Lunch & Learn • Legal Gray Zones and Governing By Letting Go (Dafna Rachok)

This presentation examines the suspension of legal boundaries by state healthcare institutions and professionals during the initial months of the full-scale war in Ukraine and shows how state entities prioritized prompt delivery of medicine to patients over the legal procedure. In particular, Dr. Rachok zooms in on the case when the Ministry of Health allowed an NGO to move controlled substances of methadone and buprenorphine with little to no oversight. Drawing on anthropological engagements with the idea of a gray zone, she discusses this situation of official suspension of rules as “legal gray zones” and argues that, counterintuitively, the letting go of some rules by various state institutions and actors led to a renewed sense of trust in the state by vulnerable communities.

Dafna Rachok is an assistant professor of anthropology at UNC Chapel Hill. Her research sits at the intersections of global health, anthropology, gender and sexuality studies, and Ukrainian studies. Through these intersections, she explores patient community-building, unintended consequences of global health programs, medical humanitarianism, and state-citizens relations. She received her PhD in Anthropology from Indiana University Bloomington in 2024.

Registration required. Register here before January 20.