Disaster Relief as a Global Effort (Part III)

According to data from the Emergency Events Database that is maintained by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) at the University of Louvain at Belgium, from 1980 to 2004, over 6000 natural disasters occurred, directly affecting 4.7 billion people, and resulting in 1.5 million deaths. Droughts, windstorms such as tornados and hurricanes, and tsunamis, were the most devastating type of natural disaster, and the occurrence of major natural disasters is increasing in frequency. Being able to coordinate disaster relief efforts is something that we can expect to need to be able to do, no matter what corner of the globe we live on.

Modern technology, combined with mass media and the internet, has given us ways to be connected to disaster events in real time, even when we are on the opposite side of the world. Images of devastation are often uploaded to the internet via cell phones as they occur. Major news networks send reporters to be on the scene, sometimes even in advance of the disaster (such as with a hurricane that gives warning). This past week’s earthquake in Haiti has people in Haiti using Facebook to try to locate missing loved ones, and there have been tweets sent via the microblogging website Twitter made by trapped victims themselves, to alert rescuers of their location and situation. Never before has communication been so immediate between victims, rescuers, the media, and the rest of the world at large. By being able to put an immediate face to the suffering, the unaffected have been more willing to open their hearts and their wallets to helping with disaster relief.

Right this very minute, medical personnel from more than 60 different countries, and reporters from even more are on site in Haiti helping because of the generosity of people around the world who fund disaster relief efforts through NGOs, and encourage their governments to get involved. While each of us might not have the skills, training, or flexibility in their schedule to go to Haiti to provide direct help, each and every one of us can help out by donating a small amount to the relief effort. Technology has even made this easier than ever to do. By texting “Haiti” to 90999, a $10 donation can be made to the Red Cross for relief efforts and charged to your cell phone bill, and 100% of that amount goes to the Red Cross. And during these times of disaster that are removed from us, it is a good time to reassess our own community disaster plans and take the time to learn CPR and donate blood. A life could be saved, and you never know, it might be your own!




Sources:

American Red Cross. Web. 21 Jan. 2010. http://www.redcross.org/en/.

Ethridge, Robbie. "Bearing Witness: Assumptions, Realities, and the Otherizing of Katrina."
American Anthropologist 108.4 (2006): 799-813. Print.

Rosensteil, C. Ronald. "Disaster Relief in a Kentucky Town." Ethnohistory 19.1 (1972): 27-36. JSTOR. Duke University Press. Web. 23 Jan. 2010. http://www.jstor.org/stable/481342.

Shah, Anup. "Natural Disasters — Global Issues." Global Issues : social, political, economic and environmental issues that affect us all — Global Issues. 13 Sept. 2005. Web. 21 Jan. 2010. http://www.globalissues.org/issue/522/natural-disasters.

Stromberg, David. "Natural Disasters, Economic Development, and Humanitarian Aid." The Journal of Economic Perspectives 21.3 (2007): 199-222. JSTOR. American Economic Association. Web. 21 Jan. 2010. .

Disaster Relief as a Global Effort (Part II)

Organized relief efforts following large scale natural disasters are not a new phenomenon. What is new is the ability to launch massive global relief efforts immediately. In 1755, an earthquake wrecked havoc on Lisbon, Europe’s fourth largest city at the time, and took nearly a third of Lisbon’s population. This disaster was also the first time in history that the state took responsibility for launching an emergency response and later rebuilding. Hundreds of thousands of natural disasters later, we have our contemporary relief efforts which are on a larger scale and include such things as celebrity inspired telethons to raise funds, benefit concerts, and congregations of people from all religions collecting donations, in addition to various NGOs and State-sponsored aid coming in from various corners of the globe. The elements of disaster relief that have remained constant are the desire that human beings have to help one another when large-scale disasters occur, and the tendency to look for somewhere to place blame when the devastation and casualty rates begin to climb. Not all things remain the same; the organization and speed of such efforts is constantly evolving as we learn from the mistakes that each disaster relief effort inevitably brings with it.

