This month’s web roundup highlights two issues that have been in the news this November: Hurricane Sandy relief, and marijuana legalization. Both topics offer resonances with medical anthropology. At the end of the post, you’ll also find a list of articles on broader topics of interest to Somatosphere readers. Happy thanksgiving travel reading, everyone!
Hurricane Sandy relief
The concept …
Tracking AIDS Conference 2012
“Overwhelming” was the common descriptor for AIDS 2012 from delegates who I encountered, as well as those reflecting upon the conference on-line. With 23-25,000 attendees, and between the events, constituencies, protests, networking, and the literature and other material passed out, it proved difficult to find anchors at this five-day gathering. Despite this, there were particular ideas …
Broadsheets will keep track of and report on the International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2012) in Washington D.C. between July 22-27. Reports will rely upon the chatter around the venue, and circulating news in social and popular on-line media. We will specifically pay attention to the presence of the organizations whose websites we have been tracking.
Starting with them, tracked sites …
“The will to live, to be healthy, to return to the security of the kingdom of the well, is unspeakably powerful. In Canada, we have seen this collectively expressed by the masses of people afflicted with multiple sclerosis, who are demanding access to a controversial and experimental treatment developed by an Italian doctor” (Stern, September 10, 2010:A15).
In 2009, …
In 1989, a well-timed visitor to the Soviet Union could bear witness to a very peculiar mass phenomenon. Public spaces would suddenly empty out—adults rushed home from work without so much as checking out what was on offer in the neighborhood store, children abandoned their games in the street, and the elderly women that occupied the benches outside virtually every …
I am not afraid to confess feeling swept, against my will, into the whirlpool of news coverage from Zuccotti Park. To begin with, initial media reports on Occupy Wall Street seemed almost proudly negligent in their characterizations of protesters’ manifold and serious grievances with the state of this country. While New York Times protest reporters N.R. Kleinfeld and Cara Buckley …