Human Arenas

Spaniards born in a democracy have no recollection of living through war and what it entails. We can only access those memories via mediation, by listening to our relatives who were there, whose stories we become witnesses to, and which ultimately become our own collective witnessing. The remembrance of the Spanish Civil War passed on to us in this manner is a contested legacy, a complex combination of affects and mediated memories, coming from offline-as in conversations with our elders-and online-such as archival footage-resources. Experiencing war firsthand left indelible marks in our forebearers' minds. Now the elderly must face this violent "war" and "postwar" rhetoric with the potential retraumatization it may cause. Not capable to understand why media and government officials alike call for heroes to resist and fight the crisis, a discourse heavily imbued with emotions and battlefront references does little to assuage citizens' fears. Perpetual news reels on the number of dead per day worsen the psychological strain of a person in lockdown, akin to that of prison inmates, more so if that person endured an actual war and its aftermath. What might be done to lessen such harmful impacts? How can we change the narrative and make it more humane?

Civitas: Revista De Ciências Sociais, 24(1), e45145, 2024

ENG. We analyse the impact of the pandemic on the care system in Spain. In particular, we focus on the perspective of relatives to illuminate the crisis of the residential care model that the Covid-19 pandemic brought to light. The pandemic had a major impact on Spanish care homes, with one of the highest mortality rates in the European Union. This caused suffering, not only for residents, but also for relatives, who reacted by mobilising and demanding political accountability. In line with the anthropology of emotions, we analyse the emotional grammars underlying the protest to show how the suffering of relatives becomes intelligible in the framework of a residential care model in crisis, and how it acquires political value beyond the private and individual sphere in which care is usually understood. Thus, we show the political work of emotions and their analytical potential in examining the transformations and challenges of the current care system. . PORT. Este artigo analisa como a pandemia impactou o sistema de cuidado na Espanha. Toma como elemento central de análise a crise do modelo residencial que a pandemia trouxe à tona e o faz a partir da perspectiva dos familiares. A pandemia teve um grande impacto nas casas de idosos, com uma das maiores taxas de mortalidade da União Europeia. Isso causou sofrimento, não apenas entre os residentes, mas também entre os familiares, que reagiram mobilizandose e exigindo responsabilidade pelo que aconteceu. Em consonância com a antropologia das emoções, o objetivo é analisar as gramáticas emocionais subjacentes ao protesto, para mostrar como o sofrimento dos familiares se torna inteligível na estrutura de um modelo de cuidado residencial em crise e como ele adquire valor político além da esfera privada e individual na qual o cuidado é normalmente pensado. ESP. El artículo analiza la forma como la pandemia impactó el sistema de cuidados en España. Toma como elemento central de análisis la crisis del modelo residencial que la pandemia evidenció y lo hace desde la perspectiva de los familiares. La pandemia tuvo un impacto importante en las residencias, con uno de los índices de mortalidad más elevados de la Unión Europea. Ello provocó sufrimiento, no solo en los residentes, sino también en los familiares, quienes reaccionaron movilizándose y exigiendo responsabilidades por lo acontecido. En línea con la antropología de las emociones, se trata de analizar las gramáticas emocionales que subyacen a la protesta, para mostrar cómo el sufrimiento de los familiares se torna inteligible en el marco de un modelo de atención residencial en crisis, y como adquiere valor político más allá del ámbito privado e individual en el que suele pensarse el cuidado.

2021

PURPOSE This study aims to explore the psychological effects of lockdown during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic on people living in an Italian prison. The suspension of family visits and most activities, along with the difficulties in applying social distancing to this vulnerable population was associated with increased psychological distress. Riots broke out over two days in more than 22 prisons across Italy at the beginning of March 2020, highlighting the negative psychological impact of the pandemic and the country's emergency policies. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH The research involves 17 men (Italians and foreigners) detained in a Lombardy prison from 1 March to 4 May 2020, corresponding to the lockdown phase in Italy. The qualitative content analysis (CA) of 27 posts, written by participants during that period and published on the blog "L'Oblò", were analysed. The analysis allowed the identification of topics and subtopics that are related to two maj...

Contemporary Political Theory

Memory Studies, 2021

Working at the intersection of political science, ethnographic sociology, and contemporary historiography, Sarah Gensburger specializes in the social dynamics of memory. In this interview, she talks about her book Memory on My Doorstep: Chronicles of the Bataclan Neighborhood, Paris 2015-2016, which traces the evolving memorialization processes following the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, their impact on the local landscape, and the social appropriations of the past by visitors at memorials and commemorative sites. She also discusses her new project Vitrines en confinement - Vetrine in quarantena ("Windows in Lockdown"), which documents public responses to the coronavirus pandemic from different sites across Europe through the creation of a photographic archive of public space. The interview highlights issues around the immediacy of contemporary memorialization practices, the ways in which people engage with their local space during times of crisis, and how we are all actively involved in preserving memory for the future.