“It is after a disaster that the benevolence of the United States society and the affluence that makes such benevolence possible becomes clear,” says C. Ronald Rosensteil of the University of Kentucky on the disaster recovery efforts that followed a devastating tornado in a small Kentucky community in 1972. So willing to help were those from neighboring communities, that disaster relief made a tremendous difference in the quality of life of all the people in the community, not just those directly affected by the tornado. Affluence and race tend not to be factors in disaster relief as evidenced with the 2005 devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and along the gulf coast of the United States. One of the very first international offers of aid came from neighboring Cuba, with whom the United States has had strained relations for decades. Cuba offered to immediately send nearly 1600 doctors and 26 tons of medicine. Unfortunately for relations, the United States rejected the aid offer, but the sentiment remains. Countries big and small were willing to provide aid to a country as affluent as the United States when they saw human suffering. There is an obvious trend towards willingness to help others when they are suffering because of natural-caused disasters. When aid is needed and the perception is that the people are responsible for their own situation, such as with poverty, there is less inclination to help.

And while people turn their backs on suffering when it is perceived to be of their own making, there is no shortage of sympathy and willingness to help out when a large scale natural disaster is to blame. What often happens during the reconstruction period following a massive disaster relief effort is that often the donations and aid offered stops matching the needs of the victims. There is a common misconception that any and all aid will be appreciated when, in fact, each recovery effort has its own unique needs. Following the devastation created by the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia, unnecessary items being shipped in as donations were actually impeding recovery efforts. An area only needs so many blankets! The generosity that underlies the donations is still admirable and a reflection on the goodness of humanity.

At a certain point in the post-relief period, questions start to arise about what caused the scale of destruction experienced by the natural disaster. This blame game isn’t new. In the before mentioned Lisbon earthquake of 1755, criticism was present after the initial relief effort was completed and recovery was well under way. Jean-Jacques Rousseau writes to Voltaire in a letter dated August 18, 1756, “Without departing from your subject of Lisbon, admit, for example, that nature did not construct twenty thousand houses of six to seven stories there, and that if the inhabitants of this great city had been more equally spread out and more lightly lodged, the damage would have been much less and perhaps of no account.” Even in the eighteenth century, urban residence patterns and housing construction trends were acknowledged as contributing to damage and casualties in a naturally occurring disaster event. Post-Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was criticized for lack of planning and coordination, and the levy maintenance was heavily scrutinized and blamed in causing an elevated death toll. Looking for someone or something to blame is part of the post-disaster recovery process that helps victims with the psychological aspects of recovery. Once those affected can find some meaning in what happened to them, they can begin to move on and to rebuild with confidence that things will be different and that they are not sitting ducks just waiting on the same event to occur again.

Disaster Relief as a Global Effort (Part I)

“We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men.”
-Herman Melville

Turning on the television this morning I was greeted with images of destruction. Images of human suffering. Images of unimaginable loss. But also, there were images of hope. Images of heroism. Images of the human spirit behaving at its best. The massive earthquake that struck Haiti last week has brought out the best in us, as we try to help those who can’t help themselves.

When disaster strikes on such a massive scale, humans band together and help each other, when under different circumstances, the problems of those same others are ignored. In the instance of Haiti, a handful of relief organizations have been active at trying to help the impoverished nation for years, but never before in Haitian history have the Haitian people had the support and sympathy of the entire world focused on them. Despite the devastating losses, Haiti stands a good chance at emerging from this disaster better than ever. The global community is helping to recreate a solid infrastructure, and people from all corners of the globe have been moved to contribute to the disaster relief effort.

As disasters have become more globalized through media, technology, and our generally increasing interconnectedness, people are beginning to pay attention to what is happening in other countries and on other continents. And the more awareness created by major disaster events, the more the international community, when welcomed, can help make like better for those affected.

This shift in global awareness has happened rapidly. Using the United States as an example, the flooding in 1998 garnered nearly no international attention, but by 2005, when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and much of the gulf coast, the international support came on a scale never before seen by Americans. The Mexican government sent aid almost immediately, and was followed with aid offers from 98 other nations and 11 International Organizations. While much of those offers of aid went uncollected, the sentiment was still the same. People wanted to help those affected by disaster.

