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Rabach Theorizing Place and Covid 19

kaitlynrabach

Mishuana Goeman in Mark My Words talks about remapping as a way of rethinking space and temporality, so the future is driving the study of the past and the past is interrogated for the future.

Goeman uses the fiction of Native women to push forth the idea that words don’t only represent reality, arguing that by using narrative “in (re)mapping, we as Native people have the power to rethink the way we engage with territory, with our relationships to one another, and with other Native nations and settler nations” (38–39).

So imagining spatial encounters and relationships is actually a way of mapping alternative relationships

Massey’s understanding of space is the “product of interrelations,” “spheres of possibility,” “and always under construction or a simultaneity of stories-so-far” (6-7), so space is a meeting of histories.

What histories are meeting now? Maybe more importantly, whose histories are meeting? I think this is where scalar analysis can come in to complement Massey’s thinking about space.. to start to tease out a bit these entangled encounter or meeting space, knowing it will never fully be disentangled.

 

Also, when think about Massey’s line of space as a meeting place, something always in transit, I’m thinking specifically of encounters. And space/place as encounter. And stay at home orders rethink the way many of us are encountering each other, also in certain contexts, especially for those with the privilege of staying at home, change encounters are being lost. The sort of tranistness of space is being lost.

Rabach Theorizing Place and Covid 19

kaitlynrabach

I’ve been thinking a bit with Elizabeth Povinelli’s use of “abject” status (the excess, to cast away, the throw away) which she pulls from Judith Butler and spaces of liminality. The subjective experience of an abject status intersects so harshly with systems of power, the economy, national policy, etc. So, thinking about spaces of abjection. Who occupies this space during this time? How is it changed? How is it being embodied?

Gonzales, Roberto G., and Leo R. Chavez. 2012. “‘Awakening to a Nightmare’: Abjectivity and Illegality in the Lives of Undocumented 1.5-Generation Latino Immigrants in the United States.” Current Anthropology 53 (3): 255–81. https://doi.org/10.1086/665414.

Povinelli, Elizabeth. 2012. “BEYOND THE NAMES OF THE PEOPLE: Disinterring the Body Politic.”Cultural Studies 26 (2–3): 370–90. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2011.636206.

RabachK Theorizing Place and Covid 19

kaitlynrabach

In our group we had Dr. Jessica Sewell come speak to us a little while ago about her book Women and the Everyday City and we landed on the topic of “imaginaries of space” for a long time. And the visual politics of space- so how do we notice things? What do we notice? What seems out of place or in place. Thinking about how imaginaries make certain presences completely invisible (thinking here about gendered labor, black labor, and more). And how powerful imaginaries are, how they intersect with our construction of language. But also how resistance can work with these imaginaries.. thinking about women’s sort of take over of dept stores during the suffrage movement as an extension of their private space, a space for organizing. This is long winded way of trying to think through COVID-19 national models in the context of national imaginaries. What has been puzzling me is so many Americans’ response to the Swedish model of governing in Covid and how imaginaries of Sweden have been warped in such a way that there is a complete erasure of how xenophobic policies have gained traction in Sweden in recent years.  

Rabach_Theorizing Place and Covid 19

kaitlynrabach

Gendered Spaces – We keep seeing these headlines over and over  (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/15/world/coronavirus-women-leaders.html) and I think there’s a lot more analysis that needs to happen here.. But women leaders = success in governance in these reports and I think we should complicated this more. What does this look like from the scale of the body to national political offices?

 

Failed governance - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/07/michigan-lawmaker-armed-escort-rightwing-protest

^ For many this is failure, but for others the ability to have militarized weapons in the state capitol is a success. So how do we blur the boundaries between success/failure?

 

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hayley.frank

The Minister of Home Affairs acts as the President, and the Vice Chairman of the NDMA (National Disaster Management Authority) acts as Vice President. The body of the organiation is comprised of 42 members including secretaries of nodal Ministries and Departments of Government of India and State Governments, the heads of national scientific, research and technical organizations, and eminent scientists and practioners. The governing body of the organization, which runs its day to day operations, is comprised of 16 members, and is chaired by the Vice Chairman of the NDMA, with the Secretary of Home Affairs acting as the Vice President. 

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hayley.frank

The Disaster Management Act of 2005 constitutes the responsibilites of the NIDM to be human resource development, capacity building, training, research, documentation and policy advocacy in the field of disaster management. The organization aims to promote disaster management as a high priority in the national goverment. They also aspire to create "a culture of prevention" pertaining to disasters that involves all stakeholders. 

pece_annotation_1475709096

hayley.frank

The Disaster Management Act of 2005 constitutes the responsibilites of the NIDM to be human resource development, capacity building, training, research, documentation and policy advocacy in the field of disaster management. The organization aims to promote disaster management as a high priority in the national goverment. They also aspire to create "a culture of prevention" pertaining to disasters that involves all stakeholders.