A coalition of churches, synagogues, mosques, and cultural organizations located in the Inland Empire. Unfortunately, without any up-to-date number of members in this coalition.
For the org. there is a spiritual connection linking the desert landscapes and religious beliefs. Their primary focus is congregating more groups around environmental hazards in desert lands.
The organization is looking for a “new dimension and depth” in the discussion about the environmental crisis. Engaging in different fields:
Desert Stewardship Project is an interfaith coalition dedicated to protecting the deserts of California.
BIOETHNOGRAPHY: “Thus, instead of combining objects of inquiry (biology and culture), I conceived of bioethnography as combining two different methods for knowing the world (Mol 2002, 153)—ethnographic observation and biochemical sampling—in order to ask and answer research questions that could not be addressed through either method alone. This methodological focus involves exploring how our data collection and analysis might be shaped if we suspended the nature/culture binary” (Roberts, 2021, p. 2)
“bioethnography asks, what if we created numbers otherwise, upending the cooked data that reinforces inequality? In fact, bioethnography can enable us to identify structural forces, such as NAFTA and the global health apparatus itself, that are part of the bodily processes that make ill health. In other words, while we know that all data is cooked, it matters how it’s cooked.” (Roberts, 2021, p. 5)
Roberts describes their ongoing bioethnographic collaboration with a team of exposure scientists who are working in environmental engineering and health. Though ethnography is not easily enumerated, Roberts emphasizes that integrating it with quantitative data is worthwhile and makes for “better numbers”. As an example, Roberts describes 3 bioethnographic projects on neighborhoods, water distribution, and employment and chemical exposures. These projects were part of a longitudinal birth-cohort study in Mexico City called Early Life Exposures in Mexico to ENvironmental Toxicants (ELEMENT), created to understand the effects of early-life nutrition and exposure to toxicants (such as lead and phenols). Overtime, this project was expanded to include the study of new toxins (e.g. BPAS, mercury, and fluoride) and new health concerns (e.g. obesity, meopause, sleep).
Roberts’ focus on neighborhoods was produced from the ethnographic observation that neighborhood characteristics might influence exposure levels. Following this observation, Roberts’ and ELEMENT researchers sorted participants by neighborhood and identified significant differences in blood-lead levels. Additionally, Roberts applied previous ethnographic observation and scholarship to argue that high levels of toxicants like lead correlate with the capacity of neighborhoods to withstand other dangers, such as police violence. These findings prompted the development of two new bioethnographic project centered on water and the effect of neighborhood dynamics on health.
In the article, the authors used data from the 2011-2015 American Community 5-Year Estimates by the U.S. Census, 2010 U.S Census, and George C. Galster, “The Mechanism(s) of Neighborhood Effects: Theory, Evidence, and Policy Implications.”. They looked at data follwing children under 18, and followed poverty trends such as census tracts for concentrated areas of high poverty. They used the number of children in Essex County Cities and compared it to the the amount of children in poverty in those cities, for the years of 2000 and 2015. Henceforth, they created an arguement stating that Child Poverty rates have risen within those 15 years, and even by 50% in some areas. The only issue I have with some of this data is that in some cities, we see a decrease in child population - and while there is an increase in child poverty in those areas, I feel like the reduced number of children in that area plays a big part in the so called "Increased Child Poverty Rates".
The main argument in this artical is children poverty in newark has increased by 19 percent in the last 15 years. In newark over 40% of chlidren live in poverty.
Vulnerability and resilience in this artifact are defined by the high concentration of child poverty in Essex County. They are measured using the Census from 2000 and 2015 which show how there is a trend in the percentage of children who expereince poverty within the county. Majority of the children living in poverty are currently living in heavilyu concentrated poverty neighborhoods like Newark, Irvington, and the Oranges. Although the affluent town of Milburn is nearby, it is unclear how these children continue to live below the poverty line in Newark even though the towns are only 6 miles apart.
As a sesearch from the Rotgers University, the students or researchers support:
- The child poverty in becoming more concentrated. With the numbers next to us, we can say that a 52.5% of the poorest childs live in census were the concentration is above a 40%
- Inner-ring suburbs of Orange, East Orange, and Irvington have seen the largest increases in child poverty.
- Essex County’s smallest municipalities have very low child poverty, although many have seen their child poverty rates increase by more than 50 percent since 2000