The 21st century has ushered in an era of global communication and awareness than has never been possible before now. As globalism continues, we are likely to become more and more interdependent on one another, and more aware of difficulties, such as large scale natural disasters. People helping people is one of the great achievements of a global mass media, hopefully that spirit of altruism grows in the coming future...

The Drama of Days...

In an effort to try to pick a show that no one else will, I will reveal my little-old-lady like tendencies and do a soap opera. I grew up with a grandmother who always watched her “stories,” and so soap watching was always something that I associated with the being old (not just grown up, but old). One day, about a decade ago, I was at home on a school holiday and happened upon the premiere of NBC’s Passions. The next day, I watched again, and by day 3 I was hooked! Over the years, when I was able, I watched Passions, and quite often the last couple of minutes of the soap opera that aired before it, Days of Our Lives. By the time Passions went off the air, it seemed natural to just switch and watch the full hour of Days, and with the advent of Tivo, I don’t even have to keep my afternoons free to never miss an episode!

Days of Our Lives takes place in the fictional town of Salem, somewhere in the Midwest. As an ensemble production, the main characters are arranged in families: the Bradys, the Dimeras, the Kirakisis family, the Hortons, and a plethora of minor characters. The characters rotate through having main storyline, and each has been featured at some point during the show’s lengthy history. The main characters of the moment are Sami Brady, who is dating Rafe Hernandez, the FBI agent who protected her when she was in witness protection after having witnessed the murder of the mayor of Salem. During that ordeal, Sami was pregnant with her ex-husband, EJ Dimera’s baby, but she hid the pregnancy from him because his father is the town bad guy. Well, EJ’s wife Nicole, who was also pregnant, experienced a miscarriage and happened upon the knowledge of Sami’s hidden pregnancy. After the baby was born, she traded the baby of a teenage girl whom she met through a shady doctor with gambling problems for Sami’s baby and passed it off as her own. Sami invented a story about having adopted the baby she brought home from witness protection, and it later died of meningitis. EJ found out about the deception and thought that his baby with Sami had died. Eventually, the truth came out that Sami and EJ’s baby was the one that Nicole claimed to be hers. Nicole was arrested for the baby switch, but Sami’s half-brother, Brady, who didn’t know why Nicole was arrested bailed her out of jail, and while out, she went to the Dimera mansion and found the baby alone in the study and kidnapped her. Eventually Nicole felt remorse for the kidnapping and called home wanting to bring the baby back, but as she was on the phone with Sami, a mystery woman knocked her out from behind and kidnapped the baby. Weeks later, we learn that EJ orchestrated the kidnapping of his own child as revenge against his father for conspiring with Nicole, and Sami, whom he is still in love with and wants to separate from her current love interest. To say it is complicated is an understatement! And that is only two of the characters! There is also Bo and Hope Brady, a “power couple” that have been together since the 80s. Sometime in the 90s, Hope was kidnapped by Stefano Dimera and presumed dead, and Bo moved on with a new love, Carly. When it was revealed that Hope was still alive, Carly married another man and left Salem. And that might have been the end of it, but not on a soap. Two decades later, Bo and Hope’s daughter Cierra is kidnapped and they disagree about how to handle the demands of the kidnappers. Hope wanted to pay them off, but Bo thought they needed to follow police procedure (he is the police commissioner). Well, Hope moved out…and then Carly moved back into town. And this was after killing her husband over his threats to her daughter that she gave away years before after an affair. Her husband’s aunt Vivian, who tried to bury her alive a couple of decades ago, chased her back to Salem and wants revenge for her nephew. She found out that Carly’s daughter was in Salem and wants to kill the daughter as revenge. Problem is that daughter, Melanie, is dating Philip Kiriakis, the baby that Vivian stole as an embryo and incubated for 9 months, because she was in love with his father, Victor. Well, now she has a cozy relationship with Victor again, and is trying to be a mother to Philip (she’s a bit of a loon). So only time will tell if she will marry her “son’s” fiancé in order to get her revenge.

