Ecuador Acidification
This PECE essay details the quotidian anthropocene in Ecuador utilizing the Questioning Quotidian Anthropocenes analytic developed for the Open Seminar River School.
This PECE essay details the quotidian anthropocene in Ecuador utilizing the Questioning Quotidian Anthropocenes analytic developed for the Open Seminar River School.
Fukishima's emergency response, public and corporate messages on Indian Point, Entergy Corporation
"To return to the story: with humanitarians effectively governing in crisis zones, it is not surprising that gender-based violence should become an issue; having been categorised as a human rights violation, one which garnered significant attention, it could not be easily ignored or brushed aside as a ‘private’ matter. Still, approaching gender-based violence as a humanitarian issue required some translation. Humanitarians are primarily concerned with saving lives and relieving suffering; humanitarianism of the sort practised by MSF is most significantly focused on health, and the lives and wellbeing of populations."
"The complications of treating gender-based violence as a humanitarian issue were raised early on by MSF in their work in the Congo Republic. In his essay, Marc Le Pape discusses how, because of rape and violence perpetrated by groups of armed men who set up roadblocks and then proceeded to do as they pleased with those they trapped, humanitarians had to decide whether to accept military escorts on aid convoys to protect against such roadblocks, again with serious political repercussions. Caritas did eventually allow trucks to carry military escorts, yet these escorts in turn invited their friends – armed militiamen – onto the trucks, even as they carried with them the spoils of their plunder"
"Humanitarianism’s mission has expanded so that it now occupies a dominant place in the global political arena – whether humanitarians asked for this or not. But the incorporation of genderbased violence shows humanitarianism at its limit; gender relations and gender-based violence cannot be contained by forms of crisis-driven, moral and medical intervention. In other words, this type of politics based on protecting a universal humanity cannot do all our political work for us; such violence renders visible inequalities that are simply unmanageable and unchangeable by its methods."
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.
The entire study is focused on vulnerable populations – particularly those who due to racial or economic divides, do not have proper access to healthcare, or may be affected by factors such as poor housing and malnutrition.
Emergency response is incrediably relevant to this article. Although a lot of the focus is on humanitarian aid, EMS has these same issues. We have limitations on how much information about a patient we can discuss, although more information is available for statistical use. It is also hard in the short period of time with a patient to fully understand a lot of this information, and we don't go into the field as researchers. Finally, motive is completely unimportant to us most of the time. We see what is wrong and we treat it, we can't worry why the person has a laceration, that is the job of the police, except in the cases of child or elder abuse.
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.
"Through close examination of concrete settings in which biosecurity interventions are being articulated, these chapters show that ways of understanding and intervening in contemporary threats to healt are still in formation: 'biosecurity' does not name stable or cleary define understanding and strategies, but rather a number of overlapping and rapidly changing problem areas."
"After considerable delay, we have recently seen the implementation of large-scale responses to these new infectious desiease threats that bring together governmental, multilater, and philanthropic organizations."
"...newly perceived threats to health... have placed greater pressure on public health departments and national security officials to develop an approach to disease events not easily managed thorugh the traditional paradigm of public health."
This article is discussed and referenced in STS based courses and emergency response seminars and planning committees. The paper is also cited in a book Edited by Richard Hindmarsh and Rebecca Priestley entitles "The Fukushima Effect."
This article has been cited in a few works, many having to do with Chernobyl or other nuclear disasters such as Fukushima. This reports has also been cited in numerous reputable journals as well as cited by numerous health organizations and experts on the topic. A lot of information from this report has been used to support other works reporting on Chernobyl.