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SUMMARY:Workshop: Infrastructures of Wellbeing - Co-organisers: Ash Amin a
 nd Sarah Radcliffe
DTSTART:20220317T140000Z
DTEND:20220317T163000Z
UID:TALK166072@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Speaker to be confirmed
DESCRIPTION:In this workshop\, we will examine the varied infrastructures 
 that shape the relative wellbeing of social groups\, especially those marg
 inalized through poverty\, migrant status\, and colonial exclusions. These
  groups are characterised by dwelling in places where processes to ensure 
 wellbeing are inadequate\, unavailable\, or unattainable. Yet despite this
 \, social networks and practices enact wellbeing in the interstices availa
 ble to them. Convened by the Infrastructural Geographies research group\, 
 the workshop aims to explore how understandings and practices of wellbeing
  are organised\, enacted and secured in diverse settings\, from refugee ca
 mps to Indigenous territories.  \n\nIntroduction – Sarah Radcliffe and A
 sh Amin  \n\nMelissa Fielding  Individual resilience in place of social in
 frastructure: Positive wellbeing as a condition for social housing in the 
 UK \n\nThis paper explores the ways in which 'wellbeing' is utilised by UK
  local governance to transfer state responsibility onto the individual in 
 the climate of austerity. To access the social housing register\, resident
 s living in temporary supported housing are required to meet a series of c
 onditions. These conditions range from showing how the practical needs of 
 a tenancy will be met (i.e.\, paying rent on time) to presenting desirable
  characteristics based around ideas of self-sufficiency and resilience. Dr
 awing from interviews with local housing officers\, housing managers and s
 ocial housing tenants across the East Midlands\, this paper highlights the
  ways in which positive wellbeing is encouraged and instrumentalised by st
 rategic actors in the social housing system. It shows how this process is 
 implemented within the climate of reduced social infrastructure as a cost-
 saving exercise\, rewarding the prospective tenant who displays a sense of
  positive wellbeing with access to the social housing register.  \n\nAsh A
 min  Dwelling habitats and mental health: the poor in Delhi \n\nThis talk 
 looks at how mental states in a slum and among the homeless in Delhi are f
 ormed in the intersections of political economy\, dwelling practices\, and
  habitat affordances. Its aim is to understand how subjectivity is shaped 
 by intermediaries and infrastructures of place\, which in their affordance
 s mediate the balances between abjection and resilience. The talk is based
  on ongoing ethnographic work in Delhi\, and will draw on individual narra
 tives to explore the connections of biography\, circumstances and place.  
  \n\nSarah Radcliffe  Hacienda Futures and socio-epistemic wellbeing  \n\n
 Ecuador's 2008 constitution centred the Indigenous concept of Buen Vivir (
 living well) and held out a promissory agenda of rights\, welfare and an e
 nd to structural discriminations for the multiracial country. Since 2008 h
 owever\, buen vivir has become a technopolitics that excises Indigenous pr
 actices\, knowledges and experiences. Notwithstanding - and often alongsid
 e - buen vivir technopolitics\, diverse actors in a northern Andean munici
 pality work to build intercultural processes that retrofit state infrastru
 ctures and decentralized governance into locally-meaningful outcomes and a
 gendas of wellbeing. Drawing on interviews and participant observation\, t
 he paper discusses the significance and implications of subordinating well
 being policy goals to local configurations of praxis and knowledge.  \n\nM
 aria Hagan  Rhythms of social life at the post-camp border  \n\nSeveral co
 ntemporary border zones are governed through the active infliction of an i
 nhospitable environment on those who seek to clandestinely pass through th
 em. Namely\, the makeshift encampments of displaced people are systematica
 lly destroyed by police forces\, compromising their wellbeing and the very
  possibility of their survival at the border. Drawing on ethnographic fiel
 dwork carried out with people living furtively in the northern French and 
 northern Moroccan coastal borderlands\, this talk will focus on the modes 
 of social living that emerge in these challenging conditions. It will cons
 ider how people work to preserve their wellbeing\, establishing social thr
 esholds through rhythm\, common spatial and imaginative practice. Proposin
 g an interpretation of these social networks as both lifelines and strateg
 ic resources\, the talk will also touch upon the fragility of social ties 
 in a context of everyday competition and pressure to cross the border.  \n
 \nDiscussion on crosscutting themes  \n\nClose
LOCATION:Small Lecture Theatre\, Department of Geography
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