Ecologies of Care in the Crisis of the Welfare State
A Critical Dialogue Between Madrid and Trieste
The Museo Reina Sofía organises two round-table discussions, over two sessions held on consecutive days, focusing on the experiences of community healthcare in Madrid and Trieste in relation to the work of Franco Basaglia and anti-psychiatry. The encounters are framed inside the project Entrar afuera (Enter Outside), an analysis of institutional ecologies and crisis, started in 2016 by Marta Pérez and Pantxo Ramas in the Museo Reina Sofía Study Centre’s Research Residencies programme.
In this research project, community healthcare is put forward as a place of experimentation to find different forms of considering the relationship between society and institutions in the contemporary crisis of the welfare state. Its main aim is to interweave dialogue between different daily practices of community healthcare in Trieste and Madrid, with their experimentations not only contrasting with processes of the individualisation of personal care and the privatisation of common resources, but also reflecting on the invention of new modes of forming healthcare. These practices thus move away from the modern paternalistic model that reifies patients, taking them as objects of care to, conversely, consider them as subjects with rights and frailties.
The materials to come out of this research are available on the Entrar afuera platform, which seeks to trace the present-day living thread of care institutions (healthcare, education, life…) invented in the light of institutional critique movements from the 1970s. The ecology of these materials gives rise to a critical dialogue, led by public service workers who, day after day, raise questions on how to confront the contemporary desertification of social rights and on the role played by public policies in this process of impoverished public resources designated to care. Closeness, singularity, competence, normality, public healthcare, community, emancipation… are some of the words punctuating this dialogue.
These concepts have enabled us to trace lines between professionals involved in the processes and set forth situated readings, as much through chronicles as certain outside gazes that move critique beyond the two isolated experiences. In addition to sharing the results of the research, these encounters look to bring us closer to the current vitality in the Basaglian institutional critique movement through conversations with some of its leading figures.
Participants
Margherita Bono is a sociologist. She has been a focal point in Zindis, from the Micro-Area programme of Muggia Town Council, and she currently coordinates situated research at the Collina Social Cooperative for the development of new interventions.
Giancarlo Carena is chairman of the Monte San Pantaleone Agricultural Social Cooperative. As a psychiatric nurse, he has led the social cooperative movement in Trieste since the 1980s.
Michela Degrassi is a physiotherapist. She is a focal point in Gretta, in the Micro-Area programme of the University Agency of Integrated Healthcare, Trieste.
Giovanna Del Giudice is chairwoman of the Standing Conference for Mental Health in the “Franco Basaglia” World and has been leading psychiatrist in the Basaglian anti-institutional revolution since 1971.
Mercedes Martínez is the head of Madrid Salud, the Service for the Prevention and Promotion of Healthcare in Madrid.
Sari Massiotta works on the Management Board of Public Health Services at the University Agency of Integrated Healthcare, Trieste.
Marta Pérez is a professor of Anthropology at the Complutense University of Madrid. She also teaches Mobility and Health at Madrid’s Duke University and participates in activism spaces for public and universal access to healthcare. She is a member of the Entrar Afuera research collective.
Pantxo Ramas works at Kent Law School at the University of Kent and is an activist and member of the research collective Entrar Afuera and the association Conferenza Permanente per la Salute Mentale nel Mondo.
Programme
Wednesday, 10 April 2019 – 7pm / Sabatini Building, Auditorium
Enter Outside in Community Healthcare: Experimenting with Militant Research
In this first round-table discussion, workers from Trieste and Madrid present research materials, as well as questions and reflections posited throughout the collaborative work.
Participants: Margherita Bono, Michela Degrassi and Mercedes Martínez
Moderated by: Marta Pérez
Thursday, 11 April 2019 – 7pm / Nouvel Building, Auditorium 200
A Journey Questioning the Present: Institutional Critique Viewed from Trieste
The aim of this second encounter is to shed light on the three most important devices in the Trieste ecology of care: mental health, health in the territory and social cooperation. This ecology’s historical and contemporary relevance is global in scope, its questioning going beyond healthcare to invent the possibility of another institutional role in a radically democratic urban day-to-day.
Participants: Giancarlo Carena, Giovanna Del Giudice and Sari Massiotta
Moderated by: Pantxo Ramas
