* Structural - Local Universities, Marie Curie, EU Comission, States
* internationally connected climate activism (Last Generation/Fridays for Future), permaculture movments/farms, "green" star-ups, local farmers
How can collaboration in the field be practically thought if the time frame is alreay set for three years?
Can temporalities be questioned if the temporality of neoliberal university is strcuturing the project?
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?
The extensive bibliography suggests that the article was produced with extensive research into the history of humanitarian aid for sexual violence and the political aspects of humanitarianism. The article and bibliography show that this article was produced on existing data rather than through field research.
The film shows that health infrastructure is imperative in the treatment of patients and containment of an outbreak. Also, it is suggested that the government’s attempts to contain the spread of the disease were challenged in part by a lack of awareness and available information.
The main argument is supported through the existing research, which is minimal, as well as expert interviews, focus groups, and information from the Aid Worker Security Database.
Several historical examples are used including the burning of the US Capital in 1814, the Hague St. explosion in 1850, and the Iroquois theater fire in 1903. The article uses examples that were in the public awareness at the time of the disaster in order to exemplify the many agents pressuring investigators to make a rapid and acceptable decision including the public, the government, and the businesses effected.
The article does not address emergency response, rather it dealt with public health and the government’s responsibility for the health of immigrants. A significant part of public health is the allocation and availability of resources, which differs based on country. The argument made is that the available medical resources in France should be used to assist those who do not have access in their countries. Unfortunately, there remains the responsibility to the citizens of France to provide access to any and all resources necessary for their health which necessitates denying treatment to some immigrants. The issues faced by the government and public health interests is how to balance those moral obligations, which is discussed in the article.
Vincanne Adams is an anthropologist, and former director of Medical Anthropology with UC Berkeley. Diana English is a Clinical Assistant Professor at Stanford Hospital and Clinics. Taslim van Hattum is a well-known researcher focused on public health, she currently works as Director of Behavioral Health Integration for the Louisiana Public Health Institute.