Gendered Geographies of Care: Women as Health Workers in an Indigenous Health Project in the Peruvian Amazon

This article examines how women as primary gatekeepers for well being became involved as health promoters in a local indigenous health care project in the Amazonian region of Madre de Dios, Peru. Here, I provide a case study of the processes and transitions that the project underwent from its inception to its eventual inclusion of indigenous women health promoters into its programs among indigenous communities from the mid 1980’s through the early 1990’s, at a time when western primary health care was even less accessible then it is today. The article begins with an overview of Madre de Dios and a general discussion of the links between health and gender. It then calls attention to women’s invisibility in daily primary healthcare and examines how and why women were initially neglected in health care delivery strategies while examining the progression and extent of their involvement, their role in health resource management, and the difficulties they faced as leaders vis-à-vis broader political structures such as the native federation and local government. Overall, the project succeeded in broadening the definition of health to include ideas of well-being, ‘living well’ and conservation as a set of relationships with the environment and its care - areas in which women undeniably hold key positions. In examining geographical natural resource maps by charting ideological and gender-based practices upon it, this article discusses a gender balanced approach to processes legitimizing indigenous healthcare practices. This research suggests that the overlooking of women’s roles in community health is embedded in local and global gendered politics of health care that tend to ignore that care practices are embedded in daily social relations. Furthermore, the problems that the omission of women as health promoters raises offers a general critique of the indigenous health agent approach to healthcare in Amazonia

Turning a blind eye: the complicit trespassing of ‘Chinese walls’ in financial institutions in New York

This article examines the ways in which ‘Chinese walls’ – that is, information barriers within financial institutions – are constituted and subverted by acts of trespass within large investment banking firms in New York. While Chinese walls positively serve to prevent corruption and fraud, they simultaneously entice legal, semi-legal and illegal forms of trespassing. My analysis shows that some trespassing is based on non-verbalised and embodied exchanges of information that are not in and of themselves illegal. Referred to as playing ‘the game’, the result of these forms of trespass is that the Chinese wall becomes an ‘effect’ or fiction. At other times, trespassing can cause inconvenient suspicion, encouraging those who operate amidst these walls to participate strategically in various aspects of willful blindness. Together, these examples reveal the conceptual and material relationships between ‘seeing’ and ‘knowing’, thereby highlighting the complexity of information flows in financial institutions and demonstrating how the critical regulation of financial capitalism is sometimes weakened

Traversing and Translating High Finance

Symposium/workshop held on 25 April 2015 at the Royal Anthropological Institute. This workshop, held at the Royal Anthropological Institute, went beyond charting the frontiers of corporate investments by forming bridges between disparate terrains that might otherwise seem unconnected, and proposing new methodologies for exploring and communicating such links. Anthropologists, artists, accountants, hacktivists, economists, journalists, former brokers and educators traced their ideas and methods as they imaginatively and rigorously made links geared toward making visible the frequently invisible workings of finance. Presentations informed by conceptual and performative art and exhibits focused on themes of financial secrecy and transparency that arose throughout the workshop, entreating participants to focus on current global predicaments such as the economic crisis – not solely on its effects, but also importantly, its causes

