Analyze

RabachK Theorizing Place and Covid 19

kaitlynrabach
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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.  

Bodies and Land in NOLA

jdl84
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The history of racialized exclusion to both social power and land tenure and homeownership has shaped how bodies are differentially impacted by land use in NOLA. This entire history could (and probably already is) a topic for a dissertation, but one case I found particularly interesting involved the Army Corps of Engineers' 2007 creation of an online database in which residents can find the "flood potential" faced by their homes (http://nolarisk.usace.army.mil/ --unfortunately no longer up).  While this database was hailed as a landmark achievement in providing NOLA residents with their "right to know" about the risks in their neighborhoods, only a few remarked on what the data actually showed: that in the two years following the flood predominantly white neighborhoods had experienced 4-6 feet of flood reduction, black neighborhoods had experienced little to no flood reduction whatsoever. 

This reminds me of a more general entanglement of racialized disparities, historical disinvestment and inequitable distribution of risk in America, which as Anna Clark so summarily puts it (in respect lead": "lead is one toxic legacy in America's cities. Another is segregation, redlining, and rebranding: this is the art and craft of exclusion. We built it into the bones of our cities as surely as we laid lead pipes."  

West Lake Landfill

AllanaRoss
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Cancer cluster. Not racialized in this particular area so much as class-based. Bridgeton is a working-class, mostly white suburb. The neighborhood closest to the landfill is a mobile home park. 

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a_chen
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The translation for the system is managed by Transifex (not Ushahidi owned) with monthly plans for localised translation. In the case that the user not comfortable with English might be an issue to work with the system. Especially the reporters from the hard-reach areas with fewer educations. (They might deal with the problem of using technologies.)   

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Sara_Nesheiwat
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I would say that a situation where this site would be difficult to work with would be in an urgent, or time sensitive situation. Let's say during a situation where quick medical care is needed, this site would be difficult to work with and not a good source of information during that time. Yet in most situations and settings this would prove to be a good source of data. 

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erin_tuttle
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This system would definitely be difficult to use directly in the field as it does require steady internet connection to allow for collaboration between users. Another likely problem would be collaboration between users who speak a different language, although the publishing aspect of the app, and adaptable software downloads allow for multiple languages. Integrating numerical data between users who’s primary languages differ creates technical challenges that could range from complete field incompatibility to something as simple as interpreting a comma as thousands rather than a decimal point.