8. Coercive Care: Healing in Violent Spaces

 Welcome to Week 8 of Transforming Lives through Care. This is part of a course in the Anthropology of Care at La Trobe University.

🎯 Learning Goals

By the end of the this week you should be able to:

• Explore how care can involve coercion, control, and violence
• Examine how moral and social obligations shape care decisions
• Reflect on involuntary care practices in your own context

🚦 Introduction

Violence… It’s not the first word we usually associate with care. But what if care involves being tied to a hospital bed? Locked in a room by your family? Or forced to endure pain as part of treatment? This week we explore the uncomfortable space where care and coercion overlap. In some communities, violence is seen as a necessary step toward healing—and family members become both protectors and enforcers. Is this still care?

📚 Recommended Materials

📘 Essential Materials

Read: Garcia, Angela. “Serenity: Violence, Inequality, and Recovery on the Edge of Mexico City”

“You need the pain to understand. Because life is f_____g hard.”

Summary: Garcia analyzes anexos—violent, coercive rehab centers in Mexico—where recovery intertwines with suffering, family bonds, and survival. Violence is reframed as therapeutic, reflecting systemic neglect and normalized pain in marginalized communities. Families often make painful choices within a moral economy shaped by desperation and love.

🗣️ Interactive Tasks

 Involuntary Care – A Moral Dilemma

Think about involuntary psychiatric care in your own society. For example, forced hospitalisation, chemical restraint, or court-ordered treatment.

Is it different from the coercive care Garcia describes in Mexico? Or is it just differently organised?

• When (if ever) is it justified?
• What role do family, the state, or class play in who receives involuntary care?

Be ready to discuss one case (real, observed, or hypothetical) in class or write a short reflection in your notes.

🏁 Conclusion

Summary

This week we examined how care can take on coercive, even violent forms—especially in contexts of poverty, addiction, and family crisis. Angela Garcia’s work reminds us that the boundaries between healing and harm are culturally shaped and morally complex.

Significance

Coercion and care are not opposites. This week shows how structural violence, inequality, and love can become tangled in the same practice. Understanding this helps us reflect more honestly on care systems in our own society—from psychiatric wards to aged care homes.

What’s Next

Next week, we explore how care circulates in systems—not just between people. We'll use the concept of governmentality  look at how institutions, technologies, and policies shape the flow of care in complex ways and, at the same, reshape our own identity.

🔎 Further Research

This week's topic is part of the field of Medical Anthropology. To delve deeper, you can enrol in these related subjects: ANT3CHH Culture, Health & Healing; DST1DEV Development Studies.