This week, we're switching gears again to our final unit on health, medicine, and disease. We will revisit a number of themes that we've discussed throughout the course, namely geographies of exclusion and the production and reproduction of poverty. We'll also continue to look at different ways of understanding, explaining, and representing the world and the interests expressed therein. In short, we'll be looking at the politics of microbes and how their spread and management are not only "natural" but also the result of social and political histories.
The first reading that we're doing on this topic is Jenna Loyd's "A Microscopic Insurgent: Militarization, Health, and Critical Geographies of Violence," which is to be found in your course packets. Loyd is going to take us to Iraq to look at the connection between health (particularly representations of health and disease) and the US military intervention there. Heads up: this is an academic journal article is vastly different in approach and tone to the chapters we've just been reading in Neuwirth. While it is fairly brief, don't be fooled--it's also very dense. You should take your time with this reading and work to really understand it. At the same time, try not to get frustrated at its difficulty. Try to focus on how Loyd makes the claim that "health is entwined with violence."
To provide some background, Loyd (like many of the authors that we've read) is taking issue primarily with the misrepresentation of place and history in the New York Times. In particular she takes aim at the way in which Mark Drapeau presents the history and emergence of a cholera epidemic in Iraq (the article that she is critiquing can be found here). In doing this, Loyd explores the link between humanitarian causes and military violence, arguing that the former are often used to legitimate the latter. We can see Loyd's article as part of an ongoing conversation about "structural violence." This is not a term that we've used in class, although much of what we've discussed to date--the effects of "free trade" and agricultural policy on farmers as well as displacement in urban area--can be considered "structural violence." This term simply refers to the (often unintended and under-examined) effects of economic and governmental policy that do physical and mental harm to certain groups or individuals within a population. Structural violence often produces or intensifies existing social inequalities, placing certain populations at greater risk of disease, premature death, malnutrition, and general insecurity. Loyd makes the argument that the violence of war should not only be measured in its direct costs to life, but also in the forms of structural violence that it creates.
As you read, pay attention to how Loyd frames her argument against Drapeau. Her argument is very similar to that of Professor Lindskoog's in his open letter to David Brooks about Haiti. Where do you see similarities? What evidence does she use to make her claim? What do you think she is suggesting about the US's role in Iraq in relation to histories of Imperialism? And what do you think the implications are for how we think about humanitarian aid?
In this artitcle Loyd arguement is similar to Professor Lindskoog's because just like David Brooks, Drapeau was trying to please the American audience. He compared the countries wealth with the poorness of the country. He always felt that Iraq health issues can be an oppurtunity for an American project. Loyd says that struggles over health are also struggles over definitions of violence and ultimately over who has the power to organize an legitmate the use of violence, i think what she is trying to say is that the United States uses other countries down falls in health to define them as a weaker country and as a way to take over and imperialize. i think that the implications of the humanitarian interventions are to make peace and to make the United States look like the better country. this article had alot of information but it was very hard to read through.
ReplyDeleteThis may have been hard to read, but you got the key points, Lavaisha! We'll get to the finer points in class.
ReplyDeleteIn this article "A Microscopic Insurgent" written by Loyd mainly describe that economic and environmental destruction's relationship. Loyd also describe the suffering of violence is linked with the health issue. For instance, the Iraq war was a great example to show us how military power affected people's health emotionally and physically. Iraq's 2007 cholera epidemic was the main reason why the United States decided to control over it. However, this was a good chance to show the great power of our country either on the medical or military power.
ReplyDelete"a microscopic insurgent" by Jenna M. Lloyd, explains "how health is entwined with violence", and she says gave a good example of the "justified" american military invasion on Iraq, and according to Lloyd, one of the reasons of this was that the iraqi's governement had a [poor] and misserable campaign that was not promoting succesfully personal hygiene, and the "right" decision was a clean-water program, and of course! who else was able to do this, who else could help this developing nation? .... U.S. government.
