FRANCESCO DIODATI In the last post, I wrote about the effects of the COVID-19 emergency on elderly care in Italy and the new ethical challenges that emerged in one of the most aged countries in the world under the current crisis. I discussed how the main issue has become how to balance the risk of…
Tag: medical anthropology
Care Labour and Isolation in Italy: New Ethical Challenges Part One
FRANCESCO DIODATI Since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, I’ve decided to make a report on the effects of isolation politics on care labour in Italy, starting from the way the new scenario was reshaping my ethnographic research on elder care in Emilia-Romagna. Emilia-Romagna is one of the northern regions most affected by contagion and…
Stuck Between A Rock And A Hard Place: Risk Assessment and Ethical Dilemmas in the Time of Covid-19
The View From The Front Line As Osteopath/Medical Anthropologist MARIA LARRAIN A week ago, the diary started to look unusually quiet but not surprising giving how the news about coronavirus was unfolding. I had expected that we may have to close if a full lockdown was enforced and started to look into taking video consultations…
Coronavirus- Is this our Microbiopolitical Moment?
DARREN OLLERTON Despite following the early emergence of coronavirus with zeal — a combination of intellectual intrigue and morbid fascination with the science fiction potential of pandemic — it took me some time to fully digest the wholesale impact of the current contagion. I can’t deny that this may also have been somewhat facilitated by…
Same Virus, Different Temporalities: Anticipations From Mexico
LAURA MONTESI 21st of March – Oaxaca, Mexico – Day 5 of voluntary quarantine It’s the 21st of March and the official epidemiological record in Mexico reports 203 confirmed cases of Covid-19, 606 suspicious cases, and 2 deaths. Compared with the 47,021 cases of people detected with SARS-Cov-2 in Italy or the 19,980 in Spain…
Grasping for Unity in a Divided Britain: Ageism, Brexit-Era Politics & the COVID-19 ‘Boomer Remover’
REBECCA IRONS On the 19th March, the day before Boris Johnson ordered restaurants closed, I walked past the window of a packed Wagamama. The day that it had been announced that London would be facing lockdown, tube stations would be closing, and the UK had reached a state of emergency…and there, in that Wagamama, was…
Connections During Coronavirus: From Cuba to Brazil
CLAUDIA FONSECA It hit us with unexpected suddenness, just as it did most other people. José and I had been taking the public buses all that week of the Medical Anthropology conference in Cuba. We’d chosen to stay in our private hostel, located in a working-class district near the center of Havana instead of going…
COVID-19 in Cuba: Some Reflections At The Beginning Of The Crisis.
SAHRA GIBBON I have just returned from the Society for Medical Anthropology meeting in Havana which went ahead just days before the bans and restrictions on travel intensified. Going to Cuba after nearly a 12 year absence was not only an opportunity to reflect personally on the changes that have happened there since my last…
“Consciously Quarantined: A COVID-19 response from the Social Sciences” Introduction to Series
REBECCA IRONS & SAHRA GIBBON The past term has been tumultuous, to say the least. Industrial action across UK Universities meant that classes and research were disrupted for a month whilst striking members of staff were absent (for the second time this academic year), resulting in a time of uncertainty and frustration for many. However,…
