A few years ago, I wrote a paper about the brouhaha over Salma Hayek’s breastfeeding a Sierra Leonean baby. I delivered that paper a few places and it started a relatively long and fairly complicated relationship with what I’ve been calling “humanitarian popular culture.” Into this category, many things fit: the satirical Matt Damon’s Children ad on... Continue Reading →
On the off chance that war doesn’t change everything: more on Ebola
I’m trying not to make my commentary about the current Ebola outbreak about representation, but I’ve been a bit troubled by the political analyses accompanying the epidemiological and health systems ones. Specifically, I want to talk a bit about how Liberia’s and Sierra Leone’s civil wars have been deployed by these analysts to understand the response... Continue Reading →
On Ebola and the pathological movements of Others
This morning, I woke up to two emails about the most recent NYT article about the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Having worked in Sierra Leone on a range of health issues, I have been a recipient of these kinds of messages at least a few times a week. I'll just comment on this article because it... Continue Reading →
Gaza and the politics of numbers
How powerful is a number? I’ve been writing about the politics and techniques of enumeration for some time now and continue to delve into how the global health and development industries use numbers to advance and justify their work. I am also interested in how people interpret and use various estimates to communicate value(s) and... Continue Reading →
Ethnographic Emergency 