The Digital Divide and Futurist Imaginings of Zelle‐ous Resistors

The “digital divide” is widely acknowledged as exacerbating inequality by leaving some people on one side or the other of a knowledge divide without access to appropriate tools for the future and all the opportunities that digital technology promises. Attempts to understand this gap tend to focus on issues of trust, levels of financial education, and digital skills, mainly seeking to understand why some individuals and groups—who are mostly assumed to have minimal financial know-how and digital skills—do not trust either online financial institutions or exclusively app‐based finance. Considering the large investment in fintech solutions driven by these industries, and the practical features designed in part to make the user’s life easier and user experience more intuitive and reassuring, it is worth noting that such queries are inclined to conclude that these untapped users cannot imagine a digital future due to their own lack of digital skills and lack of exposure to tech. This article suggests that, for a portion of this population, many of whom are digital natives, this is not the case. instead, they can invest in understanding and adapting to technology and do so. Yet they are uncomfortable with the “instantaneousness” of some transactions because this doesn’t allow them enough time to address a problem or have recourse for anything unforeseeable. Furthermore, their interest in fintech’s inclusive platforms is foreshadowed by their vivid futurist understandings and imaginations. Indeed, they envision precisely the kind of digital significance that is often assumed that they do not. However, this article argues that the key difference is that many envision the future as a digital dystopia and are resisting what Lauren Berlant refers to as “cruel optimism.” These types of imaginings motivate many to resist the vulnerabilities that they believe can make them overly dependent on technology in ways that they believe can potentially place them at risk. This article focuses on the US multi‐bank‐owned Zelle payment system and its online and app‐based banking features as a case study to illustrate these points. It further argues that the inclusivity that online digital banking platforms aspiringly offer is often viewed by potential users not as a portal toward equality but rather as “a leap of faith” toward digital dependency and future vulnerability

Starting-up during COVID-19

The global impact of COVID-19 has rippled into all areas of social, economic, political and business lives no matter what one’s line of work or livelihood. Considerable focus has been directed at understanding some of the challenges presented by the current pandemic on primary research, including the negative impacts of a technology-dependent or technology-mediated field site, the lack of material shared spaces during covid-19 times, interrupted fieldwork, transformed field sites, mental wellbeing, the weakness of online communications in comparison to face-to face contact and other concrete and adverse repercussions of the current pandemic on primary research. While the negative disruptive effects on organizations have been addressed elsewhere (Bartik et al. 2020, Meyer et al. 2020), here I wish to reflect upon my positive experiences of meeting and working with a small start-up. From my home office, I was able to meet and connect to new colleagues, build a research team, and design and conduct a research project at a new field site– all transpiring withouthaving previously worked with the team. These circumstances led me to make decisions that I would not have made sans pandemic but which contributed toward positive project decisions. Feeling encouraged about what we accomplished together without ever having met my research team colleagues in person, I focus on how covid-19 has created new possibilities for connection and for conducting research within and across borders. Rather than to focus on disruption, one might also consider the emergence of new businesses during covid and the ensuing nascent forms and conditions for conducting business at such times

Global Ayahuasca: An Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

This chapter examines issues surrounding the viability and desirability of recent entrepreneurs and entrepreneurships aiming to create effective measures of 'transparency' 'efficacy' and 'safety' with regards to the increasing participation in the ayahuasca sessions that take place in local and global settings. It raises critical questions about the methods through which such initiatives seek to identify those legitimate authorities, actors, voices and criteria or can in turn deem certain practices and actors legitimate and others not. This takes place in environments where there are marked disjunctures between what transpires in the spoken, visible and unspoken, invisible worlds particularly amidst great inequality. Whereas such enterprises may make sense from a market perspective, they make little sense within the broader social, political and cultural contexts in which ayahuasca practitioners live and operate

Steven Lee Rubinstein (1962-2012)

The sad news of Dr. Steve Lee Rubenstein’s sudden and unexpected death at the age of 49 took us all by surprise. In fact, as I write this, months after Steve’s passing, I am still grappling with the notion that he is gone from this world, as we know it. In some ways, Steve was only at the beginning of his career with many large ideas still unleashed and yet he had already achieved more than most do in one lifetime. As friends and colleagues of Steve’s we have spent the last few months exchanging stories about his extraordinary mind, wit and generosity. Students have come forth to talk about how much he changed their way of reading texts and seeing the world, identifying him as the one person from their experience in higher education who actually made a difference to them, teaching them not only about anthropology but about life. Colleagues, young and old, have benefitted from his intense and heartfelt academic exchanges, and enjoyed his constructively critical and magnanimous manner. Steve was an interlocutor par excellence. As South Americanists we experienced first-hand his commitment to community building by bringing people and ideas together, never simply promoting himself. We have all watched him hold court in the lobbies of all the various conferences we attended. Wherever Steve sat became a magnetic hub, an intellectual watering hole across and beyond our discipline

