Search

I am interested in seeing how social ties and networks have been used to cope with (un)natural disasters. My research focus on places under disasters conditions such as Puerto Rico after hurricane Maria, in which social ties have made the difference between life and death. Furthermore, “natural” disaster has been used to approved austerity measures and unjust policies to impoverished communities like in New Orleans after Katrina. These policies were not new, as they are rooted in structures of power to preserve the status quo. Yet, people have resisted, “through a network of branches, cultures, and geographies” that has stimulated a reflective process of looking within for solutions rather than outside. As often this outside solutions are not only detached from community’s reality but can perpetuate social injustices and inequalities.

McKittrick, K., & Woods, C. A. (Eds.). (2007). Black geographies and the politics of place. South End Press.

Bullard, R. D., & Wright, B. (Eds.). (2009). Race, place, and environmental justice after Hurricane Katrina: Struggles to reclaim, rebuild, and revitalize New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Westview Press.

The IAEA is based in Vienna, Austria. It is comprised of six main departments: Department of Nuclear Energy, Department of Nuclear Sciences and Applications, Department of Technical Cooperation, Department of Safeguards, Department of Management, and Department of Safety and Security. The IAEA employs over 2200 staff throughout the world. It has offices in Toronto and Tokyo and also holds research facilities in Monaco, Austria, and Seibersdorf. The main resource the IAEA provides to its member is nuclear knowledge and expertise in its various departments though countless publications.

Miriam Ticktin is an associate Anthropology professor at The New School. She graduated with a PhD from Stanford University in 2002. “Miriam works at the intersections of the anthropology of medicine and science, law, and transnational and postcolonial feminist theory. Her research has focused in the broadest sense on what it means to make political claims in the name of a universal humanity: she has been interested in what these claims tell us about universalisms and difference, about who can be a political subject, on what basis people are included and excluded from communities, and how inequalities get instituted or perpetuated in this process. She is the author of Casualties of Care: Immigration and the Politics of Immigration and Humanitarianism in France (UC Press, 2011), co-editor of In the Name of Humanity: the Government of Threat and Care (with Ilana Feldman, Duke UP 2010), and a founding co-editor of the journal Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism and Development.” (from her profile from The New School).

There are several ways that this study can benefit technical professionals. By knowing the factors for the highest risk for communicable diseases, resources can be directed to mitigate the effects of a disaster. The more aware technical professionals are of the risks of communicable diseases, the more likely they will be able to identify when these situations are likely and prevent them from happening.

This act was a win for all individuals in EMS as no EMT, nurse, or doctor would have to send a patient in critical need away because there was no one to foot the bill. This was a horrible position that put medical workers in the position of moral culpability for policy formed by higher-ups who never had to deal with the reality of their decisions.

Emergency responders were not the main focus of the film but were portrayed as having to deal with difficult situations that they had little real control over, mostly because the state was portrayed as trying to do the right thing but making things worse. The consequences of the government fell on the emergency workers. The doctors and responders had to risk personal safety and had to deal with people not trusting them and ignoring their requests.