Anita v. Poser is Professor of Psychological Anthropology with a focus on ‘Migration, Psyche, and Aging’ at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Freie Universität Berlin. She is also PI of the anthropological-psychiatric project “Affects and Processes of Institutionalization in Vietnamese Carescapes of Berlin” within the CRC 1171 Affective Societies. The core themes of her research engage psychological and phenomenological anthropology, the anthropology of aging, care, and the life-course, the anthropology of im/mobility, as well as the anthropology of foodways. She has conducted long-term ethnographic research both in Oceania (Papua New Guinea) and in Vietnamese life-worlds of Berlin.

Panel „Care for Diversity“: „I know how it feels…but...“ Empathy and Diversity Affects in Vietnamese Carescapes of Berlin

28th May 11.30 am – 01.00 pm | Anita von Poser

The demand for helping professionals with “Vietnamese expertise” has increased in Berlin’s healthcare sector. Almost 30.000 residents were born in, or relate to, Vietnam via family ties. Social institutions therefore see a need for diversification and argue that Vietnamese helping professionals relate to the life-worlds of Vietnamese clients in more profound empathic ways compared to colleagues without such ties. In analyzing diversity affects of Vietnamese social workers, who are at the heart of my ethnographic study, I show that similar biographies do not automatically turn empathy into an easy matter, and I destabilize culturalist assumptions that still dominate migratory carescapes.