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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.

AK COVID-Development Studies Intersections

Aalok Khandekar

I am currently in the process of transitioning my M.A. level course on Science, Technology, and Development with 11 students to virtual instruction. One of my interests in engaging with COVID-19 is to examine how it (should) informs development ideologies and practices. How should students of development studies retool -- conceptually, methodologically, practically -- in wake of the pandemic?

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seanw146

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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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The purpose of the article is to underscore the difficulties and importance of post-disaster research investigation into why exactly the structural collapse of the towers happened. Dr. Knowles does this by looking into the cause, investigation, and aftermath of several historical building catastrophes in the US.   These cases have reveal how politics, public, and private entities contributed to the disasters and what tends to happen in the aftermath. In the case of the World Trade Center, Dr. Knowles identifies the main reasons for the structures failing and how other sky scrapers are susceptible to the same attack. 

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The main argument of the article is “Chronic disaster syndrome” stems from three problems: first the long-term effects of personal trauma, second the disruption of the smooth functioning of their way of life, and third the permanent displacement of depressed populations from the social landscape.