Case Studies Winter 2024
Case study reports produced by students in UCI Anthro25A, "Environmental Injustice," in Winter 2024.
Case study reports produced by students in UCI Anthro25A, "Environmental Injustice," in Winter 2024.
Slow disaster case study reports produced by students in UCI Anthro25A, "Environmental Injustice," in Fall 2022.
Combo disaster case study reports produced by students in UCI Anthro25A, "Environmental Injustice," in Fall 2022.
This article has been referenced and discussed by Vital Source and “Nuclear power after 3/11: Looking back and thinking ahead” (University of York) as well as Zotero and Disaster-sts.
The author addresses public health by making the case that “evidence based medicine” is not always there for every type of case nor is it always infallible. This effects emergency response where there are so many variables and there are no datasets, protocols, or studies for some cases.
The article: “Structural Violence and Clinical Medicine” is about the social structures that play into “violence” (anything that causes harm physically, socially, or otherwise). The research seeks to establish the importance of biosocial understanding in the medical field when trying to understand medical problems.
The main argument was that there are "biosocial phenomena" or "structural violence" that lead to the tendency for certain diseases or lack of treatment in populations, particularly those in poverty. Their three major findings were: they can make structural interventions to "decrease the extent to which social inequities become embodied as health inequities", proximal interventions can reduce premature morbidity and mortality, and structural interventions "can have an enormous impact on outcomes.
The main argument Stephen and Andrew make is that the systems for biosecurity interventions at the global level have many issues to address, solve, and improve on in regards to biosecurity, global health and emergency response, health security and modernization risks, and toward critical, reflexive knowledge.
Stephen Collier is an Associate Professor of International Affairs at The New School in NYC. He has a Ph.D in Anthropology from U.C. Berkeley and has conducted research in Russia, Georgia, and the U.S. His expertise is in political systems (post-socialism and neoliberalism), infrastructure, social welfare, and contemporary security. His knowledge in infrastructure and politics gives him a more top-down perspective of emergency response; Collier can assist with creation of organizations and groups for large scale emergencies that would require international collaboration.
Andrew Lakoff is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California, and is an anthropologist of science and medicine. He research is in globalization processes, human science, and the implications of biomedical technology. He has a similar position in emergency response as Collier, where he sees global, political, and technological interactions that would effect how we prepare and respond to international emergencies. He's written essays and other books on emergency preparedness such as "The Risks of Preparedness: Mutant Bird Flu" and "Disaster & the Politics of Intervention".
This film, I feel, best addresses those trying to understand the broader social impacts of a disease which can include government officials and policy makers, first responders, emergency personal and more.