The End Doesn’t Justify The Means

As our technologies, societies, and ways of life continue to develop, the efforts of humans to position ourselves as further disconnected from the natural world only increase. However, the connection of humans to the natural world is inescapable regardless of our artificial construction of life in a separate sphere. The actions we take to maintain these separate spheres brought on by our increasing inability to observe the inherent interconnectedness of nature and humans has severe subsequent implications for both parties. In aiming to alter the course of the natural world for our own selfish reasons, we are only hurting ourselves and other other life forms on Earth. 

Ultimately, there is no sustainable way to adjust the natural course of the environment. As Rachel Carson explains in her 1962 book, Silent Spring, human beings are an integral part of nature, rather than separate entities from it. Any deliberate shifts in this balance will have resulting consequences through nature’s ability to retaliate (246). As discussed by Carson, so many of the chemicals used as insecticides, pesticides, herbicides, etc., are known carcinogens, however, their dangerous properties are overlooked for economic purposes behind these thriving chemical industries. Instead, we treat the cancers with more chemicals rather than focusing on and eliminating the root cause. As Carson states, “as we pour our millions into research and invest all our hopes in vast programs to find cures for established cases of cancer, we are neglecting the golden opportunity to prevent, even while we seek to cure.” (242) 

If you’re paying enough attention, it should be no secret that, especially in the United States (and across capitalist economies at large) we are no strangers to killing our own people in the name of economic prosperity. It was a relevant point within Rachel Carson’s groundbreaking work nearly 60 years ago and continues to be from an environmental public health standpoint, whether it be from chemical sprays, accumulation of plastic waste, or the oil and gas industry. Additionally, and most recently, we see a reflection of our selfish tendencies by way of COVID-19 through the push to keep cities open while death tolls are consistently rising. If the inevitable demise of our planet isn’t too high a price to pay for economic prosperity you would imagine that human life certainly would be, yet those in power continue to drop the ball, are not held accountable, and continue to disregard life and ecology. 

Sources: 

Carson. 2002 [1962]. Silent Spring, pages 154-300

Human Nature vs. Natural Environment: Will We Ever Learn?

Since the birth of this nation, the overwhelming efforts to control and “improve” the land have been persistent. The entire notion of Manifest Destiny relies on the idea of “settling” the land in the West and was a major factor in the perpetuation of the exploitation of the Earth and its resources to better suit human existence that we have continuously seen throughout history. The ideas of improvement and control of land gives humans the false idea that they are superior over nature rather than an interacting part of it, subsequently leading to its inevitable demise, as these actions will eventually undermine the conditions for the natural environment’s ability to thrive. 

Rachel Carson, in her 1962 book, Silent Spring speaks to this in regards to the spraying of harmful chemical herbicides, pesticides, and insecticides (majorly DDT), stating that “the massive chemical control has had only limited success, and also threatens to worsen the very conditions it is intended to curb” (10). In the name of controlling the natural environment to be better equipped to human activity, or more aesthetically pleasing to socially constructed ideas of curb appeal, the spraying of harmful chemicals have major, and highly fatal or carcinogenic repercussions for the environment and its ecosystems. Interestingly, the harmful, unsustainable, and cyclical nature of these activities are understood, yet often go ignored. While it seems easy to understand that the more effort you put into controlling the land around you, the more fiercely nature will create resistance and backlash, it is often only met with further attempts to control the land rather than adjusting to the root issues of the control. As Carson highlights in discussing roadside brush, “The irony of this all-out chemical assault on roadsides and utility rights-of-way is twofold. It is perpetuating the problem it seeks to correct, for as experience has clearly shown, the blanket application of herbicides does not permanently control roadside “brush” and the spraying has to be repeated year after year” (74). This contradiction brings to mind the modern day capitalist economy and its propensity for ecological disaster. While we know this has been proven to be true, we continue to exploit the land, and therefore the land is less able to to sustain the resources we’ve come to manipulate it for. Our environment presents limits to growth or control in the way humans have constructed it, yet our persistence is astonishing. “As man proceeds towards his announced goal of the conquest of nature, he has written a depressing record of destruction, directed not only against the earth he inhabits but against the life that shares it with him” (85).

