Haemorrhagic Fevers in Africa: Narratives, Politics and Pathways of Disease and Response

Haemorrhagic fevers have, par excellence, captured popular and media imagination as deadly diseases to come ‘out of Africa’. Associated with wildlife vectors in forested environments, viral haemorrhagic fevers such as Ebola, Marburg and lassa fever figure high in current concern about so-called ‘emerging infectious diseases’, their hotspots of origin and threat of global spread. Outbreak narratives have justified rapid and sometimes draconian international policy responses and control measures. Yet there is a variety of other ways of framing haemorrhagic fevers. There present different views concerning who is at risk, and how? Is the ‘system’ of interacting social-disease ecological processes a local or a global one, and how do scales intersect? Should haemorrhagic fevers be understood in terms of short-term outbreaks, or as part of more ‘structural’, long-term social-disease-ecological interactions? What of the perspectives of people living with the diseases in African settings? And what of uncertainties about disease dynamics, over longer as well as short time scales? This paper contrasts global outbreak narratives with three others which consider haemorrhagic fevers as deadly local disease events, in terms of culture and context, and in terms of long-term social and environmental dynamics. It considers the pathways of disease response associated with each, and how they might be better integrated to deal with haemorrhagic fevers in more effective, Sustainable and socially just waysESR

States, Markets and Society – Looking Back to Look Forward

‘How does change happen?’ and ‘How should change happen and how can it be enabled?’ are key questions analysed in this IDS Bulletin, drawing on the Institute of Development Studies’ reflections on States, Markets and Society as a theme of its 50th Anniversary year. The year generally, and this Bulletin issue specifically, looks back in order to look forward to future challenges and how to meet them. While the first part of this IDS Bulletin draws on a selection of archive articles to highlight key debates over the decades, the second part looks forward by drawing on contributions to IDS’ 50th Anniversary conference, which took place in July 2016. The roles and relationships of the public and private sectors and civil society have been central themes in analysis and action around the social, economic and political change that constitutes development. However, articles in this issue suggest that over-dominance of market forces over government, business and civil society accounts for many of today’s development challenges, and suggest a rebalancing of the current States–Markets–Society triad to give greater weight and influence to state and societal forces to those of the market. An agenda is also considered for new alliances and relationships, suggesting that cross-cutting themes and inter- and transdisciplinary approaches will be required – by international partnerships – to integrate high quality research with the knowledge of people working in state, business and civil society organisations, mobilising evidence for impact. In such ways, this IDS Bulletin charts some contours of a future map of development studies, in a new era

Sabbatical Leave Proposal and Report

I propose a renewed emphasis on my Spanish language skills -reading, writing, speaking and listening- through: 1) speaking with native speakers; 2) immersion in Spanish media -magazines, newspapers, television, movies, etc.; 3) travel to Spanish speaking countries; and 4) a journal project in my target language. These activities will refresh and improve my Spanish and give me newfound connections with the Spanish speaking world and its cultures, making me a better Spanish teacher

Introduction: States, Markets and Society – Looking Back to Look Forward

The period since IDS was founded in 1966 has seen the rise and fall of state-led, market-led and society-focused approaches to development, accompanied by critique and counter-critique. Today, relationships are shifting amidst new interconnections and configurations of global and local power, and while in some contexts new alliances are opening up important opportunities, in others spaces are closing down. This article introduces a special issue of the IDS Bulletin which tracks key threads in the history and future of these major debates, and the contributions of IDS and its partners. Combining archival material with new articles drawn from debates at the IDS 50th Anniversary Conference in July 2016, this IDS Bulletin ‘looks back to look forward’, asking what combinations of state, market and citizen action in different contexts can help achieve more equal, sustainable and inclusive futures for all

MMR mobilisation : citizens and science in a British vaccine controversy

This paper examines the controversy over measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine in Britain through the lenses of social movement theory and social studies of science. Since the early 1990s, networks of parents have raised, and mobilised around, concerns that MMR has triggered a particular disease in their children linked to autism and bowel problems, and have been supported in this by certain scientists. In the high-profile and highly-public debate which has ensued, they have challenged established perspectives and institutions in both biomedical science, and public health policy. While much policy and public debate has dismissed their concerns as based on emotion, misinformation or “junk science”, this paper locates them as part of a citizen science grounded in parental experience. It tracks how the framing and strategies of parental mobilisation around MMR have developed, in relation to a growing counter-mobilisation from scientists, policy-makers, health professionals and journalists questioning their claims. It argues that the controversy involves differently-framed sciences (clinical vs epidemiological) linked to different political commitments (parents’ personal concerns and rights as citizen-consumers vs notions of public health). Each side has nevertheless used similar strategies in deploying science, in exposing the political economy of the other’s science, and in working through the media. Both these differences of framing, and similarities of strategy, are important to comprehending why the debate has become so heated and polarised, and why it has failed to reach closure. Keywords: citizens, science, mobilisation, vaccination, MM

