Strangers at the Bedside: Solidarity-making to address institutionalized infrastructural inequalities

Abstract

This study explores how heterogeneous actors produce solidarities to address institutionalized infrastructural inequalities. We trace fifteen years over which diverse actors constructed community palliative care infrastructure in Kerala, India. We analyze how actors engaged in solidarity processes of recognizing interdependences, reconfiguring spaces, and re-imagining accountability to challenge exclusionary institutions and construct inclusive infrastructure at different scales. We foreground solidarity-making as an indispensable yet under-theorized aspect of institutional research on inequalities. We inform solidarity studies by illustrating how solidarity-making pulsates infrastructures with diverse webs of relations and spatial configurations. Overall, we advance a generative engagement with heterogeneity in institutional analyses and discuss the implications of solidarity-making to address infrastructural inequalities.

India faces a growing need for palliative care

“…The state of Kerala,7 which has a history of community mobilisation and a thriving network of volunteer organisations, hospices, and public and private hospitals, is leading the way on improved access to palliative care 8. In 2008, it became the first state to adopt a policy on palliative care, which states that every person in Kerala should have access to quality care services, with a focus on community supported home based care that follows guidelines on primary and tertiary palliative medicine.…”