„Läuft. Die Ausstel­lung zur Menstruation“

06.10.2023 bis 06.10.2024
Muse­um Europäis­ch­er Kul­turen – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Etwa 2 Mil­liar­den Men­schen auf der Welt men­stru­ieren. Über 1,5 Mil­liar­den weit­ere Men­schen hat­ten ihre Peri­ode oder wer­den sie bekom­men. Seit rund 10 Jahren nun wird die Men­stru­a­tion in Europa öffentlich disku­tiert. Das MEK präsen­tiert die Ausstel­lung dazu.

„Läuft“ zeigt eine Geschichte des Prag­ma­tismus und der Utopi­en, des Erfind­ungsre­ich­tums und Aktivis­mus. Dafür ver­sam­melt die Ausstel­lung rund 100 his­torische und brand­neue Men­stru­a­tion­sar­tikel sowie Wer­beanzeigen. Schaubilder, Inter­views und Hands-On-Sta­tio­nen ver­mit­teln den aktuellen Wis­sens­stand. Mit knapp 200 All­t­ags­ge­gen­stän­den, Fotos, Grafiken, Zeitungsar­tikeln und Social-Media-Posts fächert die Ausstel­lung die Diskurse auf, die Men­stru­ierende seit Jahrzehn­ten begleit­en: Es geht um The­men wie Leis­tung, Peri­o­den­ar­mut, Müll, „Nor­mal­ität“, Naturver­bun­den­heit, Stim­mung und einige mehr – und natür­lich um Aktivis­mus! Denn im Zen­trum ste­hen die Stim­men und Erfahrun­gen von Men­stru­ieren­den selb­st. Wir laden dazu ein, ihnen in Inter­views zu lauschen und sich selb­st auszu­tauschen. Fil­mauss­chnitte, Musik und Kunst­werke run­den die Ausstel­lung ab.

Mehr Infos unter http://www.smb.museum/flow.

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Francesca Vaghi: “Any­thing that we can do to help, it’s got to be good”: the every­day prag­ma­tism of NHS charities
Well­come Cen­tre for Cul­tures and Envi­ron­ments of Health ad hoc seminar
Tues­day 29th Octo­ber 2025, 3–4:30pm (online and in-per­son in the Centre’s board­room in Queen’s Build­ing, Streatham Cam­pus, Uni­ver­si­ty of Exeter).

Cri­sis no longer seems to rep­re­sent a momen­tary state of emer­gency, but rather an ongo­ing sit­u­a­tion that is con­tin­u­al­ly defin­ing our present. After over a decade of aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures in the UK, which have led to cuts in the pub­lic sec­tor and ris­ing pover­ty rates, NHS and oth­er char­i­ties have expand­ed. Exam­in­ing the work of these organ­i­sa­tions offers an inter­est­ing exam­ple of how the ‘mixed econ­o­my of wel­fare’ works in prac­tice, and how a his­tor­i­cal­ly blur­ry line with­in the NHS – between what should be state-fund­ed, or sim­ply an ‘add-on’ that can be pro­vid­ed via char­i­ta­ble or vol­un­tary means – is thought of and nav­i­gat­ed by dif­fer­ent peo­ple, at a time of extend­ed cri­sis. Draw­ing from an ethno­graph­ic case-study in an Eng­lish city and with an NHS char­i­ty, this talk explores the role of the char­i­ty in sup­ple­ment­ing health­care while also ful­fill­ing the role of a wel­fare ser­vice. I intro­duce the idea of every­day prag­ma­tism to explain people’s moti­va­tions to work, vol­un­teer, and fundraise for the NHS, informed by Cooper’s work on ‘every­day utopias’ (2014), and ‘pre­fig­u­ra­tion’ (2016; 2020), and Berlant’s Cru­el Opti­mism (2011). In doing so, I aim to call atten­tion to peo­ple active­ly doing what they can to improve the present moment through day-to-day prac­tices, while imag­in­ing, demand­ing, and wait­ing for a bet­ter future. As opposed to view­ing par­tic­i­pants as pas­sive­ly accept­ing, or defeat­ed by, the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion, every­day prag­ma­tism rather seeks to illu­mi­nate how peo­ple nego­ti­ate ambiva­lence in an active and par­tic­i­pa­to­ry manner.

BIO:

Francesca Vaghi is Research Asso­ciate at the School of Social & Polit­i­cal Sci­ence, Uni­ver­si­ty of Glas­gow. Work­ing with Pro­fes­sor Ellen Stew­art, she con­ducts research on the work of con­tem­po­rary NHS char­i­ties as part of the Bor­der Cross­ings project: https://more.bham.ac.uk/border-crossings/border-crossings/projects/ . Francesca com­plet­ed her PhD in Anthro­pol­o­gy at SOAS, Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don, in 2019. This inves­ti­gat­ed how chil­dren cre­ate self and peer iden­ti­ties through food and eat­ing prac­tices, how children’s food pol­i­cy fits into fam­i­ly inter­ven­tion poli­cies in the con­text of Britain’s mixed econ­o­my of wel­fare, and how notions of ‘good food’ and ‘good par­ent­ing’ (par­tic­u­lar­ly moth­er­ing) are inter­linked. Her the­sis is the basis for her recent (2023) mono­graph, Food Pol­i­cy and Prac­tice in Ear­ly Child­hood Edu­ca­tion and Care: Chil­dren, Prac­ti­tion­ers, and Par­ents in an Eng­lish Nurs­ery.

