Ressource pédagogique : PANEL 1: THE NEOLIBERAL PANDEMIC (DIS)ORDER, CARING AND SOLIDARITIES

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Moderator : Prof. Nathalie Champroux (Cultural and Discursive Interactions (ICD) / University of Tours - FR) Dr Antonio Pele (Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro - BR) - Brazil in Times Of Covid-19: Right to Health, 'Bioresistances' and Solidarities  I will first examine medical/health initiatives that favelas grassroots networks have taken to respond to the current pandemic. I will show how favela inhabitants have organized their system of information, ambulances, isolation wards, despite the lack of funding/support of local/national public authorities. Human rights and favelas activists often claim Sobrevivênica é Resistencia, that is, ‘survival is resistance’. I contend those health/medical networks of solidarity in times of COVID-19 intend to give back a worthy life to those who have not been granted the right to live with dignity in Brazil. In relation to those cases, I argue health becomes eminently political and closely related to social justice in Brazil. I will then explore the different strategies of ‘food sovereignty.’ I will examine how grassroots efforts intend to provide free organic foods and promote local farmer’s products/production in the favelas during the COVID-19 pandemic. I will contend they succeed in tackling the lack of Brazil public policy for healthy food consumption/production. I will also argue they innovatively tie a bio-form of resistance with the right to health. Indeed, with leveraging green spaces and community organizing in the favelas, the right to health becomes intersubjective. It is not reframed (anymore) on single individual entitlement but a collective experience based on solidarity. Prof. Simon Springer (University of Newcastle - AU) - Mutual Aid and the Neoliberal Pandemic: Caring for Community during COVID and the Continuing Crisis of Capitalism  Neoliberalism is synonymous with crisis. With each successive natural or human made disaster we see the reach of neoliberalism extended even further. These moments of vulnerability are exploited as opportunities to push through unpopular changes when people are too bewildered and beleaguered to fight back. The recent COVID-19 pandemic is exemplary of this ongoing logic, insofar as it has been the rationale for many sectors, most notably higher education, to “rationalize” and “optimize” their operations more and more along market lines. The idea of education for the sake of knowledge production and personal growth no longer holds true. Governments are putting pressure on the sector to create “job ready graduates”, which means pandering to a consumerist ethos and speculating on industry demands. Mass job cuts follow such restructuring and communities, already devastated by a crisis, face new hardships that work against the shared interest of recovery. But there is an alternative to this callous trajectory and it is to be found in mutual aid and community based forms of reciprocity. Mutual aid is the fundamental basis of all human societies, an understanding that, in sharp relief to neoliberalism, is also exemplified with striking clarity during times of crises. People necessarily come together and help each other out in these moments. So as neoliberalism rushes in to capitalize on catastrophe, its failings are simultaneously exposed by the ingenuity and resourcefulness of communities who, in spite of the challenges, almost always find a way to rebuild their lives through practices of caring for community.

"Domaine(s)" et indice(s) Dewey

• Économie politique (330)

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