Obviously, this show is fiction. Thank goodness! Since it first aired in 1965, it has made some positive contributions to the destruction of sociological barriers on television. The show began as a family drama centered around the Hortons, and incorporated the hospital into much of the storylines. The show has shown tackled such heavy topics as rape, cancer, divorce, medical and psychological problems. Days of Our Lives was the first soap opera to tackle interracial marriage and artificial insemination. And they have had their share of out-there science fiction storylines. Days of Our Lives is constantly trying to create a culturally diverse cast while maintaining the “family” formula that they began with. They have recently introduced new Hispanic characters, Raphael, Arianna, and Garbriella Hernandez in an effort to be able to reach a new audience. They have also stayed current with storylines such as having a major character, Philip, join the Marines post-9/11, and be discharged from service after losing a leg in an explosion.

The show might be ground-breaking at times, but it just as easily falls into the trap of stereotyping certain groups. While I applaud their not using the African-American characters as criminals, they did create a mafia-style family with the Italian Dimera family. The Greek Kiriakis family is into shipping and running the drugs in the town (at least until they just sold that part of the business to the Dimera’s). And the Bradys, the Irish family, own a pub. But since this is a soap opera, the drama is mostly about relationships and medical issues, which are colorblind. I think it often presents women in such a manner that it seems that they are a little too co-dependent on the men in their lives, and spend an extraordinary amount of time trying to “catch” their true love, but I think it is less frightening as a teaching tool about relationships than the Twilight Saga. At least these women move on when things don’t work out, rather than sinking into severe depression.

I love this show, and all its characters. Plus, I think that it is a wonderful way to put the drama in my life into perspective. No matter how crazy things are going for me, at least I don’t have drama on the same level as these characters! And while some of the storylines might be a little heavy, I appreciate being able to watch it with my children home and not feel like I have to shield them from the TV. Too many of my other favorite programs are too violent or too sexual to watch casually in a house with kids!

Boys have Penises, Girls have Vaginas...

Well, I didn’t expect this assignment to be this hard, but I really got lost in this website. I thought it would be another boring academic site (like the ones my “other” professors send me too, not Dr. Mayeda). I was blown away by how many discriminatory images are surrounding me that I never gave a second thought about, but as soon as I saw them in this context, I was a bit upset at myself for not paying attention.

The first image that really grabbed my attention was the boys and girls versions of a medical kit toy. The boy version was to play doctor, and the girl version to play nurse. Now, I was upset. What if my daughter wanted to be a doctor? Or my son wanted to be a nurse? I know you can’t please everyone all the time, but it is definitely evidence of a larger pattern of a social gender segregation in our society.

There were dozens of examples on the “Sociological Images” website that I was able to find in a relatively short amount of time, and I am sure many others could be found without too much effort. The female-shaped flight attendant call button on airplanes, the pink hard hats in the Galls catalog, and the sexy costumes depicting male-dominated career fields…

We live in a time and place where women supposedly are able to do anything a man can do, yet there are still subtle ways that the “man” is holding women down. This example of career books for children illustrates this example perfectly. A man who goes into engineering as a career field is an engineer, but a woman pursuing the same career path is a “woman engineer.” An entirely new classification is created which creates an unfair assumption that there are differences between the two, and the difference that is most likely to be implied is that women are inferior.

And while I could easily come up with hundreds of examples of the unfair treatment of women in the workforce, the treatment of males in female-dominated career fields is equally alarming. Women can be just as discriminatory against men encroaching on their territory. When I was pregnant and delivering my oldest son, the nurse who was there when I walked in was a male student nurse who asked if he could help. The female corpsman who was present actually had the nerve to tell me that I needed to ask for a woman nurse because a man being there when a woman has a baby “ isn’t right.” What I thought wasn’t right was her trying to deny a student the chance to learn. Obviously he wasn’t there for some perverse reason; he was a professional.

And as to be expected, men harass each other for going into “female” fields. My husband is currently serving active duty in the Navy and is surrounded by manly-men who feel the need to make fun of my husband’s decision to become a nurse. My husband is tough though (a lifetime of not being into sports does that) and just laughs it off and tells them to wait until they are hurt and he can help.

