Epidemics and Othering

Epidemics and Othering PDF Author: Heike Steinhoff
Publisher: transcript Verlag
ISBN: 3839465052
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the lives of many people around the globe and has brought to the fore discussions about the ways in which relations of power have shaped human biology and the health of populations. Focusing on these biopolitics, this collection brings together a number of historical and cultural perspectives on processes of othering in the long transnational human history of epidemics and pandemics. Contributors explore the intertwinement of biopolitics and othering with regard to specific bodies, people, and places, in relation to COVID-19 and beyond, as they discuss othering dynamics in the context of post/colonialism and with reference to a number of different cultural, political, medical and media discourses.

Epidemics and Othering

Epidemics and Othering PDF Author: Heike Steinhoff
Publisher: transcript Verlag
ISBN: 3839465052
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 247

Get Book

Book Description
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the lives of many people around the globe and has brought to the fore discussions about the ways in which relations of power have shaped human biology and the health of populations. Focusing on these biopolitics, this collection brings together a number of historical and cultural perspectives on processes of othering in the long transnational human history of epidemics and pandemics. Contributors explore the intertwinement of biopolitics and othering with regard to specific bodies, people, and places, in relation to COVID-19 and beyond, as they discuss othering dynamics in the context of post/colonialism and with reference to a number of different cultural, political, medical and media discourses.

Epidemics

Epidemics PDF Author: Sarah Dry
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136532218
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
Recent disease events such as SARS, H1N1 and avian influenza, and haemorrhagic fevers have focussed policy and public concern as never before on epidemics and so-called 'emerging infectious diseases'. Understanding and responding to these often unpredictable events have become major challenges for local, national and international bodies. All too often, responses can become restricted by implicit assumptions about who or what is to blame that may not capture the dynamics and uncertainties at play in the multi-scale interactions of people, animals and microbes. As a result, policies intended to forestall epidemics may fail, and may even further threaten health, livelihoods and human rights. The book takes a unique approach by focusing on how different policy-makers, scientists, and local populations construct alternative narratives-accounts of the causes and appropriate responses to outbreaks- about epidemics at the global, national and local level. The contrast between emergency-oriented, top-down responses to what are perceived as potentially global outbreaks and longer-term approaches to diseases, such as AIDS, which may now be considered endemic, is highlighted. Case studies-on avian influenza, SARS, obesity, H1N1 influenza, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and haemorrhagic fevers-cover a broad historical, geographical and biological range. As this book explores, it is often the most vulnerable members of a population-the poor, the social excluded and the already ill-who are likely to suffer most from epidemic diseases. At the same time, they may be less likely to benefit from responses that may be designed from a global perspective that neglects social, ecological and political conditions on the ground. This book aims to bring the focus back to these marginal populations to reveal the often unintended consequences of current policy responses to epidemics. Important implications emerge - for how epidemics are thought about and represented; for how surveillance and response is designed; and for whose knowledge and perspectives should be included. Published in association with the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)

Epidemics

Epidemics PDF Author: Samuel Kline Cohn
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198819668
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 656

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Book Description
In this study, Samuel K. Cohn, Jr. investigates hundreds of descriptions of epidemics reaching back before the fifth-century-BCE Plague of Athens to the 2014 Ebola outbreak to challenge the dominant hypothesis that epidemics invariably provoke hatred, blaming of the 'other', and victimizing bearers of epidemic diseases.--

Epidemic Illusions

Epidemic Illusions PDF Author: Eugene T Richardson
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262045605
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
A physician-anthropologist explores how public health practices--from epidemiological modeling to outbreak containment--help perpetuate global inequities. In Epidemic Illusions, Eugene Richardson, a physician and an anthropologist, contends that public health practices--from epidemiological modeling and outbreak containment to Big Data and causal inference--play an essential role in perpetuating a range of global inequities. Drawing on postcolonial theory, medical anthropology, and critical science studies, Richardson demonstrates the ways in which the flagship discipline of epidemiology has been shaped by the colonial, racist, and patriarchal system that had its inception in 1492. Deploying a range of rhetorical tools and drawing on his clinical work in a variety of epidemics, including Ebola in West Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo, leishmania in the Sudan, HIV/TB in southern Africa, diphtheria in Bangladesh, and SARS-CoV-2 in the United States, Richardson concludes that the biggest epidemic we currently face is an epidemic of illusions—one that is propagated by the coloniality of knowledge production.

