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Anthropocene psychologies (or psychopathologies) have some similarities to the decadence and denialism of late socialism in central and eastern Europe that is one of my research interests. As ecological disasters, particularly in the coal regions of northern Bohemia; the most polluted area of europe at the time) gave the lie to the Party line of progress and prosperity, a comforting veil of ideology allowed leaders and many citizens to go about their business "as if" there were no looming crisis. In his New Year's address after becoming the first post Communist president of Czechoslovakia, dissident playwright Vaclav Havel made this connection clear, describing the destroyed environment as an undeniable symptom of modern humanity's disconnection from the natural world and a "contaminated moral environment." As outlined in the work of historian Miroslav Vanek (see our article "Ecological Roots of a democracy movement") , the ecological crisis was deeply entwined with a political crisis that eventually led to the collapse of the Communist state in Czechoslovakia in 1989. Havel's critique was not just of Communist ideologies, but of ideologies of technologival civilization and modernity in general:

"What we call the consumer and industrial (or postindustrial) society, and Ortega y Gasset once understood as "the revolt of the masses," as well as the intellectual, moral, political, and social misery in the world today: all of this is perhaps merely an aspect of the deep crisis in which humanity, dragged helplessly along by the automatism of global technological civilization, finds itself. The post-totalitarian system is only one aspect-a particularly drastic aspect and thus all the more revealing of its real origins-of this general inability of modern humanity to be the master of its own situation. The automatism of the posttotalitarian system is merely an extreme version of the global automatism of technological civilization. The human failure that it mirrors is only one variant of Ihe general failure of modern humanity. This planetary challenge to the position of human beings in the world is, of course, also taking place in the Western world, the only difference being the social and political forms it takes- Heidegger refers expressly to a crisis of democracy. ... It may even be said Ihat the more room there is in the Western democracies (compared to our world) for the genuine aims of life, the better the crisis is hidden from people and the more deeply do they become immersed in it. It would appear that the traditional parliamentary democracies can offer no fundamental opposition to the automatism of technological civilization and the industrial-cousumer society, for they, too, are being dragged helplessly along by it. People are manipulated in ways that are infinitely more subtle and refined than the brutal methods used in the posttotalitarian societies. But this static complex of rigid, conceptually sloppy, and politically pragmatic mass political parties run by professional apparatuses and releasing the citizen from all forms of concrete and personal responsibility; and those complex focuses of capital accumulation engaged in secret manipulations and expansion; the omnipresent dictatorship of consumption, production, advertising, commerce, consumer culture, and all that flood of information: all of it, so often analyzed and described, can only with great difficulty be imagined as the source of humanity's rediscovery of itself." (Power of the Powerless, 1978)

Thinking about the theme of this campus and after reviewing the material on the Whitney plantation, I was pondering the connections between the history of slavery in Louisiana and the industrial/technical implications and affects of the Anthropocene. I remembered a book by Andrew Nikiforuk called “The Energy of Slaves” (shout out to L Cohen fans)) which draws clear historical and technical parallels between the energy regimes of slavery and the petrochemical industry. Thought it might be interesting/relevant.

From the Greystonebooks publisher’s description:

“A radical analysis of our master-and-slave relationship to energy and a call for change.

Ancient civilizations routinely relied on shackled human muscle. It took the energy of slaves to plant crops, clothe emperors, and build cities. In the early nineteenth century, the slave trade became one of the most profitable enterprises on the planet, and slaveholders viewed religious critics as hostilely as oil companies now regard environmentalists. Yet when the abolition movement finally triumphed in the 1850s, it had an invisible ally: coal and oil. As the world's most portable and versatile workers, fossil fuels dramatically replenished slavery's ranks with combustion engines and other labour-saving tools. Since then, oil has transformed politics, economics, science, agriculture, gender, and even our concept of happiness. But as Andrew Nikiforuk argues in this provocative new book, we still behave like slaveholders in the way we use energy, and that urgently needs to change.

Many North Americans and Europeans today enjoy lifestyles as extravagant as those of Caribbean plantation owners. Like slaveholders, we feel entitled to surplus energy and rationalize inequality, even barbarity, to get it. But endless growth is an illusion, and now that half of the world's oil has been burned, our energy slaves are becoming more expensive by the day. What we need, Nikiforuk argues, is a radical new emancipation movement.”

Also book review @: https://www.macleans.ca/culture/books/review-the-energy-of-slaves-oil-and-the-new-servitude/

If the Anthropocene epoch is characterized by a decadent, mutually destructive dance of human and physical geographies, then New Orleans is the perfect host city. Founded on the exploitation of both human and natural resources, built on the shifting sands of the delta, stripped of natural defenses, sitting below sea level with only earthen levees and ancient pumps keeping out the toxic waters of the Mississippi, Lake and Gulf, the city is a model of social and environmental injustice and unsustainability. The drunk staggering home past the trash and vomit on Bourbon street singing Jock-a-mo while the rats scurry, the levees seep and storm clouds gather in the Gulf is a good metaphor for the state of the planet and human civilization in the current epoch.

