Embodied Belonging: In/exclusion, Health Care, and Well-Being in a World in Motion
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Embodied Belonging: In/exclusion, Health Care, and Well-Being in a World in Motion Dominik Mattes1 • Claudia Lang2,3
The Author(s) 2020
Abstract In this introduction, we propose the notion of ‘embodied belonging’ as a fruitful analytical heuristic for scholars in medical and psychological anthropology. We envision this notion to help us gain a more nuanced understanding of the entanglements of the political, social, and affective dimensions of belonging and their effects on health, illness, and healing. A focus on embodied belonging, we argue, reveals how displacement, exclusion, and marginalization cause existential and health-related ruptures in people’s lives and bodies, and how affected people, in the struggle for re/emplacement and re/integration, may regain health and sustain their well-being. Covering a variety of regional contexts (Germany/Vietnam, Norway, the UK, Japan), the contributions to this special issue examine how embodied non/belonging is experienced, re/imagined, negotiated, practiced, disrupted, contested, and achieved (or not) by their protagonists, who are excluded and marginalized in diverse ways. Each article highlights the intricate trajectories of how dynamics of non/belonging inscribe themselves in human bodies. They also
Editors’ Note: This edited volume on Embodied Belonging contains two additional articles previously published due to editorial error in Volume 44 (4): ‘‘Existential Displacement: Healthcare and Embodied Un/Belonging of Irregular Migrants in Norway’’ by Synnøve K. N. Bendixsen and ‘‘The Power of Shared Embodiment: Renegotiating Non/Belonging and In/exclusion in an Ephemeral Community of Care’’ by Anita von Poser and Edda Williamowski. Please accept the editor’s sincerest apologies for the error and kindly refer to Volume 44 (4) for access to these excellent papers. & Dominik Mattes [email protected] Claudia Lang [email protected] 1
Collaborative Research Center Affective Societies, Freie Universita¨t Berlin, Berlin, Germany
2
Institute of Anthropology, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany
3
Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany
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Cult Med Psychiatry
reveal how belonging can be utilized and drawn on as a forceful means and resource of social resilience, if not (self-)therapy and healing. Keywords Belonging Embodiment Exclusion Marginalization Well-being
Introduction The particular moment in history in which we began to write these introductory lines is perhaps just right for intensifying thinking about ‘belonging.’ George Floyd, the 46-year-old African American, who in late May 2020 lost his life in an act of callous police violence in Minneapolis, has just been laid to rest. Sparked by his untimely and appalling death, many countries across the world are witnessing the largest wave of protests against racism and police brutality since the 1960s. Simultaneously, the world finds itself in the midst of the global spread of COVID19, a ravaging pandemic of unprecedented scale with massive and long-term econ
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