Geronticide

Geronticide PDF Author: Mike Brogden
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
ISBN: 1846422760
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
Overall, the book provides a valuable insight into attitudes to and perceptions of older people. It is especially helpful to have a rigorously researched sociological text that covers the interplay between societies and the killing older members who have contributed, developed and supported those societies. Its usefulness to the literature on abuse is clear... I would recommend this book to readers.' - Journal of Elder Abuse & Neglect 'This book goes beyond the abuse of the elderly, and "is about, bluntly, the killing of old people" (p.11). For sociologists, criminologists, social workers and carers of the elderly, this book is well worth reading as it is thought provoking and therefore refreshing.' - International Journal of the Sociology of Law 'This is a thought-provoking book. It uses a variety of strategies to forward its central thesis: older people have always been regarded as a residual group by other members of society presumed to be more productive... This book is a good read and has an important point to make.' - European Journal of Social Work 'This book addresses elderly homicide and euthanasia, and puts it in a historial and social context. Mike Brogden provides a useful and appropriate critique on the concept of geronticide. The book does assist with the urgency of the need for a major cultural shift in the way we perceive and treat the elderly.' - International Journal of the Sociology of Law 'This dramatically titled book is a powerful one... Geronticide is a modern term but the concept is ages old. Brogden takes us via history, literature, science, religion, demography, economics, sociology, anthropology, social history and the law... This is not a book for holiday packing but a potent one to remind us of the pervasive and pernicious influence of ageism; society's and our own.' -International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry 'Mike Brogden's book on geronticide is both thought-provoking and an eye-opener. His work is a comprehensive study into one of the greatest and most difficult challenges facing our modern world. How will our society cope with the rapidly growing population of the oldest old, and the care for the increasing numbers of old, seriously ill and dying people. The book deals with the sociological, anthropological and literary aspects, revealing the fact that killing older people, on either a voluntary or involuntary basis, has been a theme throughout history... My sincere wish is that this very powerful and useful book should reach all the politicians, administrators and others involved in planning the future with regards to older people, all over the world, in the hope that it would enable us to understand the serious consequences our decisions may have for a very valuable but vulnerable group of still equally worthy members of our society.' - British Journal of Social Work 'We live in a different world after Harold Shipman. The trial and the resulting public anxiety about trust in professionals has meant that the deliberate and systematic killing of older people is no longer seen as remote or part of other societies. Mike Brogden's overview of the subject starts and finishes with Shipman, but his main discussion explores how geronticide has been and continues to be a feature of "care" for the aged... This book, then, is compelling on its' level of sweeping themes and illuminating in its' often harrowing reports of individual abuse and death. It may also encourage further reading on this subject. At a time when the National Service Framework has made strong calls for anti-ageist values, this book provides evidence of the excess of ageism.' - Community Care The increasing elderly population poses many economic and ethical questions for modern society. One of the most topical and controversial of these is the debate about euthanasia. Drawing on a variety of historical, contemporary, anthropological and literary sources, this book considers the present day debates about the sanctity of elderly lives and the question of euthanasia. The book shows that killing the elderly, voluntarily or involuntarily, has been a feature of many societies, from the primitive to the present day. Elderly homicide and euthanasia today are most commonly concealed in the home or the care institution, a situation which is attracting increasing professional concern. Geronticide: Killing the Elderly seeks to place the current debate in a wider historical and social context, while providing a comprehensive overview of current academic and professional concerns. This thorough, authoritative book will be a useful, thought-provoking read for anyone involved in working with the elderly.

The COVID-19 Crisis

The COVID-19 Crisis PDF Author: Deborah Lupton
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000375919
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
Since its emergence in early 2020, the COVID-19 crisis has affected every part of the world. Well beyond its health effects, the pandemic has wrought major changes in people’s everyday lives as they confront restrictions imposed by physical distancing and consequences such as loss of work, working or learning from home and reduced contact with family and friends. This edited collection covers a diverse range of experiences, practices and representations across international contexts and cultures (UK, Europe, North America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand). Together, these contributions offer a rich account of COVID society. They provide snapshots of what life was like for people in a variety of situations and locations living through the first months of the novel coronavirus crisis, including discussion not only of health-related experiences but also the impact on family, work, social life and leisure activities. The socio-material dimensions of quotidian practices are highlighted: death rituals, dating apps, online musical performances, fitness and exercise practices, the role of windows, healthcare work, parenting children learning at home, moving in public space as a blind person and many more diverse topics are explored. In doing so, the authors surface the feelings of strangeness and challenges to norms of practice that were part of many people’s experiences, highlighting the profound affective responses that accompanied the disruption to usual cultural forms of sociality and ritual in the wake of the COVID outbreak and restrictions on movement. The authors show how social relationships and social institutions were suspended, re-invented or transformed while social differences were brought to the fore. At the macro level, the book includes localised and comparative analyses of political, health system and policy responses to the pandemic, and highlights the differences in representations and experiences of very different social groups, including people with disabilities, LGBTQI people, Dutch Muslim parents, healthcare workers in France and Australia, young adults living in northern Italy, performing artists and their audiences, exercisers in Australia and New Zealand, the Latin cultures of Spain and Italy, Asian-Americans and older people in Australia. This volume will appeal to undergraduates and postgraduates in sociology, cultural and media studies, medical humanities, anthropology, political science and cultural geography.

