialist” work, and the writings in black, Indigenous, anticolonial, feminist, and crip studies, we suggest that discussions within anthropology might benefit from opening care from both “below” and “beyond” in what we are calling “ecologies of support.”

Ecologies of support are not to be mistaken for all-encompassing environments. Their protective effects more often than not are discontinuous and unevenly distributed. Thinking about ecologies of support entails placing a new focus on how different kinds of bodies are differentially supported, cared for, and capable of influencing their own conditions of support. Because spaces of care and safety can also easily morph into forms of containment and exclusion, what is needed are more accurate cartographies of the many intersections and frictions between the enveloping and the diverging, the protecting and the containing, the enduring and the engendering, as they play out in care practices.

Our proposal is for anthropology to not simply seek to represent or bear witness to these practices, but also to reinvigorate care by experimenting with modes of inquiry and intervention that operate along new axes of movement and new relational possibilities—a dynamic ecosystem if you will.

**

We would be happy and eager to learn from your comments and reactions to it, if you had any.

Picture CC BY 2006 Vladimer Shioshvili

Abstract

Over the last decades, care has proliferated as a notion aimed at capturing a vast array of practices, conditions, and sentiments. In this article, we argue that the analytics of care may benefit from being troubled, as it too often reduces the reproduction of life to matters of palliation and repair, fueling a politics of nationalism and identitarianism. Picking up the threads of insight from STS, “new materialisms,” and postcolonial feminist and indigenous scholarship, we discuss care from “below” and “beyond,” thus exposing tensions between the enveloping and the diverging, the enduring and the engendering, that play out in care practices. We propose “ecologies of support” as an analytic that attends to how humans are grounded in, traversed by, and undermined by more‐than‐human and often opaque, speculative, subterranean elements. Our proposal is for anthropology to not simply map life‐sustaining ecologies, but to experimentally engage with troubling modes of inquiry and intervention.

Published as Duclos, V., & Criado, T. S. (2020). Care in Trouble: Ecologies of Support from Below and Beyond. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 34(2), 153–173 | PDF

Categories
collectives experimental collaborations multimodal open sourcing participatory & collaborative design of care infrastructures publications

The Method of Telegrammatic Correspondence: A Digital Mode of Inquiry during ‘Lockdown’

Logo. CC BY 2020 Cor on Collaboration

Ever since the COVID-19 outbreak unfolded into a major health and social crisis in Spain Adolfo Estalella and I have been taking part in a peculiar Telegram-based messaging group. ‘Cor on Collaboration’, as the space was named, turned into our main source of news, links, experiences, appreciations, reflections and collective debates. It was originally set up by some of our ethnographic acquaintances in the last years, a loose group of architects, designers and cultural workers with the goal of developing a version of a podcast radio show based in Madrid, devoted to exploring manifold forms of urban collaboration. From 20 people by mid-March to the actual 84, the group soon became a frantic and lively space where all participants have been sharing personal experiences, commenting media articles, discussing specialized papers and pre-prints or analysing collectively anything relevant to understand the unfolding of the COVID crisis. From its onset the convening team encouraged us to send audio messages to compile and edit them, together with other material, as podcasts that could reach out to a wider public beyond the group. Here we reflect on the methodological inspiration we could draw from this peculiar use of a regular off-the-shelf collaborative digital platform for our work as social scientists. Shocked and perplexed by the present situation, we (as the rest of our companions) have found in ‘Cor on collaboration’ a resource to navigate uncertain times: Not just a place for solidarity, debate and contact, but a place driven by the shared effort to problematize the present situation. Contributing to the rising debate on how to undertake ethnographic work in times of lockdown we would like to intimate the affordances of this particular ‘telegrammatic’ correspondence that has allowed us (and our counterparts in this conversation) to inquire into the uncertainty of these strange times.

