Analyze

What I find really noteworthy in this text is how Julia Watts Belser takes the poem by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and includes it into a scientific text. In this way, she not only allows an affected person to have her say, the poem also leaves the reader with a very striking image of the connection between the river and the body, in multiple ways, as well as the connection between enviromental harm and disability.

The text was published in 2020 (Vol. 40, No. 4) by The Ohio State University Libraries in their Journal Disability Studies Quarterly (DSQ). It is, as you can read on their Homepage "a multidisciplinary and international journal of interest to social scientists, scholars in the humanities and arts, disability rights advocates, and others concerned with the issues of people with disabilities. It represents the full range of methods, epistemologies, perspectives, and content that the field of disability studies embraces. DSQ is committed to developing theoretical and practical knowledge about disability and to promoting the full and equal participation of persons with disabilities in society."

The author connects disability theories and activism with environmental justice, this approach allows her to show how disability is related to and through environmental harm, she shows how diagnoses are used politically in these cases, and looks critically at how these processes determine how, when and in what favor human and environmental harm is taken into account. The writing is shaped by the consequences of the Anthropocene like environmental harm linked to health isusses, especially affected are communities of color and poor communities in the United States, here pre-existing patters of structural inequality, already known from climate change come into play,  this communities are the most affected and the least responsible.

The text left me with a question that I actually often find frustrating in the process of research. On page 6, the authors take up the criticism of a Fukushima resident who says: “[W]hat you call research does not give benefits to local people” (Miyamoto and Ankei, 2008, cited in Ankei, 2013, p.24). The authors here suggest adopting or borrowing terms from the field that are used by citizens to create a more “socially robust science” (Bonhoure et al. 2019, Nowotny, 2003). From the authors' point of view, this can be achieved above all by paying closer and careful attention to the language of citizen organizations and the contexts these groups work in. After further elaboration, the authors call for citizen science terms and concepts developed by, for and with citizens to better reflect the values, priorities, and stakes of its main agents and of all concerned parties. But I am not sure that this approach alone would be sufficient to adequately address such expressed criticism. Perhaps one should ask about the expectations of people one is researching with/about in order to enter into a conversation and to be able to understand this criticism. Perhaps the authors will address this point again in further publications. I think to ask oneself how to deal with this criticism methodically and ethically could also be very fruitful for empirical research in general.

I am a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at the University of California, Irvine. I am working on my doctoral dissertation that explores post-disaster ecological imaginary shaped and performed through data practices in post-Fukushima Japan. My project examines how data practices of citizen radiation detection activities construct and reconfigure the understanding and experience of citizen scientists regarding post-Fukushima “Japan” as part of the ecosystem.  For further projects, I am also interested in the sociocultural role of small data in the era of big data and how small data that represent and intervene in environmental issues are intersected and interacted with big data in various domains. 

I am currently participating in the Transnational Disaster STS COVID-19 project and the COVID-19 and Data group as a subgroup of the project above. As a member of these groups, I am unraveling COVID-19 data practices and the relationships among multiple data actors such as the government, research institutions, media, and citizen scientists in Japan. I am also interested in how differently citizen data platforms have been gaining scientific and political authorities in Japan, the U.S., and South Korea during the pandemic.

I am particularly interested in these questions: 

• What do different disciplines and communities involved in COVID-19 response mean by “good data”?

• How do local, national, and global data intersect, interact, and compete with each other? 

• What is shown and what is revealed or disregarded in COVID-19 data produced about different settings (a particular city, region, or country, for example)?

• How are COVID-19 GIS data integrated with other data forms? What is the role of the GIS data in different COVID-19 settings?

• What is the role of civic data as COVID-19 information in comparison to governmental or institutional data?

• What do people expect from data within the COVID-19 pandemic? 

• How is the data circulated for COVID-19 different from data produced in another pandemic period?

I can be contacted at inahk[at]uci.edu.

It is necessary, in order to properly address growing global disasters and health-threats such as epidemics, to have a global approach to health instead of a national focus.

The number of emergency workers lost during 9/11:

343 Fire Fighters - http://nyfd.com/9_11_wtc.html

60 Police Officers

8 EMTs and Paramedics - http://www.world-memorial.org/Tribute/EMS/medics.html

EMS Lesson's Learned from 9/11

http://www.jems.com/articles/2006/08/lessons-learned-911.html

Changes were made to the mutual aid system. Resources that had, in the event, run out or were needed sooner than they were used are now better stocked and available. Some new trainings were implemented.

More stories from 9/11 by EMS

http://www.nyc.gov/html/fdny/pdf/mck_report/ems_response.pdf

-Due to recent terror attacks, there has been an insurgence in French xenophobia. Has this changed these policies? What is the current public opinion on the treatment of undocumented foreigner with illness?

-How do other countries manage ill undocumented foreigners? What is the international consensus in first world countries?

-What is the cut-off for illness in the cases discussed? 

Not that I could find.

The authors reference main research articles and books written about the subject from the past. 

They also reference epidemiological and sociological studies in supporting their mental health arguements. 

Other health references, such as the DSM and Indexes are referenced in the article. 

The author states that this work is based off of a few things, including multiple years of field work in Ukraine throughout 1990 to 2000.

Based upon her observations within research and medical facilities within Ukraine during these visits she defined patterns of issues affecting the population.

Using her knowledge and past experience as well she established these patterns and their effects in order to understand the situation in Ukraine.

She also interviewed russian scientists to understand their perspective on the issues as well.