Epidemic Politics in Contemporary Vietnam

Epidemic Politics in Contemporary Vietnam PDF Author: Martha Lincoln
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0755636198
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Through a tumultuous 20th-century period of revolution and foreign wars, Vietnam's public health system was praised by international observers as a “bright light in an epidemiologically dark world,” standing out for its accomplishments in infectious disease control. Since the country's transition to a “market economy with socialist orientation” in the mid-1980s, however, some of these achievements have been reversed as the “renovation” of national systems for welfare and health leaves gaps in the social safety net. A series of cholera outbreaks that spread through Northern Vietnam in 2007-2010 revealed the paradoxes, contradictions, and challenges that Vietnam faces in its post-transition period. This book presents an anthropological analysis of the political, economic, and infrastructural inputs to these epidemics and suggests how the most commonly repeated accounts of disease spread misdirected public attention and suppressed awareness of risk factors in Vietnam's capital. Drawing a parallel to the experience of novel coronavirus in Asia and beyond, this book reflects on how political priorities, economic forces, and cultural struggles influence the experience and the epidemiology of infectious disease.

Quarantine!

Quarantine! PDF Author: Howard Markel
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421443678
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
This riveting story of the typhus and cholera epidemics that swept through New York City in 1892 has been updated with a new preface that tackles the COVID-19 pandemic. Winner, 2003 Arthur J. Viseltear Prize for Outstanding Book in the History of Public Health, American Public Health Association In Quarantine! Howard Markel traces the course of the typhus and cholera epidemics that swept through New York City in 1892. The story is told from the point of view of those involved—the public health doctors who diagnosed and treated the victims, the newspaper reporters who covered the stories, the government officials who established and enforced policy, and, most importantly, the immigrants themselves. Drawing on rarely cited stories from the Yiddish American press, immigrant diaries and letters, and official accounts, Markel follows the immigrants on their journey from a squalid and precarious existence in Russia's Pale of Settlement, to their passage in steerage, to New York's Lower East Side, to the city's quarantine islands. This updated edition features a new preface from the author that reflects on the themes of the book in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. At a time of renewed anti-immigrant sentiment and newly emerging infectious diseases, Quarantine! provides a historical context for considering some of the significant problems that face American society today.

Feeding the Other

Feeding the Other PDF Author: Rebecca T. De Souza
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262352796
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
How food pantries stigmatize their clients through a discourse that emphasizes hard work, self help, and economic productivity rather than food justice and equity. The United States has one of the highest rates of hunger and food insecurity in the industrialized world, with poor households, single parents, and communities of color disproportionately affected. Food pantries—run by charitable and faith-based organizations—rather than legal entitlements have become a cornerstone of the government's efforts to end hunger. In Feeding the Other, Rebecca de Souza argues that food pantries stigmatize their clients through a discourse that emphasizes hard work, self help, and economic productivity rather than food justice and equity. De Souza describes this “framing, blaming, and shaming” as “neoliberal stigma” that recasts the structural issue of hunger as a problem for the individual hungry person. De Souza shows how neoliberal stigma plays out in practice through a comparative case analysis of two food pantries in Duluth, Minnesota. Doing so, she documents the seldom-acknowledged voices, experiences, and realities of people living with hunger. She describes the failure of public institutions to protect citizens from poverty and hunger; the white privilege of pantry volunteers caught between neoliberal narratives and social justice concerns; the evangelical conviction that food assistance should be “a hand up, not a handout”; the culture of suspicion in food pantry spaces; and the constraints on food choice. It is only by rejecting the neoliberal narrative and giving voice to the hungry rather than the privileged, de Souza argues, that food pantries can become agents of food justice.

Epidemics

Epidemics PDF Author: Sarah Dry
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136532226
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Recent disease events such as SARS, H1N1 and avian influenza, and haemorrhagic fevers have focussed policy and public concern as never before on epidemics and so-called 'emerging infectious diseases'. Understanding and responding to these often unpredictable events have become major challenges for local, national and international bodies. All too often, responses can become restricted by implicit assumptions about who or what is to blame that may not capture the dynamics and uncertainties at play in the multi-scale interactions of people, animals and microbes. As a result, policies intended to forestall epidemics may fail, and may even further threaten health, livelihoods and human rights. The book takes a unique approach by focusing on how different policy-makers, scientists, and local populations construct alternative narratives-accounts of the causes and appropriate responses to outbreaks- about epidemics at the global, national and local level. The contrast between emergency-oriented, top-down responses to what are perceived as potentially global outbreaks and longer-term approaches to diseases, such as AIDS, which may now be considered endemic, is highlighted. Case studies-on avian influenza, SARS, obesity, H1N1 influenza, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and haemorrhagic fevers-cover a broad historical, geographical and biological range. As this book explores, it is often the most vulnerable members of a population-the poor, the social excluded and the already ill-who are likely to suffer most from epidemic diseases. At the same time, they may be less likely to benefit from responses that may be designed from a global perspective that neglects social, ecological and political conditions on the ground. This book aims to bring the focus back to these marginal populations to reveal the often unintended consequences of current policy responses to epidemics. Important implications emerge - for how epidemics are thought about and represented; for how surveillance and response is designed; and for whose knowledge and perspectives should be included. Published in association with the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)