Politicized motherhood: emotional grammars and collective bodies in medical marijuana activism

Abstract

In this article, I discuss the intertwining of pain and politics in order to provide an ethnographic framework for the emotional grammars and the formation of collective bodies in medical marijuana activism in Rio de Janeiro. I focus my analysis on a field scene (re)constructed from the streets, on a day of the annual political act known as the marijuana march, and establish a close dialogue with some anthropological theories of emotions, collectivities, and processes of victimization. I offer a political-moral-emotional grammar to analyze the activism studied, suggesting that there is a materiality of symbols and performances that fabricate a “people,” a sense of interdependent and politically organized collectivity, which moves through a language of politicized motherhood — taking into account the multiple markers observed: gender, race, social class, disability, and age. To this end, I begin with an ethnographic study of the associations of mothers of children with disabilities in the city of Rio de Janeiro, demonstrating how political reproduction and care go hand in hand, producing both imaginaries of family and rights and everyday practices of care actions. The article demonstrates that the politicization of emotions is crucial to contemporary politics and is therefore of utmost importance for the sociological understanding of medical marijuana activism.