Reflections on Crafting an Ayahuasca Community Guide for the Awareness of Sexual Abuse

This commentary serves to reflect upon the conception and development of a set of guidelines for the awareness of sexual abuse in ayahuasca settings, an assortment of scenarios that take place in local and global settings entailing the use of a psychedelic brew known for producing visionary and purgative effects composed of Amazonian Banisteriopsis caapi (ayahuasca vine) most commonly combined with the leaves of Psychotria viridis (chacruna) or Diplopterys cabrerana (chaliponga). The globalization and diaspora of ayahuasca expertise, usage, and plant materials has broadened the diversity of individual and group interactions and geographical and social contexts in which this hallucinogenic concoction is ingested, and thus given rise to a range of possibilities which also may, despondently, include possibilities for sexual harassment and abuse. Here, the authors raise the key issues and processes that have led to formation, publication, and dissemination of the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines’ Ayahuasca Community Guide for the Awareness of Sexual Abuse, focusing specifically on the needs for such guidelines, as well as the challenges faced in collaboratively creating them. The creation of guidelines as a form of education is a task wrought with concerns, as they must first and foremost convey the fact that abuse is never the victim/survivor’s fault, and yet they must also aim to inform individuals of potential common scenarios that can lead to abuse. In this sense, guidelines themselves are held up to scrutiny, and the process of collaboratively crafting the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines’ Ayahuasca Community Guide for the Awareness of Sexual Abuse has not been an exception. The authors stress the importance of research and experience in understanding the complexities of the contexts in which potential abuse can occur, particularly around issues of consent and intercultural communication. The overall aim is one of education at all levels; not just in better informing participants but, in doing so, being part of a broader goal of changing the potential scenarios themselves

Indigenous urbanization in Amazonia: A new context for social and territorial articulation

La idea generalizada de la Amazonia como una región compuesta principalmente por poblaciones bosquesinas está desactualizada: una gran parte de la población indígena o rural vive o está fuertemente vinculada a los centros urbanos. Dicha tendencia no implica necesariamente un proceso de éxodo o abandono de los espacios rurales o una simple desterritorialización; más bien instaura un nuevo régimen caracterizado por la movilidad, la diversificación económica, y un patrón residencial y de apropiación territorial multisituado, distribuido y dinámico. Una consiguiente mayor articulación simbólica y material a lo largo del extenso y complejo interfaz urbano-rural se evidencia en nuevos procesos de transformación y coproducción a nivel corporal, social, étnico, ambiental y territorial. Situada en los márgenes de la modernidad neoliberal, dicha coyuntura muestra a la vez ciertas tendencias históricas y culturales, característicamente amazónicas.The generalized view of Amazonia as predominantly rural is outdated: a large part of the rural and indigenous population either lives in or is strongly linked to urban centres. Such a trend does not signify rural exodus, abandonment or straightforward de-territorialization, however but rather reveals the onset of a new regime characterized by a highly diversified livelihood and subsistence strategy with accompanying levels of circular mobility, multi-sited and distributed forms of settlement and territoriality. A greater degree of connectivity and increased symbolic and material exchanges along a large, complex urban-rural interface is reflected in multiple and simultaneous processes of corporeal, social, ethnic, environmental, and territorial transformation and co-production. Situated at the margins of neoliberal modernity this new juncture reveals certain historical continuities and cultural trends which we deem characteristically Amazonian.- Grupo de investigación Antropología y Filosofía (SEJ-126). Universidad de Granada. - Área de Antropología Social. Universidad de Jaén. - Laborarorio de Antropología Social y Cultural (HUM-472). Universidad de Almería. - Departamento de Filosofía II. Universidad de Granada