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As a researcher, I’m interested in the political, ecological, and cultural debates around mosquito-borne diseases and the solutions proposed to mitigate them.

When we received the task, my first impulse was to investigate about the contemporary effects of anthropogenic climate change in mosquito-borne diseases in New Orleans. But I was afraid to make the same mistake that I did in my PhD research. I wrote my PhD proposal while based in the US, more specifically in New England, during the Zika epidemic, and proposed to understand how scientists were studying ecological climate change and mosquitoes in Brazil. However, once I arrived in the country the political climate was a much more pressing issue, with the dismantling of health and scientific institutions.

Thus, after our meeting yesterday, and Jason Ludwig’s reminder that the theme of our Field Campus is the plantation, I decided to focus on how it related to mosquitoes in New Orleans.

The Aedes aegypti mosquito and the yellow fever virus it can transmit are imbricated in the violent histories of settler-colonialism and slavery that define the plantation economy. The mosquito and the virus arrived in the Americas in the same ships that brought enslaved peoples from Africa. The city of New Orleans had its first yellow fever epidemic in 1796, with frequent epidemics happening between 1817 and 1905. What caused New Orleans to be the “City of the Dead,” as Kristin Gupta has indicated, was yellow fever. However, as historian Urmi Engineer Willoughby points out, the slave trade cannot explain alone the spread and persistance of the disease in the region: "Alterations to the landscape, combined with demographic changes resulting from the rise of sugar production, slavery, and urban growth all contributed to the region’s development as a yellow fever zone." For example, sugar cultivation created ideal conditions for mosquito proliferation because of the extensive landscape alteration and ecological instabilities, including heavy deforestation and the construction of drainage ditches and canals.

Historian Kathryn Olivarius examines how for whites "acclimatization" to the disease played a role in hierarchies with “acclimated” (immune) people at the top and a great mass of “unacclimated” (non-immune) people and how for black enslaved people "who were embodied capital, immunity enhanced the value and safety of that capital for their white owners, strengthening the set of racialized assumptions about the black body bolstering racial slavery."

As I continue to think through these topics, I wonder how both the historical materialities of the plantation and the contemporary anthropogenic changes might be influencing mosquito-borne diseases in New Orleans nowadays? And more, how the regions’ histories of race and class might still be shaping the effects of these diseases and how debates about them are framed?

1. I looked into the concept of 'atomic priests' mentioned on page 196 that was proposed in the 70s and 80s. I thought it was interesting when I saw it in the title of this report, and was interested to learn more about what it was. 

2. I looked on the website for IEAE, since Schmid mentioned them for a while. 

3. I also looked into the organization Spetsatom, since it sounded as if they may have had the right idea about emergency response, but the website is in Russian, so it was hard to understand. 

1. Dr. Good provides an explanation of what a narrative is and how it is influenced by culture. He tells us how experience is completely cultural as it changes the way we perceive experiences. He also explains to us what a narrative is and the ways in which people can fall short in understanding someone's narrative due to their own influences. 
2. He shares a case studies about people in Ankara as they share their narratives of their diseases and treatments
3. Dr. Good analyzes the work of other anthropologists and researchers to help create his argument.

1. I looked up how many people have been affected by cholera and found an article where the UN did admit responsibility in the cholera outbreak. http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/08/18/490468640/u-n-admits-…
2. I also looked further into the NGOs that sought to help, since some of them were fraudulent. http://www.globalresearch.ca/haiti-5-years-after-the-earthquake-fraudul…

The National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. 

I did not find the portions of the President speaking very compelling. While I understand that the speeches provided context, it did not show any perspective from the governmental side. Had they provided interviews from government officials, that would have helped the argument and framed a better picture for the viewer.

Maybe having government workers would have helped create a more wholesome argument.

On the website, OSHA describes their mission as to "assure safe and healthful working conditions for working men and women by setting and enforcing standards and by providing training, outreach, education, and assistance."