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Luísa Reis-Castro: mosquitoes, race, and class

LuisaReisCastro

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?

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Sara_Nesheiwat

The article is supported through the recollection of the past decade of research on this topic of mental health effects due to disasters. First, the article delves into the PTSD and MDD mental illness association with disasters and the background of theses disorders. The authors then utilize numerous epidemiological studies that have been developed and discussed on the matter over that last 190 years. Experiences of those that are dealing with mental illnesses are also utilized as supporting evidence of the effect disasters have on mental health conditions on those effected.

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Sara_Nesheiwat

Based off the references, it is clear that a very extensive amount of research was done with well over ~70 references. Based off the bibliography, a lot of data was collected from articles and reports on nuclear safety efforts. Also many of the references analyzed historical events and past nuclear disasters and emergency response regulations. The bibliography, which includes some of her other works shows she is an expert in the field and cited other experts as well. 

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Sara_Nesheiwat

Many studies used as references for this article have to do with the biosocial aspects of diseases. Many of the articles trace the spread of disease in different populations and analyze the population's demographics.  Health care utilization and social aspects are all themes that are seen in most of the references in this study. There are also many epidemiological studies. The dates of studies date back as early as the 80s and as recent as the year the article was written in 2006. This shows an extensive and thorough amount of research. The articles are also taken from reputable sources and journals and written by experts as well, showing a great deal of care and effort gone into research aspects of this article. 

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Sara_Nesheiwat

According to Wiley Online Library, this article has been cited by 5 other works, all related in terms of humanitarianism or sexual violence. The articles it has been cited in can be seen here: 

Number of times cited: 5
  1.  Laura Jordan Jaffee, Disrupting global disability frameworks: settler-colonialism and the geopolitics of disability in Palestine/Israel, Disability & Society, 2016, 31, 1, 116CrossRef
  2. JULIA KOWALSKI, Ordering dependence: Care, disorder, and kinship ideology in North Indian antiviolence counseling, American Ethnologist, 2016, 43, 1, 63Wiley Online Library
  3. Rosanne Marrit Anholt, Understanding sexual violence in armed conflict: cutting ourselves with Occam’s razor, Journal of International Humanitarian Action, 2016, 1, 1CrossRef
  4. Zoë H. Wool, Critical military studies, queer theory, and the possibilities of critique: the case of suicide and family caregiving in the US military, Critical Military Studies, 2015, 1, 1, 23CrossRef
  5. Miriam Ticktin, Transnational Humanitarianism, Annual Review of Anthropology, 2014, 43, 1, 273

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Sara_Nesheiwat

Emergency response was completely lacking in man power and containment efforts. There wasn't much structure to the efforts taken by emergency response in terms of containment and education of the public. There were far too many of those in need and way too few emergency response teams. Hospitals closed due to lack of personnel as well as doctors getting infected themselves. People were dying left and right and being left on the side of the street. Responders weren't able to get to people in time in some cases. Locals began to take out aggressions and frustrations on emergency responders, despite them working at full capacity. The lack of man power, communication and education lead to the emergency response being sub par in this situation. 

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Sara_Nesheiwat

Emergency response isn’t directly addressed in this article. Yet, conditions and forms of violence that are discussed in the article that emergency responders have been documented with facing, clearly effect the way they work and respond to calls. Though emergency response isn’t directly addressed, this article is very relevant to emergency responders since its implications can highly effect the work of EMS and other medical care providers.

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Sara_Nesheiwat

I researched current protocols and strategies in place in terms of biosafety. I also researched current microbial threats in terms of organisms and the ways in which we have currently developed to help prevent those specific forms of bioterrorism. I also read up on past bioterrorism events and the effects it had on global protocols as well as the development of emergency response.