Journal of Religion and Health, 2020

The pandemic caused by the spread of Covid-19 is giving rise to an exceptional social situation because of the great speed of propagation of the illness and the high level of mortality it has occasioned in a very short time. Moreover, the lockdown measures decreed in Spain prohibit the holding of wakes to avoid contagion, and limit funerals to three people plus the officiant. Thus, coronavirus is robbing people of the opportunity of a final farewell, stripping the dead of their dignity and worsening the grief of the living. This article investigates the situation and the social and cultural impact it has provoked. The method used takes the line of critical dialogue analysis (CDA) applied to information contained in the mass media, employing qualitative material from a related small-scale study. The results show that in countries like Spain where there is a strong Roman Catholic tradition the importance of these rituals is unquestionable. Although the country has become laicized over recent years, many traditions around death are still maintained. Hence, the impossibility of holding funerals is triggering a large number of social and personal conflicts. Furthermore, they indicate that lockdown, and the lack of rituals and of accompaniment constitute some of the most crucial stressors in the epidemic. Grief in solitude has become widespread and all the more fundamental in a society that values social support from close friends and family members. The conclusions show that the social distancing imposed by the epidemic is especially hard to bear when relatives are passing into death.

Comparative Studies in Society and history, 1991

STUDIA UNIVERSITATIS CIBINIENSIS. Series Historica, 2014

What does ‘doing justice to the past’ mean when we have to deal with societies that are haunted by the memory of their traumatic history? Should justice in this case mean paying homage to the victims and restoring their dignity, or rather healing the emotional damage inflicted upon the survivors? Do consensual strategies enjoy in this context a moral superiority over more confrontational approaches? The so-called Law on Historical Memory, which was passed in Spain in 2007, has shown the difficulties of applying the principles of transitional justice to the politics of memory in practice. This paper portrays how the narratives of recent Spanish history have been transformed by the social and generational changes which occurred in the last decade. These changes have not only altered the normative perception of the transition to democracy that took place in the late 70’s, but also the political culture that emerged from it. Additionally, the paper differentiates the therapeutic, the moral and the political dimensions of historical memory, and how they could function as a resource for social reconciliation.

European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology, 2020

Thinking and writing in the time of pandemic COVID-19 When we presented the early 2020 issue of the European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology, no one comprehended what the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, in Wuhan province, China, would mean to the world, to Europe, to any country or any single person in the weeks to come. A couple of months later, life as we knew it fundamentally changed. The mantras of today are 'stay at home, stay safe' and 'social distancing'. Not even the most critical mind working on surveillanceand on what George Orwell grasped in his '1984' novelwould have imagined that almost all over the world, nation states ban individual free movement and the gathering of people, while borders are closed and aeroplanes are grounded. Normal social life and work has come to a halt. It seems the policing of populations might be the 'only' way to stop the deadly virus spreading further-or at least slow it down to a pace our medical systems can handle. Ulrich Beck's 'risk society' appears to be taking on new forms in current times, while Simmel's 'psychology of the city dweller' also seems to take on novel meaning. The effects of the pandemic on social inequality, urban life, citizenship, migration, and core-periphery relations are already becoming visible, but will be only fully comprehensible in due course. What we have to face up to is unprecedented as far as contemporary generations are concerned, and will leave heavy marks, stigma, and perhaps trauma for those who survive the virus (but also for the lucky ones who are not being physically infected). There is a lot to say on the neo-nationalisation of security regimes we see right now, as well as on systematic failures of national and international politics in securing public health systems, which now renders visible the horrific scale of death counting. Neoliberal capitalism has ignored what society means, and now leaves it to the kinder people in society to fill the care gaps that are man-and system-made. The disaster is televised, and in the daily news, we increasingly see worn out faces of nurses, doctors, and of all involved with keeping alive the livelihood in our neighbourhoods, cities and across the globe. Foremost, the rising

Torture Journal

This article addresses the summative effects of the social crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic on the health-disease-care process at the level of Chilean society in the neoliberal context. The economy-health relationship is deepened, a phenomenon that is interpreted from the conceptual framework of necropolitics. The retraumatizing effect of the human rights violations recorded during the popular mobilizations of the social revolt of October 2019 in Chile, including the practice of torture, is reviewed.