Francesca Vaghi: Anything that we can do to help, it’s got to be good”: the everyday pragmatism of NHS charities

Datum
29. Okto­ber 2024 

Well­come Cen­tre for Cul­tures and Envi­ron­ments of Health ad hoc seminar

Francesca Vaghi: “Any­thing that we can do to help, it’s got to be good”: the every­day prag­ma­tism of NHS charities
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).
Uni­ver­si­ty of Glasgow

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