Quick, call an anthropologist!
I was in Freetown when the August 14 mudslide happened. The morning of the disaster, I went to breakfast and saw a friend who, unaware of the extent of the human toll, had received a call from a co-worker. The co-worker reported that one of their colleagues' house had collapsed. Children had been killed.... Continue Reading →
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 →
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 →
Last week, we read Bornstein and Redfield's introductory chapter to Forces of Compassion. In it, the authors outline a distinction among development, human rights, and humanitarianism. The temporal orientation, disciplinary foci, and the professions associated with each of these forms of social action seem to distinguish them from each other. The authors state, for example,... Continue Reading →
Ethnographic Emergency 