CGMH faculty Dr. Paula Saravia will present "On Sadness: Political engagement, Mental Health and Impacts of Environmental Precarity in Northern Patagonia."

Thursday, January 30, 2020, 3:00PM
Deutz Room, Institute of the Americas
UC San Diego

In addition to looming socioeconomic inequality, the accelerated processes of environmental change have impacted health outcomes and the overall framing of health and well-being in Northern Patagonia. At the same time, environmental struggles have influenced massive political engagement of civil society. Based on historical and ethnographic research conducted between 2017-2018, this presentation unravels the intricate relationship between political engagement, mental health, and experiences of environmental precarity among indigenous communities affected by the toxic red tide event of 2016 in Los Lagos, Chile. What is the role of environmental precarity in the configuration of forms of agency, care, and the social construction of meaning of environmental struggles? I argue that the historically grounded experience of deep sadness in the form of “torment” is particularly important to the conceptualization of suffering and endurance, with which to grasp social responses to repeating acute weather events such as toxic red tide in this region.