Sources: 

Carson. 2002 [1962]. Silent Spring, p1-154

Complexities of Loss

No matter the context, loss tends to carry an overwhelming and often persistent poignancy. Oftentimes, loss is associated with the physical realm rather than conceptual happenings. However, in disaster settings, these various types of losses coexist and compound. Katherine E. Browne’s Standing in the Need: Culture, Comfort, and Coming Home after Katrina explores the complexities of loss in its various forms and unpacks how, in the context of disaster, the concept of loss becomes increasingly complicated, taking on a number of unexpected forms. 

The “The Peachy Gang”, a large, Black, interdependent family in the St. Bernard Parish of New Orleans experienced a multitude of losses in the months and years following Hurricane Katrina. The material loss of homes, parks, churches, and other physical establishments brought on compounding layers of further resulting losses, including the loss of a sense of place, community, gathering, and culture. The inability to gather under similar circumstances as they did pre-Katrina, in large family settings with staple traditional homemade Creole meals, or attending routine lively church services hindered a crucial aspect of their family’s habitus, as put by Browne (150). However, the feelings of loss were even further exacerbated in the ongoing clash between “recovery culture” and the “wounded culture”, especially in this circumstance, where bureaucracies had a consequential lack of understanding of local knowledge, systems, and practices.

Browne explains how as these struggles with FEMA, Road Home, and other organizations endured, loss became increasingly intertwined with not only material loss but with loss of control (191). She highlights a number of circumstances that contributed to this feeling of loss of control that ultimately perpetuated the difficult process of recovery, with the overwhelming presence of rebuilding and overtaking from outsiders being a large contributing factor. According to Browne, instances of disaster opportunism, like that of the rebuild of Violet Park No. 2 and the blatant “whitewashing history for tourist consumption” in aims to reframe the parish completely disregarded local tradition, the historical significance of the Black community, and the backbone in which they served and maintain (170-173). This clash not only serves as discriminatory, but propelled feelings of otherness and loss of control within the family’s own community. This loss of control with the intersection of continued grieving of physical places as well as loved ones, like Katie, seems to combine to create a perpetual and rightful frustration as well as a collective shift in the dynamic of the Johnson-Fernandez family system (189). Browne’s account of this particular family’s experience provides vast insights into the complicated navigation of life post-disaster and opened my eyes to new perspectives of loss and its implications for recovery.

Sources:

 Browne, K. E. (2016). Standing in the need: Culture, comfort, and coming home after Katrina. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Solace in Sense of Place

Disaster impacts and their implications for livelihoods, comfort, sense of place, and emotional and physical well-being are deeply complex and unique as they relate to individual communities. These impacts within the United States are especially disproportionately experienced within BIPOC communities due to historical and ongoing discriminatory systems and made worse through a number of inaccessible systemic barriers. Katherine E. Browne accounts the devastation of Katrina, the resilience of human-kind, and the indispensable nature of comfort in Standing in the Need: Culture, Comfort, and Coming Home after Katrina through the experiences of “The Peachy Gang”, a large, Black, interdependent family in the St. Bernard Parish of New Orleans.

Within this narrative, Browne immediately establishes the importance of comfort and sense of place in and after a disaster setting. Particularly, this family’s emphasis on social gatherings around traditional Creole food provided a significant amount of comfort and stability when displaced in Dallas post Katrina. The disorientation that came along with being uprooted and feeling alienated in an outside community further inflicted further emotional turmoil. As explained by Browne, this meant maintaining these social gatherings around food and cooking, and the very particular ingredients, preparations, and executions around it became increasingly crucial to withstanding the aftermath of Katrina. Any absence of these markers of culture were substantially felt (Browne, 40, 54). 

It is interesting to note the deep rootedness of these culture markers and place attachments, especially as the family begins to come back to St. Bernard’s Parish and feel immediately relieved to be back at their home base, even among the chaos and devastation. As a reader, I was also struck by the initial solace of the Peachy Gang. However, as struggles with FEMA arose, Browne explains how the comfort attached to this sense of place and belonging in the community was quickly impeded, as FEMA trailers caused further disruptions to everyday life, making it feel much less like home (82). Additionally, reading these experiences became a frustrating and disheartening reminder of the incompetence of these supposed relief organizations and their lack of adaptability to various cultures, circumstances, dialects, etc. It is astonishing to me that the tricky navigation of bureaucracy falls on the shoulders of those affected and is seemingly made to be extra confusing. This struck me as a very acute example of structural violence, and while Connie is able to perform the role of resident code-switcher, this should not be necessary. Reconfiguring this needs to become a priority in order to better serve communities like St. Bernard’s Parish and a number of other communities undertaking similar struggles in the face of disaster.

