Tag: Brazil

Solidarity, infrastructure and critical pedagogy during COVID-19: Lessons from Brazil

Post author Dominique P. Béhague, William Minter and Francisco Ortega
Post date April 7, 2021

This article is part of the following series: Dispatches from the pandemic

Even before the pandemic hit Brazil’s favelas, residents began organizing to protect themselves — against both the novel coronavirus and the government’s active suppression of effective public health action (Ortega and Orsini, 2020). Seasoned activists began fund-raising, mobilizations donations, distributing food, masks, and hygiene kits, and writing policies and manifestos; volunteers signed up to learn basic first aid and walk …

Tags Activism, Brazil, coronavirus, COVID-19, Infrastructure

Books

The Ambivalent Tactics of Therapeutic Governing

Post author Dominique P. Béhague
Post date March 15, 2021

Li Zhang has captured a fascinating moment in the social and political transformation of psychotherapy in China. There is much to say about this exquisite book. While grounded in the particularities of postsocialist China, Zhang situates her analysis in dialogue with much broader questions relating to globalization, governmentality, and grassroots practices. Her book will undoubtedly stimulate rich dialogue with scholars …

Tags Brazil, China, Governance, Psychiatry, Psychology, Psychotherapy

Lectures

Standards and urgency in times of pandemics: hydroxychloroquine as a pharmaceutical and political artefact

Post author Manuel Campinas
Post date September 1, 2020

This article is part of the following series: Dispatches from the pandemic

Separated by two meters of water from the crowd, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro, infected by COVID-19 and wearing his mask, rallied up his supporters, “If by chance your mother or grandfather catches it, will they take chloroquine or not?”

“They will!” shouted back the crowd in unison, across the narrow strip of water.

Hydroxychloroquine has turned from being a commonly …

Tags Brazil, pharmaceutical markets, Public health, Standards, Vaccines

Lectures

Intimate connections and singular embodiments: disability in times of the Covid-19 pandemic

Post author Helena Fietz, Anahí Guedes de Mello and Claudia Fonseca
Post date August 19, 2020

This article is part of the following series: Dispatches from the pandemic

In Brazil, most state governors and city mayors in Brazil have been following the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines and, in defiance of federal government protocol, have adopted policies of social isolation and distancing. To stay home with our families, going out only when necessary is an effective policy for care and prevention aimed at the “general population.” Still, when …

Tags Brazil, COVID-19, Disability, Public health, WHO

Lectures

The management of the coronavirus pandemic in Brazil and necropolitics: An essay on an announced tragedy

Post author Daniel Granada
Post date May 20, 2020

This article is part of the following series: Dispatches from the pandemic

In recent years, we have seen cuts in budgets for health, education and social security in Brazil. On the other hand, we have also seen an increase in working time and social security taxes, an added precarity of labor relations, and a weakening of workers’ unions. Although higher education remains public and free of charge, resources have been reduced and …

Tags Brazil, coronavirus, COVID-19

Features

What Comes After COVID-19

Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, has stated publicly that COVID-19 isn’t a problem for his country because Brazilians are characteristically tough. So tough that they can “jump into a sewer…and nothing happens” to them (Ortega and Orsini 2020). This blithe affirmation from the country’s highest leader is especially troubling since it is precisely infrastructural inequities like open sewers that …

Tags Brazil, care, COIVD-19, post-crisis, structural vulnerabilities, Zika