Skip to main content

Search

Mutual Aid/Best Practices vs Local Practices

_jzhao

This image reminds me of how mutual aid and communities keep each other fed, and safe, and how local practices are actually best practices. My own research, although not immediatley related to the specific public health concern of COVID, will focus on Indigenous food soverignty, particularly the right and autonomy to ferment and distribute alcohol (紅糯米酒) within the Amis community, and their current fight with the local health department on declaring whether or not their alcohol is "safe" for public consumption and distribution.

pece_annotation_1473044193

ciera.williams

“More than 20 years ago, social scientists Harry Otway and Brian Wayne cautioned that accident prevention (safer designs, better operator training, etc. , but even more so emergency planning, faced significant economic and managerial hurdles.”(p199)

“Nuclear accidents have tended to trigger organizational reform with regard to nuclear emergency response, but not on an international level. In considering this problematic ground, where might we start to develop a global approach to nuclear disaster mitigation?”(p200)

“The specific kinds of highly specialized knowledge involved with operation nuclear reactors however may not be accessible to broad public debate to the same degree as, for example, evacuation policies. But in the interest of sustainable, socially legitimate solutions, arguably decisions about even the technical responses to disasters should not be left to scientists and engineers alone, whether they are based within the nuclear industry, a regulatory bod, or a nongovernmental organization.”(p196)

“For all its undeniable flaws, the nuclear industry worked for several decades- in Japan and elsewhere. That is also the truly frightening realization after Fukushima: this disaster was not ‘waiting to happen’, but occurred in a system that had been functioning reasonable well for quite some time.”(p198)

“…The Way Forward is embedded in a technocratic rationality that seeks an effective ‘technical fix’ for reducing the risk of a nuclear disaster to manageable proportions. That misses the less tangible social expertise and improvisational skills inevitable involved in any successful disaster response.” (p206)

pece_annotation_1473633657

ciera.williams
Annotation of

The American Red Cross uses the gold-standard products for most of its research and service. For disaster response, the ARC utilizes the good-will of its volunteers to address needs such as shelter, food, and health services. On the local level, chapters of the ARC have disaster action teams that respond to smaller emergencies and provide transition services to the victims of such emergencies. They also have a larger wokforce of volunteers to pull from and use for support services. 

pece_annotation_1474236920

ciera.williams

The authors are Stephen Collier, PhD and Andrew Lakoff, PhD. Dr, Collier is an associate professor of international affairs at UC Berkeley. He is an anthropologist by training, and focuses his research on a variety of political schools of thought and their applications. Dr, Lakoff is an associate professor of sociology and focuses his research globalization, biomedical innovation and the history of human sciences.

pece_annotation_1475352128

ciera.williams
Annotation of

The stakeholders in the film would be the doctors, the local health ministry, and the patients themselves. The doctors were the most focused on, and they were put into a lot of situations in which they were the sole decision makers. However, many times the decisions weren't life or death, but death or comfort. For instance, Davinder was in a situation where a child was inexplicably swelling all over his body. The doctors weren't well equipped for diagnosing his illness, and thus the child was doomed to worsen and die. A nurse informed him that the mother had taken the child and left, to which Davinder remarked that he couldn't blame them. He believed the comfort of the child in somewhere without his care was worth just as much as, if not more than, his care in the hospital. This was quite different than Kiara's opinion that they needed to stay in the hospital. She blamed it on a lack of confidence in medical ability, while he saw it as being human.

Following the time on the mission, the doctors all had to decide what was next. Dr. Brasher left MSF to practice medicine in Paris, while Dr. Gill went to Australia to become a pediatrician, with no plans of returning to MSF. Dr. Lapora was promoted to Emergency Coordinator, and established three more missions in other parts of the world. Dr. Krueger still works with MSF and has been on a number of other missions. All of the doctors continued medicine, but their experiences in Liberia dictated their plans on whether to continue this service.  

pece_annotation_1480365451

ciera.williams

Users for I've-Been-Violated just put in name, phone number, and email. It also documents location, sound, and video when you activate the service. 

The other two apps require registration with the system, though if you register for one, you aren't able to just use the same login for the other. The registration just asks for email and password. Not sure if it asks for more later, as the app was really glitchy when I tried.

pece_annotation_1481684273

ciera.williams

The author is making the point that we are too caught up in the numbers and facts of medicine, and we need to go back to the narrative. The details that come with a patient's history and social actions contribute a great deal to outcome and treatment. The author supports this with several examples of cases he has had or heard of and how they changed his view of a treatment.