Sources:
Browne, K. E. (2016). Standing in the need: Culture, comfort, and coming home after Katrina. Austin: University of Texas Press.

“Mountain Beyond Mountains”

The second half of Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder continues to follow Dr. Paul Farmer’s journey to provide healthcare to people in impoverished parts of the world with a lack of infrastructure and resources. These places, as Kidder explains, are hard to personalize until they’re in front of you, and within these chapters continue to include parts of Haiti, Peru, Cuba, and Russian prisons where multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) and HIV are rampant. 

Throughout this second half, Kidder continues to highlight the poor distribution of money and medicine throughout the world through a vivid view of the inequities faced by any person without the means to survive much impact at all, especially infectious disease. As Farmer’s Partners in Health (PIH) continues to grow in success, they are able to allocate life saving interventions more broadly. However, it is astonishing that after several multimillion dollar grants, there is still a certain amount of struggle to provide people with proper and/or affordable treatment. The way this wealth is distributed calls attention to the disparities within the global public health sphere and further calls to mind ideas of whether or not healthcare (or simply survival) is a right or a privilege. This is seen in the case of a patient, John, in Zanmi Lasante, where his nasopharyngeal carcinoma treatments easily added up to nearly $100,000, which, thankfully, were eventually able to be provided for free (Kidder, 263). Additionally, the resulting medevac flight to Mass General Hospital in Boston alone was a notable $20,000 expense, and post-flight, it was quickly discovered that John’s symptoms had spread too far to be recoverable (Kidder, 277). While his particular case ended up being non-intervenable as far as treatment, Kidder expands on how many other individuals could be cured if provided with these measures and resources – a concept which is also explained to be Farmer’s never-ending internal struggle throughout the entirety of Mountains Beyond Mountains. 

John’s death further illustrated the exertion and sacrifice made by those willing to fight for him, and, as Kidder highlights, was met with a level of helplessness and defeat by Serena, the attending physician that had been providing this care and taking what could be seen as extreme measures. However, this story in particular served as a personalization of one of the critical themes pointed out by Kidder throughout the book; being that “the idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that’s wrong with the world” (Kidder, 294).

Sources:

Kidder, John Tracy. Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World. Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2003.

Superhuman: Paul Farmer

With any level of interest, involvement, or practice of anthropology and/or global health comes some adjacent level of familiarity with the prodigious Dr. Paul Farmer. Most of us know of him, critique him, or want to be him. Part one of Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder explores the early stages of Dr. Paul Farmer’s career and his journey to treat tuberculosis in poverty ridden Haiti and Peru. 

As Kidder highlights, Farmer is a uniquely driven and ambitious man of action. At just 23, he had a collection of conceivable plans for his future endeavors within the medical field and is portrayed as nearly sub-human in his stamina and wise beyond his years in execution. My nearly 23-year-old mind felt small digesting the fact that this had been his path at my age. Farmer is certainly a trailblazer of sorts, however, through the characterization of his astonishing accomplishments and bold and bright ways of thinking, there were certainly moments I began to feel a disconnect between Farmer and his impact. 

While it seemed very clear that Farmer had nothing but the best intentions with strong desires to implement accessible and effective healthcare to TB patients in Haiti and Peru, there were frequent dustings of accidental ethnocentrism and a disconnect that comes with trying to implement Western medicine into a non-western, underdeveloped setting. Although his introspective side and anthropological background did seem to help battle this, it also seemed he struggled with his frustrations when his measures weren’t effective or fully sustainable, although I am unsure of whether or not the appropriate adjustments in terms of treatment were always made. However, this was a very interesting juxtaposition to his interactions and behavior towards patients, which were without a doubt, adjusted in efforts to understand and appreciate local norms, tribulations, and social practices. Through part one, I found this theme to be a constant, however, it seems as though this began to slowly shift. Kidder illustrates this shift, as it is explained how Farmer’s view of anthropology began to evolve in Cange from a traditional approach to ethnography in anthropology (that aims to observe without changing the situation) to feeling as though he would rather use anthropology as a tool for intervention. This desire to find a balance between observing and acting struck me as especially crucial. As Kidder proceeded, I began to see glimpses of Farmer’s gears turning in what I am hoping will turn out to be efforts to merge his anthropological and medicinal approaches more seamlessly.

Sources:

Kidder, John Tracy. Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World. Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2003. 

