‘The Government is the One Who Caused Cholera’: State Transformation and the Politics of Public Health During Zimbabwe’s Crisis

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simukai Chigudu
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
State Transformation ◽  
Cholera Outbreak ◽  
Political Conflicts ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
The One ◽  
Political Economic

Zimbabwe’s cholera epidemic of 2008/09 is almost unrivalled, in scale and lethality, in the modern history of the disease. The disease infected nearly 100,000 people, claiming over 4000 lives over a ten-month period. This chapter examines the political and economic origins of the outbreak and analyses some of the meanings, memories, and narratives that the outbreak has left in civic life. It makes three key arguments. First, it contends that the origins, scale, and impact of the cholera outbreak were overdetermined by a multilevel failure of Zimbabwe’s public health system, itself a consequence of the country’s post-2000 political conflicts and economic crisis. Second, by recounting stories of the relentless suffering and dispossession that accompanied the cholera outbreak the chapter reveals how the disease mapped onto and exacerbated the contours of abandonment, abjection, and exclusion within Zimbabwean society. Third, the chapter ultimately argues that cholera emerged from prolonged and multiscalar political-economic processes for which no short-term or easy solutions are available. While the outbreak aroused public anger and outrage at the government for its causal role in the epidemic and the inadequacy of its relief efforts, this anger did not translate into any effective political mobilization or permanent change. Thus, the politics of cholera, in its making and aftermath, show the grim and profound consequences of state transformation for public health and for notions of belonging in the body politic.

PUBLIC HEALTH, NURSING, MEDICAL SOCIAL WORK

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1957 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 651-656
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Short History ◽  
Medical Social Work ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
Health Nursing ◽  
The One ◽  
And Child Health

"IF THE Government can have a department to look out after the Nation's farm crops, why can't it have a bureau to look after the Nation's child crop?" It was 1903 and Miss Lillian Wald, founder of New York's Henry Street Settlement, was writing to Mrs. Florence Kelley of the National Consumer's League. This was the beginning of the 9-year effort, in Congress and throughout the country, which led to the foundation of the Children's Bureau in 1912. Devotion, preseverance and steadfastness of purpose have marked the Bureau's leadership since its establishment, and Dr. Martha May Eliot, recently resigned Chief, has been an outstanding example of the fearless fighter for better care of children. Her resignation, to become Professor of Maternal and Child Health at Harvard University's School of Public Health, put to a close a period of 31 years in the Bureau, years full of striking progress and accomplishments. Martha Eliot's career and the history of the Children's Bureau are closely interwoven; to understand the one it is important to know the other. A happy coincidence is the recent appearance of a short history of the Children's Bureau providing an interesting and factual chronicle, beginning with the first efforts at the turn of the century to establish an agency for children.

Receptions of the Past: Commemoration, Racism, Desire

Somatechnics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 288-303
Author(s):  
Michael Connors Jackman
Keyword(s):  
Critical Point ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
White Privilege ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Race And Racism ◽  
Lesbian And Gay ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of

This article investigates the ways in which the work of The Body Politic (TBP), the first major lesbian and gay newspaper in Canada, comes to be commemorated in queer publics and how it figures in the memories of those who were involved in producing the paper. In revisiting a critical point in the history of TBP from 1985 when controversy erupted over race and racism within the editorial collective, this discussion considers the role of memory in the reproduction of whiteness and in the rupture of standard narratives about the past. As the controversy continues to haunt contemporary queer activism in Canada, the productive work of memory must be considered an essential aspect of how, when and for what reasons the work of TBP comes to be commemorated. By revisiting the events of 1985 and by sifting through interviews with individuals who contributed to the work of TBP, this article complicates the narrative of TBP as a bluntly racist endeavour whilst questioning the white privilege and racially-charged demands that undergird its commemoration. The work of producing and preserving queer history is a vital means of challenging the intentional and strategic erasure of queer existence, but those who engage in such efforts must remain attentive to the unequal terrain of social relations within which remembering forms its objects.

Epidemiological surveillance and performance assessment: the two roles of health indicators during the COVID-19 pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 186-203
Author(s):  
Nathan Genicot
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Performance Assessment ◽  
Health Indicators ◽  
Health Policies ◽  
Epidemiological Surveillance ◽  
Public Health Policies ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The One ◽  
Massive Development

AbstractThe COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to the massive development and use of health indicators. Drawing on the history of international public health and of the management of infectious disease, this paper attempts to show that the normative power acquired by metrics during the pandemic can be understood in light of two rationales: epidemiological surveillance and performance assessment. On the one hand, indicators are established to evaluate and rank countries’ responses to the outbreak; on the other, the evolution of indicators has a direct influence on the content of public health policies. Although quantitative data are an absolute necessity for coping with such disasters, it is critical to bear in mind the inherent partiality and precarity of the information provided by health indicators. Given the growing importance of normative quantitative devices during the pandemic, and assuming that their influence is unlikely to decrease in the future, they call for close scrutiny.

scholarly journals The rise and fall of diseases: reflections on the history of population health in Europe since ca. 1700

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan P. Mackenbach
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Risks ◽  
The Body ◽  
Health Interventions ◽  
Epidemiological Transition ◽  
Public Health Interventions ◽  
Human Interventions ◽  
Ultimate Cause ◽  
History Of ◽  
Limited Usefulness

AbstractThis essay explores the amazing phenomenon that in Europe since ca. 1700 most diseases have shown a pattern of 'rise-and-fall'. It argues that the rise of so many diseases indicates that their ultimate cause is not to be sought within the body, but in the interaction between humans and their environment. In their tireless pursuit of a better life, Europeans have constantly engaged in new activities which exposed them to new health risks, at a pace that evolution could not keep up with. Fortunately, most diseases have also declined again, mainly as a result of human interventions, in the form of public health interventions or improvements in medical care. The virtually continuous succession of diseases starting to fall in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries suggests that the concept of an “epidemiological transition” has limited usefulness.

The Nature of Truth

1952 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-28
Author(s):  
B. De Kretser
Keyword(s):  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Moral Truth ◽  
Religious Systems ◽  
The One

The consideration of this problem is important for at least two reasons. In many countries there are reports of an increasing decline in public morals and of growing dishonesty and corruption in the life of the body politic. This is taking place at a time when the established religious systems are being subjected to the pressure of pseudo-scientific secularism on the one hand and the claims of modern alternative faiths on the other. Clearly the two developments are interconnected. Yet, to judge from the burden of many public utterances of responsible leaders, including the now important and significant ‘Moral Re-armament’ Group, the close dependence of moral truth and the truth about the character of reality is not realised. Most people are content to mutter the usual platitudes—‘Honesty is the best policy’, ‘Do please try to be good and speak the truth’. But the problem of truth is more complicated than our naīve moralists would have us believe.

Colonial time in tension: Decolonizing temporal imaginaries

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 1221-1238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adib ◽  
Paul Emiljanowicz
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
Prison System ◽  
The Body ◽  
Alternative Conceptions ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Colonial Time ◽  
Recent Trends ◽  
Political Economic

This article argues that colonial time is fractured, uneven, and co-constituted by tension. Despite coercive violence and instruments of temporal control, non-internalized alternative conceptions of time can/do exist, hybridize, and transform autonomously. We explore these tensions through an examination of post-revolution Iran's attempt to project colonial time through the prison system, and the persistence of non-internalized temporal alternatives as articulated through prisoner memoirs and narratives. Prisons and imprisonment, by removing bodies from the body politic, functions to colonize time to erase, homogenize, and mediate past, present, and future – thereby reproducing ideational-material governance. Yet prisoner memoirs and narratives reveal this process to be incomplete as the agency of individuals to retain, create, and testify provide indications of non-internalized decolonial temporal imaginaries. In taking into consideration our case study and recent trends in anthropology, we inject into the field of International Relations an understanding of colonial time as tension, which can be applied to political-economic and cultural contexts in which time is actively being colonized.

The Development of the Canon Law Since 1500 A. D.