Yet, despite the intractable problems of decaying infrastructure, inequality, corruption and the constant threat of disaster, a stubborn spirit of grit, resilience, and even joy somehow endures. I first visited New Orleans in 2007. While the CBD and tourist quarters were open for business, heaps of steaming, mouldering debris still littered the lower 9th ward and outlying districts and half the population remained displaced, the majority-minority of whom labelled “refugees” in their own country. The hurricane had blown the sequins off the Big Easy’s carefree façade, stripping away the ideological veneer and laying bare its stark inequities, yet its soul was somehow intact*.

The criminal incompetence and indifference of the emergency response to Katrina (I remember tractor trailers full of supplies idling for days in Gloucester, MA waiting for instructions from FEMA) illustrated how there is no such thing as a “natural” disaster in the Anthropocene. “Acts of God” are increasingly triggered and mismanaged by acts of man.

As a political scientist and cultural historian, I am interested in how issues of power, control, resources, and justice are framed; how such narratives are deployed and contested; and (as an geographer at heart if not by training) how these cultural systems codependently interact with the environmental systems that underwrite them. The theme of “land, life and labor” exploitation of the New Orleans campus seems to me particularly salient for my interdisciplinary instincts and social science perspective. I look forward to meeting, working, and learning with you all.

*PS: The soul of New Orleans, which restored my faith in America during the dark years of the W administration (remember when we thought it couldn’t get worse?), is also what led my daughter to adopt the city as her own for the past five years, and inevitably led her parents to keep a wary weather eye on the Gulf and cancer alley. Actually both my daughters (like all sons and daughters of their generation) are on the front lines of the Anthropocene, as my youngest is a budding environmental scientist. So, my desire to understand the systems and scale of these issues is personal as well as political.

-I looked up UN response efforts in Liberia during the time of this outbreak. Doing this, I was able to learn about the process that was taken in an attempt to decrease the transmission of the disease. I also learned about specific numbers in terms of confirmed cases as well as deaths. The UN was mentioned but not explicitly talked about in the film, so I wanted to further my understanding of the actions and role they played during this outbreak. 

http://ebolaresponse.un.org/liberia

-I wanted to research the general healthcare in Libera and see if there is a lack in healthcare in this area, which may have aided in the severe devastation caused by the outbreak. As mentioned, the civil war really effected many outcomes of the country, one of them being healthcare. Communicable diseases were a factor that was already a topic of concern in this area before the outbreak of Ebola. Currently healthcare in Libera is being reformed, yet after reading this report, it is easy to see why the government and public health workers struggled so much to contain this outbreak.

https://csis-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/legacy_files/files/publi…

-I wanted to learn more about the Ebola virus in general but also learn more about the diagnosis and the symptoms that those infected would display. I also wanted to learn more about the progression of the virus after being infected as well as the incubation period. I researched the virus on the World Health Organization website. Here I was able to find all this information out from the virus' origin to the diagnoses process and symptoms.

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs103/en/

This paper has been cited and discussed in 7 different articles according to Google Scholar. Many of the papers it has been cited in have to do with the effects of social media on opinions of opioid use, gun violence, vaccination rates and more. The papers all have to do with public perception and education on certain topics, very similar to this study.

Emergency response is addressed in terms of post disaster investigations rather than immediate on scene response. The political and social analysis of these city areas, as well as the social aspects of the disasters are analyzed. Discussing why the events occurred, how to prevent them, as well as the political aspects such as power and public factors are also discussed. Investigations mainly showed that more needed to be done in terms of preventatives and safety that could have possibly minimized the amount of disaster in some of the situations. 

This article discusses the French laws and their effect on immigration and healthcare. The laws around the retention of illegal immigrants in France to get treated for their illnesses are discussed. Policies are also discussed in comparison with America and other western nations. The law that is behind this was published in June 1997 by Jean-Pierre Chevenementthe. The public health aspects as well a immigrant rights are also discussed. 

This program, as mentioned earlier is set in Tulane University in New Orleans yet has a lot of global outreach. This program's website has a map showing their direct partners all over the world on the front page. Partners include, Tulane University, RAND Gulf States Policy Institute, Louisiana State University,University of South Alabama, Louisiana Public Health Institute, Benadir University, Catholic Relief Services, dozens of colleges and programs in Africa such as the University of Zimbabwe as well as the Kinshasa School of Public Health, other partners includes UNICEF-Mali and others in Asia, such as Moi University and the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center. Needless to say these are just  few of the many partners this program based out of Tulane has all over the world.

It was harder to find this information, but from what I gathered, the concept of national health insurance first became a topic of discussion during the Truman administration. From 1958 to 1964, controversies rose and a bill was drafted, specifically by who is unknown, but the signing of the act was part of Johnson's Great Society. Though names are not listed, it is said that those who previously worked on the King-Anderson Bill drafted this current Medicaid policy and that Wilbur Cohen, Assistant Secretary for Legislation of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, really pushed for this Medicare bill.  

Adriana Petryna has a PhD in Anthropology from UC Berkeley and teaches courses in this field at UPenn. She specializes in globalization and public health as well as medical anthropology. Her interests lie in Europe and the US, mainly the Chernobyl disaster. She centers her work on public and private forms of scientific knowledge production. She is very interested in the way science and technology play a role in the context of crisis.