Sep 13, 2023
"COVAX and World Bank to
Accelerate Vaccine Access for Developing Countries," trumpets a
World Bank press release. "How AI Is Making Healthcare More
Affordable And Accessible," announces Forbes magazine. "How
technology is helping improve financial inclusion around the
world," reports CNBC.
It's a linguistic frame that
appears regularly in media, PR, and policymaking. Those who can't
afford the top-tier forms of basic necessities like housing or
physical and mental healthcare, we're told, can have "access" to
less expensive, lower-quality versions. Enter bottom-rung ACA
marketplace plans, less effective COVID vaccines, homeless people
living in train containers, scammy cryptocurrency apps, and clunky
chatbot "therapists." After all, they're better than the
alternative: having no healthcare, housing, or income at
all.
But why must having nothing at
all be the only alternative? Why isn't it possible to ensure
high-quality essentials for everyone?
And how
does media's repackaging of substandard necessities as "increasing
access" and fostering "inclusion" serve to make the barbarism of
austerity politics seem palatable, even
benevolent?
On this episode, our season
seven premiere, we'll examine the trope of framing subpar material
essentials as forms of "inclusion" for the poor or "increasing
access" to important life saving and sustaining needs, exploring
how media simply accept, rather than challenge, the manufactured
austerity that allows this cruel stratification in the first
place.
Our guest is writer, artist and
pod host Beatrice Adler-Bolton.