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For Health Autonomy: Horizons of Care Beyond Austerity―Reflections from Greece
The present way of life is a war against our bodies. Nearly everywhere, we are caught in a crumbling health system that furthers our misery and subordination to the structural violence of capital and a state that only intensifies our general precarity. Can we build the capacity and necessary infrastructure to heal ourselves and transform the societal conditions that continue to mentally and physically harm us?
Amidst the perpetual crises of capitalism is a careful resistance—organized by medical professionals and community members, students and workers, citizens and migrants. For Health Autonomy: Horizons of Care Beyond Austerity—Reflections from Greece explores the landscape of care spaces coordinated by autonomous collectives in Greece. These projects operate in fierce resistance to austerity, state violence and abandonment, and the neoliberal structure of the healthcare industry that are failing people.
For Health Autonomy is a powerful collection of first-hand accounts of those who join together to build new possibilities of care and develop concrete alternatives based on the collective ability of communities and care workers to replace our dependency on police and prisons.
ABOUT CARENOTES COLLECTIVE
Intensifying inequality and violence have heightened the need to deepen our capacity to resist, offer concrete alternatives, and reproduce ourselves in the process. CareNotes Collective organizes directly on this terrain and seeks to record and amplify the experiences of those struggling for health autonomy in their own communities. Our challenge is to imagine how to expand these practices while defending our communities from the risks of cooption, state violence, and emotional trauma as well as financial domination.
Despite the continued violence of the state and private sector, efforts to protect our bodies and environment continue to emerge from those of us left with few other means of sustaining daily life. Yet those who are excluded from the basic right to housing, health, food, safe spaces, emotional wellbeing, and so many other needs, are vilified. Simultaneously, the efforts of care workers committed to our general well-being (educators, healthcare, farm workers, social workers, neighbors, mothers, autonomous networks) are also devalued in an endless restructuring of “crisis.” One strategy is recognizing the centrality of care workers—mothers, the elderly, the pathologized, migrants, LGBTQ+ communities, and autonomous networks—in creating sites of counterpower where we can collectively defend and care for one another while resisting the violence of capitalist life. Such collective care has the potential to liberate space and time, to transform workflows within and beyond traditional care spaces, and to link networks otherwise separated by wealth, race, expertise, and geography.
Amidst the perpetual crises of capitalism is a careful resistance—organized by medical professionals and community members, students and workers, citizens and migrants. For Health Autonomy: Horizons of Care Beyond Austerity—Reflections from Greece explores the landscape of care spaces coordinated by autonomous collectives in Greece. These projects operate in fierce resistance to austerity, state violence and abandonment, and the neoliberal structure of the healthcare industry that are failing people.
For Health Autonomy is a powerful collection of first-hand accounts of those who join together to build new possibilities of care and develop concrete alternatives based on the collective ability of communities and care workers to replace our dependency on police and prisons.
ABOUT CARENOTES COLLECTIVE
Intensifying inequality and violence have heightened the need to deepen our capacity to resist, offer concrete alternatives, and reproduce ourselves in the process. CareNotes Collective organizes directly on this terrain and seeks to record and amplify the experiences of those struggling for health autonomy in their own communities. Our challenge is to imagine how to expand these practices while defending our communities from the risks of cooption, state violence, and emotional trauma as well as financial domination.
Despite the continued violence of the state and private sector, efforts to protect our bodies and environment continue to emerge from those of us left with few other means of sustaining daily life. Yet those who are excluded from the basic right to housing, health, food, safe spaces, emotional wellbeing, and so many other needs, are vilified. Simultaneously, the efforts of care workers committed to our general well-being (educators, healthcare, farm workers, social workers, neighbors, mothers, autonomous networks) are also devalued in an endless restructuring of “crisis.” One strategy is recognizing the centrality of care workers—mothers, the elderly, the pathologized, migrants, LGBTQ+ communities, and autonomous networks—in creating sites of counterpower where we can collectively defend and care for one another while resisting the violence of capitalist life. Such collective care has the potential to liberate space and time, to transform workflows within and beyond traditional care spaces, and to link networks otherwise separated by wealth, race, expertise, and geography.
144 pages, Paperback
Published January 28, 2020
4 people are currently reading
166 people want to read
About the author
Silvia Federici
103 books1,929 followersSilvia Federici is an Italian and American scholar, teacher, and activist from the radical autonomist feminist Marxist and anarchist tradition. She is a professor emerita and Teaching Fellow at Hofstra University, where she was a social science professor. She worked as a teacher in Nigeria for many years, is also the co-founder of the Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa, and is a member of the Midnight Notes Collective.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 31, 2021
For Health Autonomy features short essays and interviews on a number of social, autonomous, and radical projects throughout Greece operating in the context of neoliberal austerity measures. It's a lovely little book and an extremely valuable read for anyone looking to practice care work in the apocalypse. Particularly impressive is their attempts to find ways to care for social, psychological, and physical ailments simultaneously in the midst of crisis and social upheaval.
December 22, 2025
Super interesting, short anarchist health-care read. Would have loved if it was more organized and thorough in its descriptions of how these social health clinics in Greece operate. Would love to have read an account from a patient and hear more specifics about the socio-medical work that was done in those radical spaces. Especially because the theme of reproductive infrastructure that was spoke about at the beginning. Anyway lots to think about in the context of America as well…
Shoutout making world’s bookstore employee for the rec!
Shoutout making world’s bookstore employee for the rec!
January 9, 2020
This is a fantastic book about the creativity of Greek collectives in the face of austerity. With the help of direct democracy, horizontal organising & direct action, these collectives of doctors, care workers, activists & citizens have created a network of fully free, open to all & autonomous 'solidarity clinics' serving 10% of the population. These clinics have not relationship to the state, private firms, charities or NGOs- they are for the people, by the people.
This book/pamphlet delves into how this was achieved, how the clinics are maintained & reproduced, and how they are also inventing new & holistic forms of care. A must-read in these troubling times, with lots to learn for social/workers' movements around the world.
This book/pamphlet delves into how this was achieved, how the clinics are maintained & reproduced, and how they are also inventing new & holistic forms of care. A must-read in these troubling times, with lots to learn for social/workers' movements around the world.
December 14, 2022
Kind of a hot mess of superficially collected, redundant field notes, but also that's clearly a vibe they were leaning into. An interesting jumping off point for future work on community-run/anarchist/alternative healthcare clinics and models. Would have been a strong single article. Did make me curious about the collective's non-writing projects
May 25, 2022
still looking for perspectives on high tech care
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews