Cholera in the large towns of the West and East Ridings, 1848-1893.

This study discusses the three cholera epidemics in 1848-49, 1853-54 and 1865-66, focussing on how the disease was experienced and acted upon, as well as its impact in the four . large towns of the West and East Riding of Yorkshire (Bradford, Hull, Leeds and Sheffield). It does this comparatively and sets cholera outbreaks in the context of local social, administrative and geographical factors. The main thesis is that historians should not talk about the national experience of cholera for the period 1848-66, rather they should recognise different experiences and impacts between towns, through time and at different levels of society. A subsidiary argument, however, is that the scares which occurred in the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s can be considered at the national, even international level.In 1848-49 there were major differences in mortality between the four towns, with Hull and Sheffield at two ends of the spectrum nationally and regionally. In 1853-54 and 1865-66 none of the four towns experienced a major epidemic, though they did experience exceptional levels of public health activity, such that an 'epidemic consciousness' can be identified. While nationally there was an incremental fall in cholera mortality over the three later epidemics, in the four towns there was a single fall after 1849. As each threat passed there was growing confidence that cholera was controllable, though it never lost its power to 'shock'.In 1848-49 there were major differences between the towns in levels and forms of activity both to the approach and the containment of the epidemic. This was due to a number of variables: social relations and class attitudes, the role of the medical profession, theories of cholera's etiology (including the gradual adoption and adaptation of Snow's ideas), local reactions to relations with central government, the intensity of the mortality crisis and past experiences of epidemic diseases. The most striking feature in 1853-54 was the lack of variation in official actions across the towns. During and after the 1866 epidemic a two-tier approach was adopted, with cholera increasingly seen as a port disease.Was cholera the local sanitary reformers' best friend? The answer given is no, but this is qualified in several ways.The commonest middle class view of the later epidemics was that those who suffered were culpable, due to their ignorance and fecklessness.. In other words, the problem was not so much the disease as the people. Working class reactions to sanitary reform were not characterised, as is often said, by ignorance or hostility, rather they were varied and patterned. Actions were guided by a specific, usually local, understanding of urban disease ecology and of the wider determinants of health and disease. This knowledge of the local physical environment was linked to views on rights and responsibilities. The working class did not share the one dimensional environmentalism of the sanitarians; instead they contended that many other factors were determinants of health, not least wages and hours of work

Our Future on Earth

This report provides a snapshot of our world at the start of 2020, helping to make sense of the state of this unique biophysical human ecosystem we inhabit as a planetary changing species. It combines up-to-date research with the latest world events, including physical and social science perspectives to explore where we are now, where we hope to go, and how we might get there. It also includes a novel survey of scientists to rank their top concerns for global systemic risks in the coming years. Humans are now the main driver behind planetary change, and human systems must be targeted if we are to do something about it. That means addressing societal systems including populism, finance, and information transmission, alongside the practices and technologies that emit greenhouse gases, from fossil-fuel burning to food production. This is a particularly exciting time to look at these issues: the past year has been one of extraordinary social awakening to the hazards of environmental change, and of demands for action towards a sustainable future. As 2019 unfolded, people began talking of “climate breakdown” and demanding their governments and institutions declare a “climate emergency” (Oxford Dictionaries chose “climate emergency” as its 2019 word of the year)

