The Case of Brazil: Coloniality and Pandemic Misgovernance as Necropolitical Tools in the Amazon. Issue 1 (1st December 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Boanada Fuchs, Vanessa
• Is Part Of: International journal of social quality. Volume 11:Issue 1/2(2021)
• Page Start: 111
• Page End: 142
• Publication Date: 2021-12-01
• Subjects: Amazon -- Brazil -- coloniality -- COVID-19 -- misgovernance -- necropolitics -- social quality; Social policy -- Periodicals; 361.6105
• DOI: 10.3167/IJSQ.2021.11010208
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1757-0352

Abstract

Abstract: This article analyzes the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the lives of the Amazonian populations of Brazil. Following the social quality approach, it inquires into how COVID-19 intertwined with and reinforced underlying trends and inequalities in different life domains expressed in long-term societal complexities, urban–rural dynamics, and environmental transformations. The article finds that the pandemic, following coloniality of power patterns, has been instrumentalized as a necropolitical tool, and has disproportionately impacted certain peoples and territories based on ethnoracial bias. The collapse of the local health system in the State of Amazonas is a systemic burden, not serendipity. A dialogue is proposed between decolonial and social quality approaches to analyze, unveil, and denounce the interplay between the coloniality of power patterns in non-Western contexts.