Competing Responsibilities: The Ethics and Politics of Contemporary Life
Susanna Trnka is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Auckland and coeditor of Senses and Citizenships: Embodying Political Life.
Catherine Trundle is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at Victoria University of Wellington and coeditor of Detachment: Essays on the Limits of Relational Thinking.
Susanna Trnka is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Auckland and coeditor of Senses and Citizenships: Embodying Political Life.
Catherine Trundle is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at Victoria University of Wellington and coeditor of Detachment: Essays on the Limits of Relational Thinking.
Violence
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Published:March 2017
The city of Ostrava is famous throughout the Czech Republic for its residents’ respiratory problems, with some scientists contending that Ostrava’s children suffer from the world’s highest rates of asthma. Activists blame Ostrava’s steelworks, whose management, in turn, suggests that local residents should do more to improve their own health. This chapter examines how childhood asthma gets cast as a citizenship issue, inspiring national debate over whether the state is the ultimate guarantor of citizens’ rights. I argue that by drawing on prevalent tropes about working-class labor and the need to protect vulnerable children, popular representations of Ostrava’s woes portray...
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