Analyze

Mishuana Goeman in Mark My Words talks about remapping as a way of rethinking space and temporality, so the future is driving the study of the past and the past is interrogated for the future.

Goeman uses the fiction of Native women to push forth the idea that words don’t only represent reality, arguing that by using narrative “in (re)mapping, we as Native people have the power to rethink the way we engage with territory, with our relationships to one another, and with other Native nations and settler nations” (38–39).

So imagining spatial encounters and relationships is actually a way of mapping alternative relationships

Massey’s understanding of space is the “product of interrelations,” “spheres of possibility,” “and always under construction or a simultaneity of stories-so-far” (6-7), so space is a meeting of histories.

What histories are meeting now? Maybe more importantly, whose histories are meeting? I think this is where scalar analysis can come in to complement Massey’s thinking about space.. to start to tease out a bit these entangled encounter or meeting space, knowing it will never fully be disentangled.

Also, when think about Massey’s line of space as a meeting place, something always in transit, I’m thinking specifically of encounters. And space/place as encounter. And stay at home orders rethink the way many of us are encountering each other, also in certain contexts, especially for those with the privilege of staying at home, change encounters are being lost. The sort of tranistness of space is being lost.

I’ve been thinking a bit with Elizabeth Povinelli’s use of “abject” status (the excess, to cast away, the throw away) which she pulls from Judith Butler and spaces of liminality. The subjective experience of an abject status intersects so harshly with systems of power, the economy, national policy, etc. So, thinking about spaces of abjection. Who occupies this space during this time? How is it changed? How is it being embodied?

Gonzales, Roberto G., and Leo R. Chavez. 2012. “‘Awakening to a Nightmare’: Abjectivity and Illegality in the Lives of Undocumented 1.5-Generation Latino Immigrants in the United States.” Current Anthropology 53 (3): 255–81. https://doi.org/10.1086/665414.

Povinelli, Elizabeth. 2012. “BEYOND THE NAMES OF THE PEOPLE: Disinterring the Body Politic.”Cultural Studies 26 (2–3): 370–90. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2011.636206.

In our group we had Dr. Jessica Sewell come speak to us a little while ago about her book Women and the Everyday City and we landed on the topic of “imaginaries of space” for a long time. And the visual politics of space- so how do we notice things? What do we notice? What seems out of place or in place. Thinking about how imaginaries make certain presences completely invisible (thinking here about gendered labor, black labor, and more). And how powerful imaginaries are, how they intersect with our construction of language. But also how resistance can work with these imaginaries.. thinking about women’s sort of take over of dept stores during the suffrage movement as an extension of their private space, a space for organizing. This is long winded way of trying to think through COVID-19 national models in the context of national imaginaries. What has been puzzling me is so many Americans’ response to the Swedish model of governing in Covid and how imaginaries of Sweden have been warped in such a way that there is a complete erasure of how xenophobic policies have gained traction in Sweden in recent years.  

Gendered Spaces – We keep seeing these headlines over and over  (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/15/world/coronavirus-women-leaders.html) and I think there’s a lot more analysis that needs to happen here.. But women leaders = success in governance in these reports and I think we should complicated this more. What does this look like from the scale of the body to national political offices?

Failed governance - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/07/michigan-lawmaker-armed-escort-rightwing-protest

^ For many this is failure, but for others the ability to have militarized weapons in the state capitol is a success. So how do we blur the boundaries between success/failure?

Emergency response is addressed in more of a public health aspect rather than EMS. The conditions post Chernobyl in terms of government involvement, political and social climates were emphasized. Along with this, the resettlement and life adjustments of those effected, as well as health and radiation implications are extensively discussed. 

The article is supported through the use of numerous examples and educated points made by the author. First, the author supports her arguments by going through the events that transpired that day at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. She uses the details of the events in Japan to support her argument that a global emergency nuclear response team is necessary. Schmid also cites other areas in the world where this was an issue and protocols were not clear. Ultimately which caused the incidences at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, all of which would have benefited from a response team equipped and specially trained to deal with this type of situation. The author cites that incidences at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were the result of systems that were too complex, tightly coupled  and technical, ultimately not allowing broad policy changes when needed. The author also cites that this occurred in one of the world's most advanced areas in the world, both technologically and economically. She states that having scientists and the elite left to make decisions about responses to disasters alone further proves her point and supports her arguments. She also notes that current organizations have little international authority and often suffer when attempting to include or talk to the public in terms of these situation which doesn't allow for full integration with the public. She notes the importance of this integration, but also that world leaders are attempting to do so and see how beneficial this is. She compared the way previous situations similar to that in Japan was handled and she mapped out new regulations that arose based off each of those incidences in order to see what can further be implemented as a blanket response globally for all nations in a situation like this.

This program is funded by tuition paid for my students (or maybe some form of scholarship, on a case by case basis.) Columbia University is a private institution, and those enrolled in this program pay a tuition for cost of the education and resources. 

The authors support their argument many ways, one being how that the rates of HIV/AIDS are so positively linked and correlated with social arrangements that it is often referred to as social disease. HIV commonly effects those that are poor and disease rates are fueled by gender inequality, racism and poverty. The article discusses how structural violence has influenced HIV progression. The article cites that structural violence influences diagnosis rates, staging and treatment. The also article references a study done in Baltimore which reports racism and poverty forms of structural violence and the effects on excess mortality among African Americans without insurance- ultimately showing  they were more likely to to be susceptible. The authors also used other historical data and research to support heir claims. Efforts through Partners in Health were made to prevent the spread and transmission of diseases in Haiti. The efforts made in Haiti and Rwanda were cited, both the positives and negatives. The article also discusses ways to incorporate more interventions to help eliminate any social influences of disease. 

The argument is supported through an analysis of current subjects of humanitarian aid and how it effects them differently and now the principle of neutrality is not apparent and discrimination is seen based off type of suffering. The argument is also supported through numerous essays from Medecins Sans Frontieres, which provide background information as well as statistical data. Also the expert analysis of the author is used to support the article based on her interpretation and experiences of gender based violence being a humanitarian problem. There is also an ample amount of facts and statistics to support the argument. 

A main concern is the fact that no disaster will ever be the same. A hurricane in one area will be very different in another area, despite the same source of destruction. This is because each areas has a different population, different needs  and different services available in each area. The most challenging part is the ability to foresee what might be good resources or equipment or forms of medical care and best to supply at each different disaster since each one is unique.