ReplyDelete"at a moment in which debate raged over the effectivenessof the U.S. military escalation in Iraq, cholera signaled the marked failure of U.S reconstruction".
Lloyd also argues that the use of money on supporting the military rather than [satisfy] human/universal needs such as clean water, food, and education, caused scarcities and social hierarchies...["how health, no less than democracy is being militarised..."]
Lloyd took the opinion of Paul Farmer, who blames french colonialism and american imperialism, for haiti's devastated urban and rural economies, ecologies, and its health [crisis]. but "yet, deadly epidemics resulted not from the lack of modern economic development but precisely because of vulnerabilities produced through colonial wealth extraction..."
["cholera is a grave threat for the american project in iraq, but also an opportunity to capture the hearts and minds of the population"]
....and those were the main points [in my opinion :D ] that lloyd made on her article...
ReplyDeletehow health can be a excuse for military intervention..
There are certainly similarities between Loyd’s and Professor Lindskoog articles.
ReplyDeleteBoth of them are answers to suggestions. And both of them accentuate the inaccuracy that both of speakers, Brooks and Drapeau consequently, have used to describe structural violence in third world countries of Haiti and Iraq. While Brooks and Drapeau blame Haitians and Iraqis for their hostility to progress, none of them are considerate of the situation in the country per se. Brooks argues that Haitians have a culture( religion and mentality) that’s an obstacle to their development. To what Professor Lindskoog responded that multiple factors have occurred and built the state of Haiti as it is today: its precocity to the abolishment of slavery and gain of sovereignty have resulted to its disability to world economics assimilation, the gain of sovereignty led to a unpaid ransom to France (that was their colonial) and the corrupted governance of the Duvalier family have simply led to Haitian plutocracy - both Papa and Bebe Doc have shown minor concern about their country and simply pocket the funding that was destinated to Haitian development. Nothing to do with culture. Similarly, Loyd is responding to the suggestion of Drapeau for US military intervention in Iraq to cease cholera disease in north Iraq, that US officials shall be more aware of the specifics of the Iraqi region before applying any humanitarian aid that might literally harm the State. Drapeau have found pretext to his claim underneath the nature of Saddam Hussein’s former regime. He recalls to Iraqi insurgents and dramatize the situation by saying that “suicide bombers don’t call in sick”, underlining the ongoing Iraq-US conflict, his neglect to the main population of Iraq and the necessity of American military intervention to fight against cholera. What he doesn’t appeal to, but Loyd does - is that north Iraq(where the cholera epidemic took place) is a highly industrialized zone, where take place oil extraction, and where reside the outcast of the Iraqi society - Kurdish people. These are people that aren’t originally Iraqi and are claiming for their autonomy on Iraqi territory. Such separatists movements of their are sadly widespread in the Middle-East countries. And if this specific group will receive strong support from the NGOs, Iraqis that are struggling daily against Americans in the rest of the country, would call such humanitarian aid inadequate and unequal.
There are solutions to such problems, but they won’t come trough force that the American Empire is more likely to exert in merely all kinds of international situations. In order to make such interventions more efficient it may be good to analyze the locale prior to the making of decisions and solutions.
The article of Jenna Loyd is about how the U.S. uses its power to interact in other countries. This article relates to Lindskoog's article because Drapeau only focus on the positive things that conducted the U.S involment in Iraq. Drapeau shows how the U.S. invasion in Iraq was going to benefit the country by taking out of power Saddam and giving the country more freedom. How ever Drapeau fail to mention the negative effects on how the U.S. was killing people and not providing freedom since people had to stay in their homes because they had to protect themselves from being hurt. The same way Brooks mentions how the U.S. help Haiti by providing aid but never mention the high interest Haiti had to pay back. Loyd wants to show how the U.S. relationship with foreign contries are for imperialistic reasons because the U.S. always looks for the benefit of it self. Instead of actually helping the other country because giving aid to Haiti,but then double ling the interest instead of helping the country is contributing to more debt for Haiti.
ReplyDelete