Link to book into the event here: “Any­thing that we can do to help, it’s got to be good”
Tick­ets, Tue, Oct 29, 2024 at 3:00 PM | Eventbrite

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Inequal­i­ties in (Men­tal) Health­care: Crit­i­cal Per­spec­tives in Med­ical Anthropology
Pan­el at World Antrhopo­log­i­cal Union Con­gress 2024
Con­venors: Sharon Gabie (Nel­son Man­dela Uni­ver­si­ty, Johan­nes­burg­burg, South Africa), Hel­mar Kurz (Uni­ver­si­ty of Muen­ster, Germany)
When: 11th – 15th Novem­ber 2024
Cfp dead­line: 13 May 2024

Pan­el Abstract:
(Men­tal) health­care sys­tems world­wide meet var­i­ous chal­lenges, par­tic­u­lar­ly the insuf­fi­cien­cy of resources for patients of low­er eco­nom­ic class­es and rur­al areas. What is more, in many places ther­a­peu­tic set­tings remain “zones of aban­don­ment” (Biehl 2005), par­tic­u­lar­ly when affil­i­at­ed with offi­cial health­care sec­tors. How­ev­er, some phil­an­thropic, reli­gious-spir­i­tu­al, and pri­vate agen­cies pro­vide “good exam­ples” of (men­tal) health­care (Basu et al. 2017).
Chang­ing gov­ern­ments and con­test­ing poli­cies have impact­ed local, translo­cal, and glob­al (men­tal) health­care sup­plies, main­tain­ing incon­sis­ten­cies in (men­tal) health­care. Fur­ther, the recent COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has clear­ly illus­trat­ed that struc­tur­al vio­lence (Farmer 2005) and chronic­i­ty of cri­sis (Vigh 2008) still shape inequal­i­ties in access to health resources in both the Glob­al North and Glob­al South. New chal­lenges may be requests regard­ing the men­tal health­care pro­vi­sion for Indige­nous and migra­to­ry communities.
In South Africa, a recent case of neg­li­gence and mal­ad­min­is­tra­tion of peo­ple with psy­chi­atric dis­or­ders is that of Life Esidi­meni. The tragedy wit­nessed 144 peo­ple die because of inap­pro­pri­ate care and the lack of equipped infra­struc­ture and staff to cater to the needs of peo­ple in men­tal health care facil­i­ties and many more suf­fer­ing trau­ma (Duro­jaye & Aga­ba 2018, Fer­l­i­to & Dhai 2018). South Africa is no excep­tion for the fact, that coun­tries across the globe neglect men­tal health care as an over­all aspect of health and well­be­ing. The results of a four-coun­try study, which includ­ed South Africa, found that there is a lack of data to con­vince pol­i­cy­mak­ers to pri­or­i­tize men­tal health, a lack of imple­men­ta­tion, and how to mobi­lize peo­ple to seek inter­ven­tion to the prob­lem at an ear­ly stage (Pil­lay 2019). In dis­ad­van­taged com­mu­ni­ties, black com­mu­ni­ties in par­tic­u­lar, the stig­ma against men­tal health issues is com­pound­ed by cul­tur­al and social chal­lenges that pre­vent many peo­ple from seek­ing ear­ly inter­ven­tion (Gumede 2021).
Phil­an­thropic orga­ni­za­tions have always been essen­tial health resources, and not only for mar­gin­al­ized social groups (for the exam­ple of Brazil­ian Spiritism, see Kurz 2024). How­ev­er, they have been wide­ly ignored in pub­lic and aca­d­e­m­ic dis­course, and how polit­i­cal insti­tu­tions con­test, reg­u­late, or inte­grate relat­ed approach­es remains a research desider­a­tum that this pan­el wants to address around the fol­low­ing lead­ing ques­tions, focus­ing on men­tal health prac­tices but inte­grat­ing all health-relat­ed aspects of human well-being:
1) Strate­gies between actors. What are the con­tem­po­rary challenges/opportunities of diverse actors with­in the field of (men­tal) health in their par­tic­u­lar local­i­ties? In which spaces do they inter­vene? Where are they exclud­ed? What trends can be iden­ti­fied, e.g., in the emer­gence of new agen­cies in the field or pow­er dis­tri­b­u­tions among exist­ing actors?
2) Con­tent of action and inter­ven­tion in the field. What is cur­rent­ly at stake? What are per­spec­tives and prac­tices? How do diver­gent actors respond to (men­tal) health challenges?
3) Polit­i­cal reg­u­la­tion. How do state and offi­cial health­care insti­tu­tions relate to con­test­ing and com­ple­ment­ing approach­es? Do forms of coop­er­a­tion exist? Do obsta­cles exist? What are polit­i­cal strate­gies at the inter­sec­tion of polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic, and social interests?

To sub­mit a paper/abstract, please fol­low these guide­lines: https://waucongress.org/call-for-papers/

The con­venors are avail­able for any doubt or ques­tion in advance and through­out the CfP process:
Sharon Gabie (Nel­son Man­dela Uni­ver­si­ty, Johan­nes­burg­burg, South Africa) sharon_gabie@yahoo.ie
Hel­mar Kurz (Uni­ver­si­ty of Muen­ster, Ger­many) helmar.kurz@uni-muenster.de

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