João Nunes

Reclaiming the political: Emancipation and critique in security studies

The critical security studies literature has been marked by a shared commitment towards the politicization of security – that is, the analysis of its assumptions, implications and the practices through which it is (re)produced. In recent years, however, politicization has been accompanied by a tendency to conceive security as connected with a logic of exclusion, totalization and even violence. This has resulted in an imbalanced politicization that weakens critique. Seeking to tackle this situation, the present article engages with contributions that have advanced emancipatory versions of security. Starting with, but going beyond, the so-called Aberystwyth School of security studies, the argument reconsiders the meaning of security as emancipation by making the case for a systematic engagement with the notions of reality and power. This revised version of security as emancipation strengthens critique by addressing political dimensions that have been underplayed in the critical security literature.

Questioning health security: Insecurity and domination in world politics

It has become common to speak of health security, but the meaning of the latter is often taken for granted. Existing engagements with this notion have been constrained by an excessive focus on national security and on the securitising efforts of elites. This has led to an increasingly sceptical outlook on the potentialities of security for making sense of, and helping to tackle, health problems. Inspired by the idea of security as emancipation, this article reconsiders the notion of health security. It takes as its starting point the concrete insecurities experienced by individuals, and engages with them by way of an analytical framework centred on the notion of domination. Domination deepens analysis by connecting individual experiences of insecurity, the social interactions through which these are given meaning, and the structures that make them possible. Domination also broadens the remit of analysis, shedding light on the multifaceted nature of insecurity. The analytical benefits of this framework are demonstrated by two examples: HIV/AIDS; and water and sanitation. The lens of domination is also shown to bring benefits for the political engagement with global health problems.

Ebola and the production of neglect in global health

Abstract This article argues that the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa reinscribed the neglect that has surrounded this disease. The argument develops theoretical tools for understanding how neglect is produced in global health. Arguing that neglect is connected with the production of harm and vulnerability, it stresses the importance of emotions in issue-prioritisation in global health. Focusing on the dynamics of abjection, the article shows how the 2014 Ebola outbreak was framed as a (racialised) African problem and obfuscated by a political and media spectacle. The result was the preference for short-term crisis-management responses that detracted from long-term structural solutions.

WHO must remain a strong global health leader post Ebola

The 2014 Ebola outbreak in west Africa has demonstrated again the urgent need for strong leadership and coordination in responding to global health challenges. As members of the global health scholarly community, we call upon all WHO Member States to recommit themselves to strengthening global outbreak alert and response by sustainably investing in the WHO, its departments, and personnel. As members of the WHO secretariat have admitted, mistakes were made in how the organisation initially responded to the 2014 Ebola outbreak. Ahead of the 68th World Health Assembly in May, 2015, the temptation will be to point fingers and use the extreme case of Ebola to justify further erosion of the WHO. The temptation might also be to divert voluntary contributions to other institutions. We firmly believe that any such measures must be approached with extreme care. In international forums, a proposal is being discussed to establish a new “first responder” UN agency, which will provide emergency operational assistance in humanitarian crises by rapidly deploying trained personnel, equipment, and supplies. While an enhanced rapid response would be beneficial, a new agency would be subject to the same vagaries of institutional funding and Member State interests in delivering its mandate. Even more importantly, these are functions that the WHO already fulfils via the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN), which maintains a roster of experts that can be deployed to assist in humanitarian disasters. The resources to create an entirely new agency would therefore be better served by strengthening the WHOs emergency response division rather than duplicating existing functions. Resources could also be more effectively used to help Member States implement the International Health Regulations (2005) via health system strengthening. An independent investigation of the WHOs handling of the 2014 Ebola outbreak is both appropriate and warranted. The investigation should focus on the structural and procedural elements of institutional practice, consider how recent funding cuts affected the WHOs ability to respond, and identify pathways to sustainable funding of the institution. The WHO can provide global health leadership that is technically informed and representative. The organisation remains a fundamental element of global health governance, and provides an indispensable service as the lead technical agency in global health. While mistakes have been made, rather than engage in the further dismantling of the WHO we call on all Member States and the international community to give the organisation the resources it needs to serve its members and the populations they represent.

A EPIDEMIA DE ZIKA E OS LIMITES DA SAÚDE GLOBAL

Zika virus was first isolated in 1947 in Uganda. If the disease has existed since then, why is it only now that there is attention from the media, science, funding agencies and national and international bodies? From the standpoint of critical global health that considers the social, political and ideological contexts which Zika is framed, we aim to analyse the Zika epidemic in four aspects: (1) investigation of the social, cultural and political processes; (2) analysis of signification practices; (3) study of neglected/silenced zones; and (4) attention to the diversity of individual experiences related to health and disease. The political tensions here identified and discussed - related to the control of neglected diseases, social, class and gender determinants - fall into dynamics, which go beyond national borders. In this sense, processes of signification and responses to the epidemic show the current limits of global health.