We have written a small piece, published as part of the Sociological Review’s Solidarity and Care series reflecting on the experience:

[EN] The Method of Telegrammatic Correspondence: A Digital Mode of Inquiry during ‘Lockdown’

[ES] El método de la correspondencia telegramática: Un modo de indagación digital para tiempos de confinamiento

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[Update 26.10.2020] Now reblogged in the UniSiegen’s Interface blog: “The method of telegrammatic correspondence

Categories
legal multimodal publications techniques & ways of doing

Constitutional graffiti: Emergent landscapes of Corona protest in German cities

(French version below)

Munich, Germany – Only seldom do constitutional debates take the streets. However, these bureaucratically heated disputes–regularly discussed in the secluded spaces of courts–sometimes catch media attention and stir political debate. After the implementation of stark public health measures to fight against the expansion of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in Germany, a mounting controversy has opened up in the last weeks. Federal states like Bavaria have issued public space use guidelines to prevent the virus to spread: these recommend not only a safety distance of 1,5m, but also include bans affecting many institutions and big shops, which have closed or been reduced to essential-mode only; in the streets and parks groups of only 3 people are allowed, with the sole exception of larger groups living in the same household. When appreciated in a comparative gaze, these measures are far less strict than most of the neighboring EU countries. However, different political factions in Germany consider that they affect the rights of free protest and the freedom of assembly.

In the last weeks there have been scattered protests all over the country, having some support across the political spectrum, against what some have called a ‘Demoverbot’ (ban of demonstrations). Some wonder: What should go first, fundamental rights or health? The debate, of course, takes different connotations, left or right. And there are different expressions related to it. Some weeks ago, a man was photographed in Karlsruhe carrying a makeshift book copy of the Constitution tied to his back. On May Day several ‘Spontis’ (spontaneous demonstrations) took the streets in the popular districts of Berlin in protest for the ban. Walking by the Isar – Munich’s river – some days ago, I found another modality: a graffiti fight painted on the pavement in a bike lane from the green spaces running parallel to the water in the Glockenbachviertel’s embankment. A collision of political views in yellow and white. In yellow someone had painted a statement whereby ‘Corona’ came to stand as the ‘Demoverbot’ in itself. In white, someone felt compelled to correct this: ‘Corona’, that person thought, is a ‘virus’, whereas ‘capitalism’ would be ‘the problem.’

[FR] Munich, Allemagne – Il est rare que les débats constitutionnels se déroulent dans la rue. Malgré tout, il arrive que ces disputes bureaucratiques de haute volée — habituellement réservées aux espaces confinés des tribunaux — attirent l’attention des médias et suscitent un débat politique. Ces dernières semaines, après la mise en œuvre de mesures de santé publique draconiennes pour lutter contre l’expansion de la pandémie de SRAS-CoV-2 en Allemagne, une controverse grandissante a émergé. Des États fédéraux comme la Bavière ont publié des directives sur l’usage de l’espace public pour empêcher le virus de se propager : celles-ci recommandent non seulement que soit respectée une distance de sécurité d’1,5 mètre, mais comprennent également des interdictions touchant de nombreuses institutions et de grands magasins, dont la plupart ont fermés ou ont été réduits à un service minimum ; dans les rues et dans les parcs, seuls les groupes de 3 personnes sont autorisés, à l’exception des collectifs pour peu nombreux qui vivent sous le même toit. Lorsqu’on les compare, ces mesures sont beaucoup moins strictes que dans la plupart des pays voisins de l’UE. Cependant, différentes factions politiques en Allemagne considèrent qu’elles affectent les droits de manifestation et la liberté de réunion. 

