Covid-19 is an unnatural disaster: Hope in revelatory moments of crisis

Abstract

The unfolding COVID-19 pandemic has closed borders, grounded planes, quarantined more than half of the world’s population, triggered anxiety en masse, and shaken global capitalism to its core. Scholars of the political ecology of disasters have sought to denaturalize so-called “natural” disasters by demonstrating their uneven consequences. Work in the political ecology of health similarly accounts for how risk of illness and disease are socio-economically mediated. While this scholarship has demonstrated the need to contextualize the unequal fallout from ecological and health disasters in ways that reveal the festering wounds of structural inequality, we know much less about how hope is cultivated in moments of crisis. The current revelatory moment of the COVID-19 pandemic offers an opportunity to find hope in the rubble through the deconstruction of framings of crisis as “error” and by homing in on the current and potential role of tourism to contribute to a more socially and environmentally just society. This reframing the pandemic as an "unnatural" disaster opens new debates at the intersection of tourism geographies and political ecologies of hope in revelatory moments of crisis.     

Destruction of microstructure in archaeological bone: a case study from Portugal

Sampling of archaeological human bone may not be justified, contrary to former high expectations regarding adult age assessment based on histomorphometry. The alterations in buried bone as a result of bacterial action are readily visible in the scanning electron microscope (SEM). An understanding of the chemical and structural changes to cortical bone requires work at the level of a few microns. This paper reports on problems encountered during analyses of samples of human bone from Mesolithic (ca. 8000 calbp) shell midden sites at Muge in central Portugal, and the methods used to try and overcome these problems. We believe we have shown that these Mesolithic bones are partly comprised of bacterially reprecipitated mineral, which has had collagen removed, with consequent obliteration of bone microstructure. We conclude that microbial destruction of the structure of archaeological bone can be a serious impediment to analysis of the characteristics of the population represented by those skeletal remains. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A lone ranger: My journey towards becoming a feminist geographer in Nairobi,Kenya

Abstract

Very few Kenyan universities offer modules on Gender or Feminism in their courses. Women are largely under-represented and very few hold senior positions. Due to the few numbers of female faculty, mentorship for young female scholars is lacking. Feminist writing by Female Kenyan geographers in professional geography journals is limited. Collective action among female geography faculty is also largely absent. This is largely due to the lack of feminist advocacy and policies in the universities. My journey to becoming a feminist geographer has received little or no support from the university. I have taken personal initiatives to link up with local and transnational gender associations in order to get insights on current feminist scholarship issues. My lived feminist experience and observations of the struggles of ordinary women in everyday livelihood negotiation have been my main motivation for continuing to do feminist work. Thus, my feminist work has concentrated on women in marginal economic informality. This paper presents my journey as a feminist geographer. It begins with a discussion on the state of feminist geography in three universities in Kenya namely, University of Nairobi, Kenyatta University and Egerton University. This is followed by a presentation of my journey toward becoming a feminist geographer in the absence of a supportive infrastructure. My journey has been inspired by my lived experience. The paper concludes with a call for a concerted effort for feminist advocacy in Kenyan Geography departments.