Marina Silva and the rise of sustainability in Brazil

In August 2014, the Brazilian political landscape was rocked by the ‘Marina phenomenon’. After the death of Eduardo Campos in an airplane accident, the presidential ticket of the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB) was assumed by Marina Silva, former Minister of Environment under Lula da Silva, former Green Party presidential candidate, and one of the founders of the political platform Rede Sustentabilidade (Sustainability Network). Spurred by popular disillusionment with the Worker’s Party (PT) and the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) – the two parties that have dominated Brazilian politics in recent decades – the PSB quickly jumped from 8% to 21% in voting intention polls. In the end, however, Silva did not reach the second round of the election and ended up supporting PSDB candidate Aécio Neves against Dilma Rousseff, the candidate of the ruling PT. What does this turn of events mean for the ideas espoused by Silva, namely her emphasis on environmental issues and sustainable development? It is too soon to declare the demise of the ‘phenomenon’ embodied by Silva. Here, we analyse the origins of Silva’s challenge to the political status quo, arguing that more important than her electoral results are the lasting implications of the sustainability discourse she espoused. This discourse not only accentuated an environment-focused cleavage previously absent from Brazilian politics but also, and perhaps more importantly, contributed to the consolidation of an overarching, sustainability-centred political challenge. This challenge goes beyond environmental issues by conjoining a diverse range of social, economic and political demands such as the reform of the political system, the fight against corruption and the control of inflation.

Visualizing primary health care : World Health Organization representations of community health workers, 1970-1989

For the World Health Organization (WHO), the 1978 Alma-Ata Declaration marked a move away from the disease-specific and technologically-focused programmes of the 1950s and 1960s towards a reimagined strategy to provide ‘Health for All by the Year 2000’. This new approach was centred on primary health care, a vision based on acceptable methods and appropriate technologies, devised in collaboration with communities and dependent on their full participation. Since 1948, the WHO had used mass communications strategies to publicise its initiatives and shape public attitudes, and the policy shift in the 1970s required a new visual strategy. In this context, community health workers (CHWs) played a central role as key visual identifiers of Health for All. This article examines a period of picturing and public information work on the part of the WHO regarding CHWs. It sets out to understand how the visual politics of the WHO changed to accommodate PHC as a new priority programme from the 1970s onwards. The argument tracks attempts to define CHWs and examines the techniques employed by the WHO during the 1970s and early 1980s to promote the concept to different audiences around the world. It then moves to explore how the process was evaluated, as well as the difficulties in procuring fresh imagery. Finally, the article traces these representations through the 1980s, when community approaches came under sustained pressure from external and internal factors and imagery took on the supplementary role of defending the concept.

Structure of 4-(Dimethylamino)benzonitrile Using Gas Electron Diffraction: A New Lease of Life for the Only Gas Electron Diffractometer in the U.K.

The continued demand for gas-phase molecular structures has led to the recommissioning of a gas electron diffractometer, formerly housed at the University of Reading. The gas electron diffractometer, now the only one of its kind in the U.K., is currently housed at the University of York, where it is now used routinely to determine directly structures of isolated molecules in the gas phase. The instrument has been fitted with an air-heated nozzle assembly to increase the range of molecules accessible to study in the gas phase; the efficacy of this assembly is demonstrated in this article via the determination of the gas-phase structure of 4-(dimethylamino)benzonitrile (DMABN) at high temperature. A series of complementary theoretical calculations using the B2PLYP DFT functional of Grimme et al. with correlation-consistent basis sets of double, triple, and quadruple-ζ quality are also presented. The agreement between the experimental and theoretical structural parameters attests to the accuracy of the applied theoretical calculations and of our gas-phase structural solution.

A computational analysis of the apparent nido vs. hypho conflict

A series of computational studies have been undertaken to investigate the electronic structures and bonding schemes for six hetero-substituted borane cages, all of which have been presented in the literature as potential hypho structures. The six species are hypho-7,8-[C2B6H13](-) (1a), hypho-7,8-[CSB6H11](-) (1b), hypho-7,8-[S2B6H9](-) (1c), hypho-7,8-[NSB6H11] (1d), exo-7-Me-hypho-7,8-[NCB6H12] (1e), and endo-7-Me-hypho-7,8-[NCB6H12] (1f) and the so-called mno rule has been applied to each of them. As no structural data are known for the carbathia-, azathia-, and dithiahexaboranes, we have also applied the ab initio/GIAO/NMR structural tool for 1b-1d, with 1c having been prepared for this purpose. We conclude that an mno count of 10 means that 1a, 1b, 1d, 1e, and 1f should be termed pseudo-nido or pseudo-hypho. Only 1c can be considered to be correctly termed hypho-7,8-[S2B6H9](-).

What can security do for food? Lessons from Brazil

What are the analytical benefits of using the security vocabulary when addressing issues of human well-being? And to what extent can a security framing of these issues be useful in the normative and political sense – that is, when making judgements about existing policies and when formulating and implementing alternative ones? This article uses the case of food security to engage with these questions. It argues for a shift away from conceptual fine-tuning of what food security should mean and towards an appreciation of how security functions as a political modality. Whilst acknowledging that this modality can work to encourage international conflict, enable governmental control and empower global capitalism, the idea that security has an inherent logic which denies progressive politics is refuted. Drawing on the idea of emancipation in critical security studies, and applying it to empirical examples from contemporary Brazil, it is shown how food security can help expedite action to address harm and vulnerability, reinforce the public sphere and widen the scope of social concern.