THE POLITICS OF SOUTHERN ASIAN BALLISTIC MISSILES: TOWARDS A FRAMEWORK FOR A MUTUAL RESTRAINT REGIME

ABSTRACT Southern Asia is witnessing the rapid proliferation of ballistic missiles in and around the region. This proliferation phenomenon, together with ongoing and enduring conflicts amongst the “competing parties” (China, India and Pakistan) creates a potential surfacing of “nuclear flashpoint” in the region. This research is an endeavour to explore the causes of this nuclear and missile race amongst the Southern Asian powers (China, India, and Pakistan) with the help of the theory of strategic culture. This study proceeds in the following way: it assesses the geo-political forces at work in the region; examines the strategic culture of China, India and Pakistan; traces the motivation of these countries for the strategic weapon programmes and delivery systems; describes their nuclear doctrines and command and control structures; and the current status of their ballistic missile programmes. It then addresses the prospects for Pakistan, India and China to move towards a system of mutual restraint regime, in which international regime theory is discussed as a conceptual framework; cold war models of strategic arms limitation and reduction models are studied and the important role of Confidence and Security Building Measures (CSBMs) is identified. The same procedure is then applied in the context of Southern Asian region; problem areas identified with the help of CSBMs tools; and conclusions reached as to the potential to move beyond CSBMs into full restraint regime. The study finds the very nature of the overlapping threat perceptions and the continuance of the unresolved issues and disputes as the main hurdles in the successful restraint models. Recommendations are therefore made for more comprehensive CSBMs leading to a Southern Asian regional version of cold war prototypes of strategic arms limitation and reduction for a more comprehensive and fruitful restraint model, which might then be applied and adhered to at the global level. The study therefore opens new avenues of research and progress in the discipline

An aesthetic for sustainable interactions in product-service systems?

Copyright @ 2012 Greenleaf PublishingEco-efficient Product-Service System (PSS) innovations represent a promising approach to sustainability. However the application of this concept is still very limited because its implementation and diffusion is hindered by several barriers (cultural, corporate and regulative ones). The paper investigates the barriers that affect the attractiveness and acceptation of eco-efficient PSS alternatives, and opens the debate on the aesthetic of eco-efficient PSS, and the way in which aesthetic could enhance some specific inner qualities of this kinds of innovations. Integrating insights from semiotics, the paper outlines some first research hypothesis on how the aesthetic elements of an eco-efficient PSS could facilitate user attraction, acceptation and satisfaction

Sustainability in design: now! Challenges and opportunities for design research, education and practice in the XXI century

Copyright @ 2010 Greenleaf PublicationsLeNS project funded by the Asia Link Programme, EuropeAid, European Commission

Health of People, Health of Planet and Our Responsibility

"This open access book not only describes the challenges of climate disruption, but also presents solutions. The challenges described include air pollution, climate change, extreme weather, and related health impacts that range from heat stress, vector-borne diseases, food and water insecurity and chronic diseases to malnutrition and mental well-being. The influence of humans on climate change has been established through extensive published evidence and reports. However, the connections between climate change, the health of the planet and the impact on human health have not received the same level of attention. Therefore, the global focus on the public health impacts of climate change is a relatively recent area of interest. This focus is timely since scientists have concluded that changes in climate have led to new weather extremes such as floods, storms, heat waves, droughts and fires, in turn leading to more than 600,000 deaths and the displacement of nearly 4 billion people in the last 20 years. Previous work on the health impacts of climate change was limited mostly to epidemiologic approaches and outcomes and focused less on multidisciplinary, multi-faceted collaborations between physical scientists, public health researchers and policy makers. Further, there was little attention paid to faith-based and ethical approaches to the problem. The solutions and actions we explore in this book engage diverse sectors of civil society, faith leadership, and political leadership, all oriented by ethics, advocacy, and policy with a special focus on poor and vulnerable populations. The book highlights areas we think will resonate broadly with the public, faith leaders, researchers and students across disciplines including the humanities, and policy makers.

