Intimate Labor at Biomedical Frontlines
Situated Knowledges of Female Community Health Workers in the Management of Covid-19 in India
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5789314 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sanghamitra Da (0000-0003-4890-9849, Arizona State University), Samhita Da (0000-0002-3280-5028, University of Delhi) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Publication date | 2021-04-19 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Catalyst Feminism Theory Technoscience (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2380-3312 • E-ISSN: 2380-3312 |
| Publisher | University of Toronto Libraries - UOTL (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.28968/cftt.v7i1.34781 |
| OpenAlex | W3158843593 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 19 |
Media reports of the COVID-19 pandemic in India have highlighted the important role that India's female community health workers, the Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs), have played in managing COVID infections in India. This paper explores the epistemic basis of ASHA work to understand the significance of their role. Through a discourse analysis of textual media articles, we show that the ASHAs' routine and COVID-related caregiving practices are a form of embodied, intimate labor rooted in their situated, community-oriented knowledge. This labor is devalued as emotional and feminized care work, which denies the ASHAs professional status in the public healthcare system of India and, in turn, reflects a hierarchy among health practitioners that stems from the status of objectivity/disembodiment in biomedicine. We find that, despite their low status in the public health system, ASHA workers develop a self-concept that enables them to self-identify as healthcare professionals, motivating them to continue providing essential healthcare services during the pandemic. We argue that an official recognition of the epistemic value of ASHA work would help to overcome the age-old nature/culture dichotomy that informs what counts as valuable, legitimate, formal medical knowledge. Furthermore, our analysis provides a critique of the gendered devaluation of care work within a political economy of health increasingly dictated by a neoliberal logic
The Cultural Politics of Emotion
Discourse analysis
The Birth of the Clinic
Intimate Labors
Factors affecting the performance of community health workers in India
Tying their hands? Institutional obstacles to the success of the Asha community health worker programme in rural north India
Trust and teamwork matter’
Negotiating power relations, gender equality, and collective agency
Voluntary participation and poor women's work
The National Rural Health Mission
Situated knowledge of pathogenic landscapes in Ghana
Dava, Daktar, and Dua
What caused India's massive community health workers scheme
Medical pluralism and medical marginality
Situated Knowledges
Wages of Virtue
Pills that Swallow Policy
Discourse Tracing as Qualitative Practice
Emerging Theories of Care Work
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,67 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2026 (4) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |