scholarly journals The Virus of Surveillance: How the covid-19 Pandemic Is Fuelling Technologies of Control

Author(s):  
Félix Tréguer

Abstract While it is too early to provide a definitive analysis of the impact that the covid-19 health crisis will have on digital state surveillance, this article aims to provide a first assessment. It starts by situating states’ response to the crisis in the longer history of epidemics and their connections to what philosopher Michel Foucault called “regimes of power.” By surveying various surveillance discourses and practices in countries like France, Italy, the United Kingdom, the United States or Israel in the Spring of 2020, the article identifies three key trends magnified by the crisis, namely, the crystallisation of new public-private assemblages in the management of health data, a shift towards health-based justification regimes for legitimising controversial surveillance and urban policing technologies, as well as mounting human rights threats and oversight failures in a context marked by a “state of health emergency”.

Author(s):  
Michael Kinch

This chapter relates a brief history of the modern research university. Although centers of academic learning have long existed, the role of these institutions in discovering new ideas was the brainchild of a Prussian aristocrat and the idea quickly gained traction in the United States under Abraham Lincoln and a shrewd Quaker grocer by the name of Johns Hopkins. The latter's eponymous university played a key role in understanding the most devastating public health crisis of the 20th century, Spanish flu. The origins of the pandemic and its impact, which ranged from hastening the end of the Great War through enhancing scientific understanding of disease, are discussed. The connections between the Spanish flu and the discovery of the polio vaccine are outlined as is the impact of NIH during the latter half of the century. The chapter concludes by conveying the discoveries, first of cholesterol itself and later of a means to lower cholesterol with a revolutionary new class of drugs known as statins. The development of these new medicines had implications not just for health of patients but for the companies developing these drugs as well.


2002 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Ceccoli

Significant differences in the availability of new medicines in the United States and the United Kingdom became apparent in the 1970s. This article examines the history of drug regulation in the two countries and argues that the divergence was the result of distinctive regulatory approaches that emerged simultaneously throughout the twentieth century. The British approach was based largely on informal, nonstatutory controls, while the American approach relied heavily on centralized regulatory controls. The article argues that the nature of business-government relations has played a significant role in the divergence. The impact of these divergent approaches is apparent in the contemporary regulatory framework, especially with respect to determining the effectiveness of new drugs.


2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 449-465
Author(s):  
Stanley N. Katz ◽  
Leah Reisman

AbstractThis article discusses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement on the arts and cultural sector in the United States, placing the 2020 crises in the context of the United States’s historically decentralized approach to supporting the arts and culture. After providing an overview of the United States’s private, locally focused history of arts funding, we use this historical lens to analyze the combined effects of the pandemic and Black Lives Matter movement on a single metropolitan area – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. We trace a timeline of key events in the national and local pandemic response and the reaction of the arts community to the Black Lives Matter movement, arguing that the nature of these intersecting responses, and their fallout for the arts and cultural sector, stem directly from weaknesses in the United States’s historical approach to administering the arts. We suggest that, in the context of widespread organizational vulnerability caused by the pandemic, the United States’s decentralized approach to funding culture also undermines cultural organizations’ abilities to respond to issues of public relevance and demonstrate their civic value, threatening these organizations’ legitimacy.


Author(s):  
Yi-Tui Chen

Although vaccination is carried out worldwide, the vaccination rate varies greatly. As of 24 May 2021, in some countries, the proportion of the population fully vaccinated against COVID-19 has exceeded 50%, but in many countries, this proportion is still very low, less than 1%. This article aims to explore the impact of vaccination on the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the herd immunity of almost all countries in the world has not been reached, several countries were selected as sample cases by employing the following criteria: more than 60 vaccine doses per 100 people and a population of more than one million people. In the end, a total of eight countries/regions were selected, including Israel, the UAE, Chile, the United Kingdom, the United States, Hungary, and Qatar. The results find that vaccination has a major impact on reducing infection rates in all countries. However, the infection rate after vaccination showed two trends. One is an inverted U-shaped trend, and the other is an L-shaped trend. For those countries with an inverted U-shaped trend, the infection rate begins to decline when the vaccination rate reaches 1.46–50.91 doses per 100 people.


Author(s):  
Funda Hatice Sezgin ◽  
Yilmaz Bayar ◽  
Laura Herta ◽  
Marius Dan Gavriletea

This study explores the impact of environmental policies and human development on the CO2 emissions for the period of 1995–2015 in the Group of Seven and BRICS economies in the long run through panel cointegration and causality tests. The causality analysis revealed a bilateral causality between environmental stringency policies and CO2 emissions for Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America, and a unilateral causality from CO2 emissions to the environmental stringency policies for Canada, China, and France. On the other hand, the analysis showed a bilateral causality between human development and CO2 emissions for Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America, and unilateral causality from CO2 emissions to human development in Brazil, Canada, China, and France. Furthermore, the cointegration analysis indicated that both environmental stringency policies and human development had a decreasing impact on the CO2 emissions.


BMC Nutrition ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Milagro Escobar ◽  
Andrea DeCastro Mendez ◽  
Maria Romero Encinas ◽  
Sofia Villagomez ◽  
Janet M. Wojcicki

Abstract Background Food insecurity impacts nearly one-in-four Latinx households in the United States and has been exacerbated by the novel coronavirus or COVID-19 pandemic. Methods We examined the impact of COVID-19 on household and child food security in three preexisting, longitudinal, Latinx urban cohorts in the San Francisco Bay Area (N = 375 households, 1875 individuals). Households were initially recruited during pregnancy and postpartum at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital (ZSFG) and UCSF Benioff prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. For this COVID-19 sub-study, participants responded to a 15-min telephonic interview. Participants answered 18 questions from the US Food Security Food Module (US HFSSM) and questions on types of food consumption, housing and employment status, and history of COVID-19 infection as per community or hospital-based testing. Food security and insecurity levels were compared with prior year metrics. Results We found low levels of household food security in Latinx families (by cohort: 29.2%; 34.2%; 60.0%) and child food security (56.9%, 54.1%, 78.0%) with differences between cohorts explained by self-reported levels of education and employment status. Food security levels were much lower than those reported previously in two cohorts where data had been recorded from prior years. Reported history of COVID-19 infection in households was 4.8% (95% Confidence Interval (CI); 1.5–14.3%); 7.2% (95%CI, 3.6–13.9%) and 3.5% (95%CI, 1.7–7.2%) by cohort and was associated with food insecurity in the two larger cohorts (p = 0.03; p = 0.01 respectively). Conclusions Latinx families in the Bay Area with children are experiencing a sharp rise in food insecurity levels during the COVID-19 epidemic. Food insecurity, similar to other indices of poverty, is associated with increased risk for COVID-19 infection. Comprehensive interventions are needed to address food insecurity in Latinx populations and further studies are needed to better assess independent associations between household food insecurity, poor nutritional health and risk of COVID-19 infection.


Societies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 52
Author(s):  
Margaret Hodgins ◽  
Patricia Mannix McNamara

New managerialism and the pervasive neoliberalisation of universities is by now a well-established phenomenon. Commentaries explore the political and economic drivers and effects of neoliberal ideology, and critique the impact on higher education and academic work. The impact on the health and well-being of academic staff has had less attention, and it is to that we turn in this paper. Much academic interest in neoliberalism stems from the UK, Australia and the United States. We draw particularly on studies of public Irish universities, where neoliberalism, now well entrenched, but something of a late-comer to the new public management party, is making its presence felt. This conceptual paper explores the concept of neoliberalism in higher education, arguing that the policies and practices of new public management as exercised in universities are a form of bullying; what we term institutional bullying. The authors are researchers of workplace culture, workplace bullying and incivility. Irish universities are increasingly challenged in delivering the International Labour Organisation (ILO) principles of decent work, i.e., dignity, equity, fair income and safe working conditions. They have become exposed in terms of gender imbalance in senior positions, precariat workforce, excessive workload and diminishing levels of control. Irish universities are suffering in terms of both the health and well-being of staff and organisational vibrancy. The authors conclude by cautioning against potential neoliberal intensification as universities grapple with the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper reviews neoliberalism in higher education and concludes with insight as to how the current pandemic could act as a necessary catalyst to stem the tide and ‘call out’ bullying at the institutional level.


Author(s):  
Terry L. Birdwhistell ◽  
Deirdre A. Scaggs

Since women first entered the University of Kentucky (UK) in 1880 they have sought, demanded, and struggled for equality within the university. The period between 1880 and 1945 at UK witnessed women’s suffrage, two world wars, and an economic depression. It was during this time that women at UK worked to take their rightful place in the university’s life prior to the modern women’s movement of the 1960s and beyond. The history of women at UK is not about women triumphant, and it remains an untidy story. After pushing for admission into a male-centric campus environment, women created women’s spaces, women’s organizations, and a women’s culture often patterned on those of men. At times, it seemed that a goal was to create a woman’s college within the larger university. However, coeducation meant that women, by necessity, competed with men academically while still navigating the evolving social norms of relationships between the sexes. Both of those paths created opportunities, challenges, and problems for women students and faculty. By taking a more women-centric view of the campus, this study shows more clearly the impact that women had over time on the culture and environment. It also allows a comparison, and perhaps a contrast, of the experiences of UK women with other public universities across the United States.


Author(s):  
Yolonda Youngs

This study traces the development and evolution of Snake River use and management through an in-depth exploration of historic commercial scenic river guiding and concessions on the upper Snake River in Grand Teton National Park (GRTE) from 1950 to the present day. The research is based on a combination of methods including archival research, oral history analysis, historical landscape analysis, and fieldwork. I suggest that a distinct cultural community of river runners and outdoor recreationalists developed in Grand Teton National Park after World War II. In GRTE, a combination of physical, cultural, and technical forces shaped this community’s evolution including the specific geomorphology and dynamic channel patterns of the upper Snake River, the individuals and groups that worked on this river, and changes in boat and gear technology over time. The following paper presents the early results from the first year of this project in 2016 including the work of a graduate student and myself. This study offers connections between the upper Snake River and Grand Teton National Park to broader national trends in the evolution of outdoor recreation and concessions in national parks, the impact of World War II on technological developments for boating, and the cultural history of adventure outdoor recreation and tourism in the United States.   Featured photo by Elton Menefee on Unsplash. https://unsplash.com/photos/AHgCFeg-gXg


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karine Bastos Leal ◽  
Luís Eduardo de Souza Robaina ◽  
André de Souza De Lima

Abstract An increase in the global mean sea is predicted during the 21st century as a consequence of global average temperature projections. In addition, changes in the strength of atmospheric cyclonic storms may alter the development of storm surges, exacerbating the risks to coastal communities. Based on the fact that the interest and range of papers are growing on this topic, this study aims to present the global scientific production status of studies that have correlated climate change and the impact of storm surges on the coastal zone leading to erosion and flooding (inundation) via a bibliometric analysis. We analyzed 429 papers published in journals between 1991 and February 2021 from the Scopus database. Through the VOSviewer and Bibliometrix R package, we describe the most relevant countries, affiliations, journals, authors, and keywords. Our results demonstrate that there has been an exponential growth in the research topic, and that authors from the United States and the United Kingdom are the most prolific. Among the 1454 authors found, 10 researchers published at least 5 papers on the topic and obtained at least 453 citations in the period. The most represented journals were the Journal of Coastal Research, Climatic Change, and Natural Hazards. We also found, and discuss, the lack of standardization in the choice of keywords, of which climate change, storm surge, and sea level rise are the most frequent. Finally, we have written a guide to facilitate the authors' bibliographic review.


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