It is good and well that we tell our children that they can grow up and become anything they want, but until society starts providing more options and stops ridiculing those who step into untraditional roles, it will be a long a bumpy road to true freedom of choice…

Image Sources:

http://contexts.org/socimages/2010/01/09/socialization-and-gendered-job-segregation/
http://contexts.org/socimages/2008/10/26/modifying-careers-with-woman/
http://contexts.org/socimages/2008/03/06/degendering-jobs-but-still-privileging-masculinity/

Sweet Peas for the Nursery...

I have a friend who is half-way done incubating a baby, and she has decided that she wants a gender-neutral Sweet Pea in a Pod theme for her nursery. Well, since nothing like that is currently pre-packaged and sold in a set that isn't targeted at Twins, I was hoping that I could solicit some decorating ideas.

Working with a white and sage green base, how would you make it more "pea" like? I have thought of commissioning a quilt. Making pillows. Knitting a stuffed, 12-inch pea pod. Collecting 3-4 paintings of pea pods and putting them in identical frames. Stenciling peas on the sides of the furniture. Large pea decals on the walls. But I am looking for more ideas. Please e-mail them to me if you can: Melis6680@aol.com

Sticks and Stones and Darfur...

When discrimination escalates to the fourth and fifth levels where ethnoviolence and genocide become acceptable, the civilized world needs to intervene. Institutionalized discrimination can be even scarier than bigotry by the citizenry. Had the Third Reich not made it the norm to discriminate against and then to eventually start to exterminate the Jewish population, the general populace would never have done such horrific acts of ethnoviolence on such a large scale. My grandmother who was raised in Nazi Germany went to her grave with a deep hatred of Jews that was ingrained in her as a child by the government and other institutions, such as schools, that shaped her life. It was very difficult for her to accept that Jews were not villains intent on destroying non-Jews. Thank goodness for the Allied military intervention that prevented the next generation from being raised with the same bias.

But this is not an isolated incident. Across the globe, people have been and are currently being slaughtered and abused for no other reason that being born different. This phenomenon is easily illustrated with the way jihadist Muslim groups, like Al Qaeda have been terrorizing Western civilization, particularly the United States for the past couple of decades. But the United States has the luxury of being able to use its resources to fight back. In many corners of the globe, people are being murdered by the hundreds, and can’t defend themselves. Shouldn’t the rest of the world step in and stop the bullying?

In Nazi Germany, the world intervened. In Kosovo, the UN intervened. But when the problem is at a greater (presumably safer) distance, perhaps it is easier to ignore the problem and hope it resolves itself. In addition to being geographically distant, the African interior is quite culturally distant from the Western world as well. Since the end of colonialism, the Western interest in the continent has dwindled considerably.

Plus, as my cynical husband points out, they don’t have anything we want. I would argue that they have oil, but he is right in that we are not out looking for new sources.

But shouldn’t doing the right thing be an international duty. In the Darfur region of Sudan, when men are being killed, women are being raped, and entire villages are being destroyed by the Janjaweed, shouldn’t someone step in and stop them? The Sudanese government seems impotent at dealing with the problem, and the UN seems to have gladly handed the problem over to the African Union, but the African Union is not empowered to actually go in and effect change. Since the end of 2004, the AU has been discussing the situation and they recognize that it is escalating in severity and that intervention is needed, but they are unable to stage an intervention without Western help.

Yes, a war in Darfur would be about as winnable as the one in Iraq, but that doesn’t mean that a military operation would not benefit the people and bring peace to the region if handled properly. Peace versus justice would be the main obstacle to making peace in the region. People would have to balance their need for justice with a peace that could be achieved more easily if they were willing to let some of the perpetrators of these vile actions off the hook with an immunity deal, and lesser punishments.

While it is about a different place at a different time, I think the movie, Hotel Rwanda illustrates the importance of acting now and not dragging out discussions in such matters. The director very nicely captured the sense of urgency of those people who were holding out that very moment hoping for a rescue. Why aren’t we already involved?

Who knows, maybe the United States and China could work together to bring peace to the region? China could bankroll another US-led war, and then enjoy greater access to Sudanese oil without leaving the US with a larger war debt. Just a thought. President Hu and President Obama, you guys should talk…