COVID-19 and Victim Blaming in the U.S.

The various ways in which the United States has completely dropped the ball in terms of its response to COVID-19 continues to become painfully obvious. As a “global superpower”, many of us have high expectations for the U.S. to successfully and gracefully pull through such a situation. However, our delayed government response, lack of preparedness and reliable/honest information, legacy of colonization, and extreme emphasis on individualism (to name a few) has led to ultimate U.S. failure in dealing with the pandemic appropriately, and continues to do so. 

Throughout the entirety of the pandemic thus far, I have noticed a common thread that has remained a constant theme throughout most reports having to do with COVID-19 within the U.S. The idea of blaming the victim for their ailments, regardless of what brought them to where they are tends to ring strong within discussions of COVID-19, even in efforts to proclaim a “we’re all in this together” mentality. Ed Young touches on this in his Atlantic article, “How the Pandemic Defeated America”. Our value put on individualism in this time has effectively hindered our ability to look out for each other. While it is, no doubt, crucial for people to be putting in efforts to self-isolate, wear masks, and social distance to avoid exposure and spreading of COVID-19, it is also crucial to examine the systems in place that are making this particularly impossible in a nation that values economy over life. For example, with universities back in session, there are endless ongoing discussions about how our reckless young adult behavior is going to result in an inevitable outbreak, causing eventual shutdowns again. While, of course, this rings true in many ways, I think it is ridiculous to put all of the blame on college students when those in positions of power made the decision to bring us back, assured us of our safety, charged us full tuition, and encouraged the signing of leases, while surely fully knowing this to be unsustainable.

Additionally, and more seriously, Dr. Celine Grounder’s podcast episodes of Epidemic unpacks this same idea of victim blaming through the evaluation of the pandemics disproportionately tragic effects on Black, Indigenous, and POC communities, and the ongoing cascading events that contribute to this disproportionate impact. The Navajo Nation has been hit particularly hard, meanwhile, outsiders blame the reservations themselves for their high rates of infection without examining their personal legacies that have contributed to this (e.g. colonization, Western water projects, lack of property taxes, hundreds of years of European disease, etc.).

Continuing to place the blame on those most affected by the pandemic has also resulted in an increase of mutual aid efforts as discussed by Robert Soden in his article, Crisis Informatics and Mutual Aid during the Coronavirus Pandemic: A Research Agenda. While the shift from individualism to a more collectivist mindframe is positive, where it has stemmed from is disappointing. Lack of accountability and support by the government has brought people to take on this collective spirit with those most impacted in mind (when they may be in need themselves). Interestingly, I can see how these efforts have likely been informed in part by social media, as most people have stopped relying on news sources for any kind of useful information. Rather, people are listening to the personal stories of those impacted on platforms like Twitter and Tiktok, which have the power to reach millions of people and strike empathy in viewers – ultimately feeling much more reliable and less of an abstraction than case reports, news channel propaganda, and White House contradictions. In a time where our leaders have mostly failed us, these efforts have been the most effective measure for reaching the most vulnerable, understanding the needs of those around us, and conceptualizing the situation at hand.

Sources: 

Ed Yong. “How the Pandemic Defeated America” September 2020, The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/toc/2020/09/

Stephanie Russo Carroll, Desir Rodriguez-Lonebear, Randall Akee, Annita Lucchesi, andJennifer Rai Richards. “Indigenous Data in the Covid-19 Pandemic: Straddling Erasure, Terrorism, and Sovereignty. ITEMS, Social Science Research Council. June 11, 2020.https://items.ssrc.org/covid-19-and-the-social-sciences/disaster-studies/indigenous-data-in-the-covid-19-pandemic-straddling-erasure-terrorism-and-sovereignty/

PODCAST: EPIDEMIC (30 min), June 5 2020. S1E26 /Indigenous Peoples / Rebecca Nagle, Melissa Begay, and Jamescita Peshlakai.

PODCAST: EPIDEMIC (30 min), April 3 2020. S1E8 /Unequal: Race, Status, and COVID-19 /Jeneen Interlandi and Greg Asbed.

Soden, Robert. “Crisis Informatics and Mutual Aid during the Coronavirus Pandemic: A Research Agenda.” ITEMS, Social Science Research Council. July 2, 2020.https://items.ssrc.org/covid-19-and-the-social-sciences/disaster-studies/crisis-informatics-and-mutual-aid-during-the-coronavirus-pandemic-a-research-agenda/