Engaged Excellence - Notes on Contributors

This is the notes on contributors for IDS Bulletin 47.6, 'Engaged Excellence'

'MMR talk' and vaccination choices: an ethnographic study in Brighton

In the context of the high-profile controversy that has unfolded in the UK around the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and its possible adverse effects, this paper explores how parents in Brighton, southern England, are thinking about MMR for their own children. Research focusing on parents’ engagement with MMR has been dominated by analysis of the proximate influences on their choices, and in particular scientific and media information, which have led health policy to focus on information and education campaigns. This paper reports ethnographic work including narratives by mothers in Brighton.Our work questions such reasoning in showing how wider personal and social issues shape parents’ immunisation actions. The narratives by mothers show how practices around MMR are shaped by personal histories, by birth experiences and related feelings of control, by family health histories, by their readings of their child’s health and particular strengths and vulnerabilities, by particular engagements with health services,by processes building or undermining confidence,and by friendships and conversations with others,which are themselves shaped by wider social differences and transformations. Although many see vaccination as a personal decision which must respond to the particularities of a child’s immune system, ‘MMR talk’, which affirms these conceptualisations, has become a social phenomenon in itself. These perspectives suggest ways in which people’s engagements with MMR reflect wider changes in their relations with science and the state

Science and citizenship in a global context

Shifting science-society relationships are highly relevant both to contemporary practices of citizenship, their expressions, and to questions around the dynamics of “participation”. Political and economic changes are altering the contexts, spaces and ways that people perceive and act on citizenship rights, as are scientific and technological changes and the new risks and opportunities they present. Today these issues are reflected perhaps most clearly in the extensive academic, policy and media debates which explore contemporary relations between risk, science and society. In this paper we begin to explore these issues in a globally-comparative frame, providing a review of some of the dominant lines of work in Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Development Studies (DS) which reflect on the relationships between science and citizenship. First we consider major emphases in how each has conceived of the relationships between “experts” and “lay knowledges”, revealing some important contrasts in their approaches. We then go on to examine how different notions of citizenship have been incorporated into these debates, whether explicitly or implicitly. We show that approaches to participation and deliberation, now central to thinking and action in a scientific context in both north and south, are underlain by particular concepts of the citizen, which variously enable and constrain their transformative potential. Today these processes take place in a globalised context, and in a third section we reflect on how this context forces us to redefine further the relationships between science and citizenship. We show in this context why it is necessary to go beyond static, universalised and essentialised notions of citizenship and a singular notion of the state, to embrace a more fluid, de-centred, and experience-based notion of both citizenship and expertise, but without losing sight of the historical, political and institutional structures which shape often highly contrasting forms of engagement

Mobilising citizens : social movements and the politics of knowledge

This paper reflects comparatively on a series of case studies of citizen mobilisation in both north and south, arguing that the politics of knowledge are now central. The cases focus on issues ranging from genetically-modified crops, vaccines, HIV/AIDS and occupational health, to struggles around water, housing, labour rights and the environment. In different ways, each has asked: who mobilises and who does not, how and why? How are activist networks constituted, involving what forms of identity, representation and processes of inclusion and exclusion? What forms of knowledge – including values, perceptions and experiences – frame these movements and how do citizens and ‘experts’ interact? What resources and spaces are important in mobilisation processes? The paper offers a synthesis of some of the major theoretical perspectives, lines of argument and issues emerging the case studies’ responses to these questions. In the first part, it engages social movement theory with theories of citizenship. It draws out four overlapping perspectives on processes of mobilisation which are all important to understanding the cases, and which point towards an understanding of ‘mobilising citizens’ as knowledgeable actors engaged in a dynamic, networked politics across local and global sites. In the second part, the paper explores three key emergent themes: knowledge and power; cultures, styles and practices of activism, and the increasing array and complexity of arenas in which citizens press their claims, including legal spaces and the media. We argue that if contemporary processes of mobilisation and their implications for citizenship are to be understood there is a need to expand and enrich debates about social movements from a diversity of literatures. Today’s dynamics of public controversy, debates about risk, and the forms of mobilisation and protest arising requires putting the politics of knowledge centre-stage in our attempts to recast democratic theory and notions of citizenship, especially in today’s global context. Keywords: citizenship, knowledge, mobilisation, social movement, identity, network