NSW Health Glossary of Medical Terminology for Immunisation and Vaccine Development
Great to see the Glossary of Medical Terminology for Immunisation and Vaccine Development launched, a practical and timely tool to support people to feel confident in having vaccination conversations in community languages.
Sleep Dealer
I enjoyed this episode of Tech Won’t Save Us that focuses on Alex Rivera’s work on borders, dehumanisation and technology. He’s a filmmaker and digital media artist whose films include Sleep Dealer and The Infiltrators. I first read about Sleep Dealer about a decade ago in The New Inquiry, and I’ve liked it since seeing it.
The Global Smartphone
We refer to the smartphone as the ‘Transportal Home’, since we may understand it better by thinking of it as a place within which we live, rather than as a device that we use. There are many ways in which people treat the smartphone as a domestic space.
Miller, D. et al. 2021. The Global Smartphone: Beyond a youth technology. London: UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781787359611
The Impact of a National Cash Transfer Programme on Reducing Suicide
CCT programs play an important role in poverty reduction and well-being improvement for beneficiaries. We have also demonstrated that it contributes towards reduced suicide rates. Targeting social determinants, using cash transfer programmes, could be important tools to limit suicide, predicted to rise in the aftermath of the economic recession, consequent to the Covid-19 pandemic
— Read on papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm
Astonishing findings from a study of 76 million Brazilians found the case transfers reduced suicide risk by 61% over 12 years.
Culture is Key: Towards cultural determinants-driven health policy
Important report from the Lowitja Institute , which outlines a call to action on the cultural determinants of health for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It includes the comprehensive framework below.
References
Williamson, L., Dent, P., & Bowman, N. (2021). Culture is Key: Towards cultural determinants-driven health policy. Lowitja Institute. https://www.lowitja.org.au/page/services/resources/Cultural-and-social-determinants/culture-for-health-and-wellbeing/culture-is-key-towards-cultural-determinants-driven-health-policy
The brain fog of the pandemic
An interesting article in The Guardian by Moya Sarner, describing the phenomenon of cognitive decline that many of us have experienced during the pandemic.
“There’s this sense of debilitation, of losing ordinary facility with everyday life; a forgetfulness and a kind of deskilling… a contraction of life, and an almost parallel contraction of mental capacity”
Josh Cohen, psychoanalyst
The animation that changed cinema
‘The US isn’t an option anymore’: why California’s immigrants are heading back to Mexico
“Things aren’t perfect in Mexico,” Figureo said in Spanish. But at least there’s access to healthcare, and some unemployment benefits for those who need it, he added. “In comparison to what it was in the US, the situation for us in Mexico right now is much better.”
— Read on amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/31/california-immigration-mexico-coronavirus-us
Lexical necropolitics
The theory of lexical necropolitics through which I explore this situation is based on Foucault’s view of racism as a technique of governance. After introducing Foucault’s work on racism below, I argue that the PRC, as a Han supremacist state, subordinates all minority languages, including Tibetan, to the state-mandated national language, producing annihilation anxieties and Sinophobic backlash. I then examine how certain languages are particularly impacted by this dynamic: abandoned by the state, and perceived as ‘mixed languages’ by Tibetans, these languages are targeted for elimination and their speakers subjected to everyday violence.