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"Hunger strike"
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The Aversions between East and West … Were Not to Be Found Here
This article tests the analytical potential of Heimat to explore identity constructions in East Germany more precisely than sociological studies have done so far. Using the example of the conservative party in the East German region of Eichsfeld in the 1990s and 2000s, I argue that the concept of Heimat , understood as a historical process in which individuals construct their subjectivities in relation to their immediate material environments, can help us to identify variations, complexities, and contradictions of different identities in concrete historical situations. Positioning itself against current debates, the article concludes that Heimat necessarily encompasses both inclusion and exclusion. However, the conservative Heimat concept of the Eichsfeld Christian Democratic Party ( cdu ), on which this article focuses, proves negotiable and is not necessarily more open toward anti-democratic forces than it superficially seems.
Journal Article
The hunger strike in prison: bioethical and medico-legal insights arising from a recent opinion of the Italian national bioethics committee
This contribution addresses some bioethical and medico-legal issues of the opinion formulated by the Italian National Bioethics Committee (CNB) in response to the dilemma between the State’s duty to protect the life and health of the prisoner entrusted to its care and the prisoner’s right to exercise his freedom of expression. The prisoner hunger strike is a form of protest frequently encountered in prison and it is a form of communication but also a language used by the prisoner in order to provoke changes in the prison condition. There are no rules in the prison regulations, nor in the laws governing the legal status of prisoners, that allow the conscious will of the capable and informed subject to be opposed and forced nutrition to be carried out. However, this can in no manner make therapeutic abandonment legitimate: the medical doctor should promote every action to support the patient. In the recent opinion formulated by the CNB it was remarked how self-determination is a central concept in human rights and refers to an individual’s ability to make autonomous and free decisions about his or her life and body.
Journal Article
Performances of Death
Hunger striking is a form of protest that escapes conventional forms of political participation. I argue that as a spectacular performance of death, the hunger strike not only draws attention to a particular cause or exert moral pressure on an opponent but can galvanize and strengthen a nascent political identity. Drawing on the example of the hunger strike of suffragette Marion Wallace-Dunlop, which I argue performatively constructed the identity of the disciplined “true suffragette,” I explain the hunger strike as a political becoming. Undertaken behind bars, by those denied citizenship rights, this protest should be understood not necessarily as the free expression of an already existing member of the demos but instead as a way of becoming a political subject while contesting and reconfiguring political boundaries.
Journal Article
Towards a Sociology of Equivocal Connections
This article contributes to the need for imagining forms of sociological thinking and doing beyond the univocity of disciplinary knowledge. In order to do so, we demonstrate how connections between different ‘sensory worlds’ involve equivocal understandings about what the ‘social’ entails. We begin by considering current anthropological reflections on the equivocal character of social relations as well as the equivocal ways in which western sociology has conceptualized the ‘social’. In order to visualize how ‘equivocal connections’ between different sensory worlds emerge, we build on Mapuche indigenous understandings about how different practices open up different sensory worlds. Through the examination of one of the hunger strikes that has taken place in the conflict between Mapuche people and the Chilean state, we show how such equivocal connections entail ontological, rather than epistemological, differences. Both as ethical and epistemological imperative, these differences must be actively demonstrated in order to reinvigorate the sociological imagination.
Journal Article
Providing health care in politically charged contexts: a qualitative study about experiences during a public collective hunger strike of asylum seekers in Germany
Role expectations of physicians providing health care for hunger strikers have been discussed in the context of prisons and detention centres. Ethical guidance for physicians in these situations is codified in the Declaration of Malta. In the last years, new forms of collective, public hunger strikes of asylum seekers have occurred. We have aimed at reconstructing the experiences of health-care personnel involved in one of such cases.
Semi-structured interviews with nine participants (physicians and paramedics) that had been involved in a public collective hunger strike of asylum seekers in Germany were conducted.