1940 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 235-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vivan A. Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Canon Law ◽  
The Body ◽  
Moral Sense ◽  
Original Meaning ◽  
Ecclesiastical Authority ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Church ◽  
Straight Rod

The body of law dealing with discipline, polity, and sacramental administration which has grown up in the history of the church is ordinarily styled Canon Law (jus canonicum), because it is a collection of canons. Canon (derived from the Greek kanon) means a rule, in a material and moral sense. Its original meaning was a straight rod. In apostolic times it signified the truth of Christianity as an authoritative standard of life and a statement of doctrine in general. It is, therefore, easy to understand how the word kanon later came to mean the ecclesiastical legislation which governed the conduct of the faithful. The excellent definition given by Archbishop Cicognani. states that “The Canon Law may be denned as ‘the body of laws made by the lawful ecclesiastical authority for the government of the Church’.”

scholarly journals LIBERALISM, LOCAL GOVERNMENT REFORM, AND POLITICAL EDUCATION IN GREAT BRITAIN AND BRITISH INDIA, 1880–1886

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 181-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
BENJAMIN WEINSTEIN
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
Local Government ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Political Education ◽  
Government Reform ◽  
British India ◽  
The Government

AbstractThis article attempts to shed new light on the character of late Victorian Liberalism by investigating its political priorities in British India. It takes as its particular focus the debates which raged between 1881 and 1883 over the Government of India Resolution on Local Self-Government. Along with the Ilbert Bill, the Resolution comprised the centrepiece of the marquis of Ripon's self-consciously Liberal programme for dismantling Lytton's Raj. When analysed in conjunction with contemporaneous Liberal discourse on English local government reform, the debates surrounding the Resolution help to clarify many of the central principles of late Victorian Liberalism. In particular, these debates emphasize the profound importance of local government reform to what one might call the Liberal project. Beyond its utility in effecting retrenchment, efficiency, and ‘sound finance’, local government reform was valued by Liberals as the best and safest means of effecting ‘political education’ among populations, in both Britain and India, with increasingly strong claims to inclusion within the body politic.

From Hard-Copy to Digital Law via “Illustrated Courtrooms”: Visualising the History of Legal English

Pólemos ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Matteo Nicolini
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Hard Copy ◽  
Legal Language ◽  
History Of ◽  
Judicial Proceedings ◽  
Three Stages ◽  
The Law ◽  
Digital Law

Abstract This essay addresses different patterns of the visualisation of the law. It examines how scholars attempt to depict, represent, and perform the law and its founding authority. It also focuses on the pragmatics of legal language: written and spoken standard legal English are pragmatically enriched within contexts where the law is interpreted, uttered, or performed. The linguistic notion of “context” discloses the interrelations between the agendas of law and power and reveals how the law conveys its content to the body politic as its ultimate addressee. It then proposes a renewed concept of legal linguistics. In order to determine the different ideologies underpinning the evolution of English legal language, as well as its prototypical forms of the visualisation of the law, three stages in the history of the English language will be examined: Late Middle English, Early Modern English, and Contemporary English. Each of these stages will be likened to the different parts of judicial proceedings. This will allow us to examine how English legal language has been used in a specific context, the trial, where the law is both uttered and performed.

Trolls Just Want To Have Fun

2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 21-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shefali Virkar
Keyword(s):  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Public Confidence ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
The Government

Over the last two decades, public confidence and trust in Government has declined visibly in several Western liberal democracies owing to a distinct lack of opportunities for citizen participation in political processes; and has instead given way instead to disillusionment with current political institutions, actors, and practices. The rise of the Internet as a global communications medium and the advent of digital platforms has opened up huge opportunities and raised new challenges for public institutions and agencies, with digital technology creating new forms of community; empowering citizens and reforming existing power structures in a way that has rendered obsolete or inappropriate many of the tools and processes of traditional democratic politics. Through an analysis of the No. 10 Downing Street ePetitions Initiative based in the United Kingdom, this article seeks to engage with issues related to the innovative use of network technology by Government to involve citizens in policy processes within existing democratic frameworks in order to improve administration, to reform democratic processes, and to renew citizen trust in institutions of governance. In particular, the work seeks to examine whether the application of the new Information and Communication Technologies to participatory democracy in the Government 2.0 era would eventually lead to radical transformations in government functioning, policymaking, and the body politic, or merely to modest, unspectacular political reform and to the emergence of technology-based, obsessive-compulsive pathologies and Internet-based trolling behaviours amongst individuals in society.

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