Humanity Journal

Brief note on the 2011 World Development Report of the World Bank.

It strikes me that one of the purposes of the elision is to facilitate the extension of (yes, biomedical, but perhaps not just biomedical) surveillance technologies of the Global North into the Global South, for reasons that primarily benefit the Global North, but that come cloaked with the moral aura of benefiting the South (even though, as you point out, it's not so clear that these surveillances really do help the South much).

If the danger for biomedical humanitarianism is that neglect will return as soon as the visible emergency moves to a different place (as Peter Redfield has argued), the danger for global health security may be one of over-preparedness – that its credibility is damaged when it responds to an event that turns out not to be as catastrophic as promised.

For a good sense of what "development" today is and isn't, you can do worse than to read this excellent if troubling New York Times article on Chinese business practices in Zambia:

It could be that without Virginia Gildersleeve, no one would be talking about it today.

There are two sets of ghosts that we experience when visiting and engaging with field sites.

Forty-nine years ago today, at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem, gunmen opened fire on the African-American activist Malcolm X, killing him almost instantly.

The Berkeley Human Rights Program has announced a postdoctoral fellowship for the 2014-15 academic year.

A project that enables us to put words back into the void that trauma leaves behind.