We identified three health-care provider groups: voluntary physicians, emergency service providers and medical consultants for the authorities. Role conflicts arising from multiple loyalty situations with obligations towards different stakeholders (e.g., strikers, employers, authorities) were perceived as the greatest challenge especially for voluntary doctor and emergency service provider participants. Such conflicts culminated in feeling instrumentalized for political goals.
The results illustrate that professional challenges in the health care during a public collective hunger strike differ in various aspects from those described in the literature on custodial settings. We recommend expanding and adapting the medico-ethical guidance.
Journal Article
The function of food refusal in male prisons and custodial environments. A rapid evidence assessment (REA)
Purpose
This rapid evidence assessment (REA) study aims to synthesise what is known about food refusal within male prison populations to aid a better understanding of why this occurs. By looking at the various functions of food refusal for this population, it is hoped that professionals can better support prisoners’ needs in this area.
Design/methodology/approach
A rapid review of available data within the published literature was completed. Searches were conducted on two databases (PsychInfo and MedLine), and a total of 328 articles were screened using a three-stage process. This resulted in 13 articles being identified for the final sample, which were reviewed and synthesised into themes by looking for commonalities.
Findings
Five themes were identified: “to protest”, “to achieve goals or demands”, “to manage interpersonal difficulties with prison/custodial staff”, “to end life” and “mental health and personality disorder”. The findings appear to suggest that food refusal in this context may be predominantly driven by a need to communicate or gain control.
Practical implications
To help prevent and cease food refusal, it will be beneficial for prison staff to use approaches that support prisoners feeling a sense of fairness, transparency, control and autonomy, as well as problem-solving skills and establishing a sense of purpose and motivation.
Originality/value
This REA confirmed there is a lack of good-quality research into the functions of food refusal among prisoners in the UK. Future research should involve contact with prisoners who have engaged in food refusal to understand motivations firsthand.
Journal Article
Becoming stronger by becoming weaker: the hunger strike as a mode of doing politics
Drawing on Judith Butler’s work and a series of studies associated with actor–network theory (ANT), this paper engages with political agency through the concept of performativity. Based on the empirical analysis of a hunger strike that took place in Brussels in 2012 and involved 23 illegal immigrants, we aim to achieve three things. First, we foreground physical bodies as political entities caught up in multiple modes of doing politics. Second, we show how such modes relate to one another, reinforcing citizenship, activism and party politics as specific performances of agency associated with liberal democracy. Finally, we argue that the Brussels hunger strike also challenges these performances by failing to meet certain expectations about what it is to be political/act politically. As the European refugee crisis is generating louder and louder voices, hunger strikes sensitise us to modes of doing that work by becoming passive, silent, weak and vulnerable. Such processes, we suggest, expand the standard repertoire of modes of doing and may refigure our understanding of the interaction between transnational and liberal democratic politics—in International Relations, ANT and beyond.
Journal Article
The Warden's Dilemma as Nested Game: Political Self-Sacrifice, Instrumental Rationality, and Third Parties
Inspired by the famous Prisoner's Dilemma game theory model, Karin Marie Fierke introduced the Warden's Dilemma to explain self-sacrifice and compromise in asymmetric interactions and to show that such an explanation requires a social ontology. She applied her model to Irish Republican Army hunger strikes in 1980–1981. Her model, however, closely resembles what game theorists call a ‘nested game’. This article (re)introduces the nested Warden's Dilemma, focuses on the tripartite relationship inherent to the model and examines hunger strikes as part of a strategy potentially informed by instrumental rationality and knowledge of the Warden's Dilemma dynamic. After briefly discussing the implications of approaching self-sacrificial behaviour from a rationalist perspective, a case study of strategic non-violence in Myanmar (Burma) demonstrates how third parties can both diffuse instrumental rationality regarding political self-sacrifice and facilitate patterns of resistance that appear to capitalize on the Warden's Dilemma dynamic.
Journal Article