1.
Pasquini, Mirko, 1991
(författare)
The Negotiation of Urgency: Economies of Attention in an Italian Emergency Room
2021
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Urgency in a hospital Emergency Room (ER) is not a self-evident state. Urgency is made, by establishing priorities, distributing attention and material resources, and deciding who and what needs to be attended to first – and, simultaneously, who and what has to wait. The process of determining urgency is known as “triage” (from the French verb, trier, “to choose”). This thesis is about the vicissitudes of triage in an Italian ER. Based on one year of ethnographic fieldwork, the thesis explores what happens when urgency is at stake; when it is contested and caught up between different, and frequently conflicting, perspectives. It explores how urgency is determined in practice, and shows how triage always is a vulnerable process of negotiation guided by economies of attention. How is urgency actually shaped in interactions between patients, their families and friends, and the ER staff? The different chapters explore how time in the ER is created through shifting registers of attention, and how attention in the ER is affected by widespread economic and social precarity, and neoliberal national policies of governance. It discusses how triage increasingly is structured by attitudes of mistrust; and also by potential or real outbreaks of violence. Addressing the particular positioning of the ER as a thick space of conjunction between neoliberal state politics and people's increasing need for care and recognition, the thesis aims to contribute to medical anthropology literature by analyzing triage not as a neutral medical way of sorting, but as a practice that actively creates difference. It explores both the limits of triage, and how those limits can spark improvisation and creative reinvention.
2.
3.
Caballero, Adelaida, 1986-
(författare)
Shortchanged : Elderly Women Street Vendors in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea
2023
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Normative assumptions regarding reciprocity between adult children and elderly parents continue to dominate narratives on later life in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet strenuous socioeconomic conditions make it difficult for families to meet expectations of care and support. In Malabo, elderly women commonly engage in economic activities such as street vending for survival. Separation from male partners and high unemployment among men and youths often turn senior women into sole providers in multi-generational households. The cultural script of self-sacrificial motherhood, however, leads people to believe that these senior women are hardly entitled to demand reciprocal support – that as proper mothers and grandmothers, they are merely fulfilling a duty. Gender-based forms of exploitation and feelings of desertion characterize family life for many older Equatoguinean women. Elderly women street vendors who live and work in Malabo are also mistreated outside their homes. Harassment, humiliation, and physical invisibilization are some of the means by which ‘patriotic citizens’ and representatives of state authorities protect the government’s narrative of ‘unprecedented development.’The thesis explores how elderly women street vendors try to counter the routinized types of violence to which they are exposed and how they strive to assert themselves as persons. I approach the women’s articulations of personhood through the concept of moral economy and discuss them with regard to normative African relationality. The empirical basis of the work is fourteen months of uninterrupted ethnographic field research in Malabo between 2017 and 2018. The analyses rely on social gerontological theories on dependency, intergenerational tensions, prosocial behaviors, gender identity, sexuality, and autonomy, as well as on anthropological theories on the category of the person, everyday violence, morality, gossip, and older women’s sexuality in Africa. The thesis aims to contribute to humanistic gerontological literature by highlighting the meanings that autonomy can take for seniors who live in conditions of no institutional support, normalized violence at home, gender prejudice, and the kind of ageism that arises from narratives that equate social advancement with development, hence identifying old age with anti-values such as ignorance and backwardness. Findings suggest that, among elderly women street vendors in Malabo, striving toward a sense of autonomous personhood is not only a means for coping with the challenges of aging in a difficult socioeconomic milieu, but also a more encompassing rejection of ‘retraditionalized’ national politics and authoritarianism.
4.
Lutz, Peter A.
(författare)
Tinkering Care Moves : Senior Home Care in Practice
2016
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This dissertation builds on the current anthropological studies of care relations in practice. It draws inspiration from science and technology studies (STS) and postfeminist technoscience. A qualitative ethnographic approach grounds the empirical data collection and analysis. This entails ethnographic fieldwork with senior home care in the United States and Sweden during 2007–2008 and 2011–2012. Analytical attention centers on how movements situate various tensions of senior home care in practice. Four interrelated published works comprise the main thematic chapters. Each article exemplifies how human and nonhuman relations move and mediate care. They develop several heuristic terms that advance ideas about how older people, aging bodies, technologies, spaces, and times that tinker each other through movements of care in practice. The comprehensive summary frames these articles with an overview of the primary thematic orientations and methodological concerns. A discussion of the main contributions and implications of the dissertation concludes the work.
