The goal of this article is to analyze the different representations of health and disease associated with the epidemics of yellow fever and cholera that took place from 1867-1871 in the city of Buenos Aires. It argues that there was a very broad and heterogeneous repertoire of representations that resulted in a variety of attitudes on the part of individuals dealing with the crisis, and led to the transformation of space and social time. In order to handle this traumatic experience, people chose very different methods for maintaining social contact, which was also a way of maintaining their health.
Since its inception as a global pandemic, COVID-19 has been the subject of multiple appropriations around the world. With the possibility of writing and sharing information open due to current technological developments and digital media, a series of publications focused on reflecting on the impact of the pandemic around the world circulated during the first months of 2020.The aim of this article is to analyze these publications, taking them as a valuable input to delve into the reflections that, from culture and social sciences, emerged on the pandemic. What can these articles show us, already more than two years after being published? What were the main ideas, concerns and diagnoses? Beyond these questions, we are also interested in investigating the construction of a network of meanings and notions that began to be associated with the disease and that, in its pandemic context, we believe is highly relevant to understanding the meanings that were incorporated into this new virus as it spread across the globe.
En el siguiente artículo analizaremos la dimensión ritual de los funerales y su vinculación con un evento muy presente durante todo el siglo XIX: la llegada y la diseminación de sucesivas epidemias de cólera. El argumento que sostenemos es que las mismas provocaron crisis sociales profundas, afectando todas las esferas de la vida social. Este tipo de episodios traumáticos, generó un proceso doble conectado a los ritos mortuorios. Por un lado, trastocaron los rituales más usuales, y por otro, esto ocasionó que la sociedad porteña desplegara otros suplementarios para que los difuntos tuvieran sus funerales. Para ello, en un primer apartado presentaremos las prácticas fúnebres tradicionales en Buenos Aires, así como las características disruptivas del cólera. Asimismo, veremos que la sociedad porteña tenía un repertorio amplio y dúctil de prácticas fúnebres, y si bien ante la epidemia no pudo desarrollar aquellas más habituales, surgieron otras para paliar el cambio en el escenario por la crisis desatada. Pero además de alta mortalidad, estas epidemias acentuaron crisis políticas y tensiones sociales, que se dirimieron tanto durante sus desarrollos como inmediatamente después. Para ello, en un segundo apartado, examinaremos la muerte del vicepresidente Marcos Paz, fallecido de cólera durante el verano de 1868. Postulamos que el Estado será un factor esencial en los homenajes a algunos muertos, sobre todo aquellos que le permitían reencauzar conflictos institucionales y/o políticos. De esta manera, nuestro argumento sostiene que los rituales fueron un elemento central para normalizar conflictos que excedían aquellos más evidentes.
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