‘Times Have Changed but the Struggle Remains the Same’: Health Movements and Collective Memory in Italy
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1285/i20356609v19n3p900-920Keywords:
collective memory, Italy, health movements, legacies, health systems.Abstract
Health movements have been central actors in fighting for access to healthcare and reimagining the meaning and practices of health itself. Although they show high continuity over time, the role of collective memory in their evolution remains understudied. Drawing on a growing body of literature on collective memory and social movements, this contribution fills this gap by examining how collective memory contributes to health movements’ collective identities and repertoires of action. We focus on the Italian case to analyze how the memory of intense and diverse mobilizations around healthcare in the 1960s - 1970s continues to influence present-day struggles in that field. During those decades, mobilizations in the country have led to landmark changes in health policy. Contemporary movements are situated in the genealogy of those mobilizations and yet are faced with a completely different scenario in which the past achievements have been challenged by neoliberal restructuring and privatization of healthcare.
The article is based on extensive periods of fieldwork and 20 in-depth interviews with activists, of three contemporary local initiatives: the People’s Clinic in Palermo; the Brigata Basaglia in Florence; and the Coordination of Women’s Assemblies of Health Centers in Rome.
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