Cycling Pathways

In an effort to fight climate change, many cities try to boost their cycling levels. They often look towards the Dutch for guidance. However, historians have only begun to uncover how and why the Netherlands became the premier cycling country of the world. Why were Dutch cyclists so successful in their fight for a place on the road? Cycling Pathways explores the long political struggle that culminated in today’s high cycling levels. Delving into the archives, it uncovers the important role of social movements and shows in detail how these interacted with national, provincial, and urban engineers and policymakers to govern the distribution of road space and construction of cycling infrastructure. It discusses a wide range of topics, ranging from activists to engineering committees, from urban commuters to recreational cyclists and from the early 1900s to today in order to uncover the long and all-but-forgotten history of Dutch cycling governance

Graphic design as urban design: towards a theory for analysing graphic objects in urban environments

This thesis presents a model for analysing the graphic object as urban object, by considering atypical fields of discourse that contribute to the formation of the object domain. The question: what is graphic design as urban design? directs the research through an epistemological design study comprising: an interrogation of graphic design studio practice and the articulation of graphic design research questions; a review and subsequent development of research strategy, design and method towards the articulation of methodology that reflects the nature of the inquiry; a detailed analysis of five different ways to study and research graphic design as urban design, in geography, language, visual communication, art and design, and urban design. The outcome of the investigation is a model that enables future research in the urban environment to benefit from micro-meso-macrographic analysis. The model endeavours to provide a way to evaluate, design and enhance ‘public places and urban spaces’ (Carmona et al., 2010) by considering different scales of symbolic thought and deed. This has been achieved by acknowledging the relationship between the relatively miniscule detail of graphic symbolism, the point at which this becomes visible through increased scale, and the instances when it dominates the urban realm. Examples are considered that show differences between, for example, the size and spacing of letter shapes on a pedestrian sign, compared to the ‘visual’ impact of an iconic building in the cityscape. In between is a myriad of graphic elements that are experienced and designed by many different professional disciplines and occupations. These are evidenced and explained. Throughout the study an indiscriminating literature review is interwoven with the text, accompanied by tabular information, and visual data in the form of photographs and diagrams. This is mainly research-driven data utilising photographs from fieldwork in Brazil, Canada, Hong Kong, Italy, Portugal, South Korea, United Kingdom, and United States of America. The methodology integrates a transdisciplinary adaptive theory approach derived from sociological research, with graphic method (utilising a wider scope of visual data usually associated with graph theory). The following images provide sixteen examples of artefacts representing the graphic object as urban object phenomenon

Reinventing the Plantation: Gated Communities as Spatial Segregation in the Gullah Sea Islands

Gated communities throughout the Sea Islands of South Carolina, Georgia, and northern Florida represent a postcolonial attempt at reinventing the plantation of the white imagination. Upon these contested landscapes, incompatible, historically transmitted epistemologies result in an ongoing power struggle between money and memory. Gullah/Geechee communities, descended from enslaved West and Central Africans whose exploited labor made world capitalism a social reality, inherited these islands at Emancipation and became self sufficient, isolated communities. A century later, the development of Sea Pines on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina would begin a trend of encroachment that has steadily gained momentum into the twenty first century. Within this cultural and political economy of racism, the Gullah have experienced overwhelming exploitation of their sociocultural institutions, resulting in land loss, economic and political marginalization, and forced acculturation that violate their universal human rights. This ongoing struggle against coloniality connects the Gullah to other diasporic communities encountering varying predicaments of white racism, couched in rhetorics of difference. Their response embodies an African spirit of resistance and survival that has brought them thus far. The spatial segregation of the Sea Islands has been accompanied by a romanticized reinterpretation of the Old South and the Lowcountry plantation. For the Gullah, this practice has translated into a reinvention of history that denies the collective memories intimately linking them to these recently appropriated spaces. This type of power-mediated use of space for purposes of exclusion reinforces a system of white privilege, thereby mapping racialized social inequalities onto the physical and cultural landscape. This critical ethnographic analysis is a contribution to African Diaspora studies, framed within a reflexive political economy. Theoretically and methodologically, the findings of this research seek to contribute to five specific areas of anthropological inquiry: the anthropology of racism and race making as sites of cultural and political-economic struggle; the anthropology of space and place; critical interrogations of power, particularly as power relates to the production of knowledge and inventions of history; whiteness as the contemporary manifestation of coloniality; and experimental methods of ethnographic inquiry