Au cours des dernières semaines, quelques manifestations ont été organisées dans le pays, avec un certain soutien de l’ensemble du spectre politique, contre ce que certains ont appelé un « Demoverbot » (une interdiction de manifester). On s’interroge : qu’est-ce qui devrait passer en premier, les droits fondamentaux ou la santé ? Le débat, bien sûr, prend différentes connotations, à gauche ou à droite. Et différentes expressions y sont associées. Il y a quelques semaines, un homme a été photographié à Karlsruhe avec un exemplaire de la constitution fait maison attaché dans le dos. Le 1er mai, plusieurs « Spontis » (cortèges spontanés de protestation) sont descendus dans les rues des quartiers populaires de Berlin pour contester l’interdiction. En me promenant le long de la rivière Isar-Munich, j’ai découvert il y a quelques jours une autre modalité d’expression : un combat de graffitis peints sur une piste cyclable du Glockenbachviertel, au niveau des espaces verts qui longent l’eau. Une confrontation de points de vue politiques en jaune et blanc. En blanc, quelqu’un avait peint une équation dans laquelle le « Corona » se substituait au « Demoverbot ». En jaune, quelqu’un s’est senti obligé d’en rectifier les termes : Le « Corona », selon cette personne, est un « virus », tandis que le « capitalisme » serait « le problème » (kindly translated by Jérôme Denis)

Publication and rationale

This short picture & text is a guest contribution to Scriptopolis (11 May 2020), the wonderful archive documenting material approaches to writing phenomena curated by Marie Alauzen, Jérôme Denis, David Pontille & Didier Torny.

Although the brief accompanying text provides contextual info on the picture, some relevant phenomena (like the 9pm clapping & the vast support of the measures) are obviously missing in this attempt at charting out landscapes of protest in German cities under Corona public health regulations. However, I wanted to document this to reflect how different liberal versions of ‘exposure’ might be emerging…

Interestingly, there are also newer landscapes of protest operating with an idea of ‘shared protection’: Disability rights movements like AbilityWatch have been exploring forms of demonstrating ‘at a distance’, particularly at a time when they feel even more exposed by a re-enactment of eugenic-like measures in health care using the hashtag #UNsichtbar. +info here: https://maiprotest.de/

Come what may, and beyond the more or less spectacular display of street protests, a looming question seems to linger: even if might sound like a minor issue, a too-civil concern, appreciating the constitutionality of these measures has become also a debate between jurists, given that they might have a jurisprudential value – hence, exploring their juridical and scientific grounding becomes quintessential, since they might be having a future impact.

Some background references

Jan Fährmann, Hartmut Aden, Clemens Arzt (15 Apr 2020). Versammlungs­freiheit – auch in Krisenzeiten!. Verfassungsblog: On matters constitutional.

SZ.de (18 Apr 2020). Verfassungsrichter kippen Stuttgarts Demoverbot. Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

Reuters (26 Apr 2020). Coronavirus: dozens arrested in Berlin protesting against lockdown. The Guardian.

Walther Michl (28 Apr 2020). Die Kohärenz als Begleitmusik zum infektions­schutz­rechtlichen Tanz. Verfassungsblog: On matters constitutional.

Felix Bohr, Uwe Buse, Anna Clauß, Markus Feldenkirchen, Barbara Hardinghaus, Wolfgang Höbel, Guido Kleinhubbert, Martin Knobbe, Julia Koch, Dialika Neufeld, Christopher Piltz, Max Polonyi, Andreas Wassermann and Alfred Weinzierl (1 May 2020). Germans Split Over Lifting of Lockdown. Der Spiegel.

rbb24.de (2 May 2020). 1. Mai in Berlin – Tausende Menschen ziehen dicht an dicht durch Kreuzberg. rbb24.de

Maik Baumgärtner, Felix Bohr, Roman Höfner, Timo Lehmann, Ann-Katrin Müller, Sven Röbel, Marcel Rosenbach, Jonas Schaible, Wolf Wiedmann-Schmidt und Steffen Winter (8 May 2020). Sturm der Lügen. Der Spiegel.

Thomas Anlauf (10 May 2020). Ohne Masken, ohne Abstand. Sueddeutsche Zeitung.