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Slums and informal settlements have long been a policy concern, particularly in post-independence cities of the global South. Although national and local governments devise public policy seeking to address these habitations, these policy initiatives occur in conversation with the often far less visible global policy discourses of international urban development actors. Positing their ideational influence, this study analyses how global discourses from key multilateral agencies and donors have framed the problem of slums and informal settlements over time, to uncover assumptions and biases that ideationally, if indirectly, contribute to urban inequality, marginalization and socio-spatial othering in the city.

This working paper is the product of the Living Off-Grid Food and Infrastructure Collaboration. It is designed to bring together our thinking on how infrastructure can shape the food and nutritional security of urban marginalised populations. Infrastructure assemblages include the material (physical and technological), as well as the political and systemic factors that ‘govern’ how infrastructure is developed and used. Urban food systems are made up of public and private actors, and market and governance processes that shape the cost and availability of food in different urban contexts. At the intersection of urban food systems and infrastructure assemblages lies the food and nutrition security of urban dwellers. The framing of contemporary debates and policy priorities with respect to both nutrition and infrastructure are heavily conditioned by presumptions – in favour of formality and griddedness, for example, or of the need to raise agricultural productivity – which fail to reflect the reality of marginalised communities in Southern cities. For these communities, their experience is one of hybridity, with formal and informal infrastructures and economies central to their lives and livelihoods. These hybrid arrangements are imbued with power structures and socio-political dynamics that are context specific and further condition communities’ experiences. Together, these are the factors that condition or shape the possibilities for individuals and households pursuing different food strategies. However, there is a failure to reflect this reality in the conceptualisation of infrastructure challenges, leading to unworkable solutions and policies that end up perpetuating problems. There is an urgent need to reframe problematic assumptions, starting first and foremost from the entry point of urban informal settlements in the global South. By taking food as a lens in this process, we illuminate these contexts, and how they relate to hybrid infrastructure arrangements and potential alternatives. This reformulation is vital at this critical juncture, when Southern cities need infrastructure development that meets the needs of rapidly changing demographics without locking cities and nations into unsustainable pathways.

In epidemic preparedness and response, it is now commonly accepted that insights from social science disciplines are important in shaping action. Unfortunately, the role of social science is often confined to risk communication and community engagement (RCCE) efforts. In this article, we propose an analytical framework that would allow researchers and practitioners from different disciplines to employ social science insights to enrich their understanding of epidemics and formulate more effective and sustainable responses. The framework goes beyond simply unpacking social, political, economic and cultural dimensions of context; it situates disease itself – as it is shaped by the contexts in which it circulates – and views it in dynamic relation to response. It also explores how different individuals, social groups and institutions shift their knowledge and practices during an epidemic through power-laden processes of dialogue and learning, or even through silencing and side-lining. It is our hope that this framework will enable responders to engage more deeply and systematically with the contexts of emergencies, so as to ensure activities are more adaptive to local dynamics.

Childhood obesity is a growing global challenge, and no country has yet reversed the upward trend in prevalence. The causes are multifaceted, spanning individual, societal, environmental, and political spheres. This makes finding solutions complex as traditional linear models of treatment and effect have proven only minimally successful or unfeasible at the population level. There is also a paucity of evidence of what works, and few examples of intervention that operate on a ‘whole systems’ level. The city of Brighton in the United Kingdom has experienced a downward trend in child obesity rates compared to national figures. The aim of this study was to explore what has led to successful change in the city. This was done through a review of local data, policy and programs, and thirteen key informant interviews with key stakeholders involved in the local food and healthy weight agenda. Our findings highlight key mechanisms that have plausibly contributed to a supportive environment for obesity reduction in Brighton according to key local policy and civil society actors. These mechanisms include; a commitment to early years intervention such as breastfeeding promotion; a supportive local political context; the ability to tailor interventions to community needs; governance structures and capacity that enable cross-sectoral collaboration; and a citywide framing of obesity solutions in the context of a ‘whole system’ approach. However, substantial inequalities persist in the city. Engaging families in areas of high deprivation and operating in an increasingly difficult context of national austerity are persistent challenges. This case study sheds light on some mechanisms of what a whole systems approach to obesity looks like in practice in a local context. This is of relevance to both policymakers and healthy weight practitioners across a spectrum of sectors who need to be engaged to tackle child obesity.

The cost of the Covid-19 pandemic remains unknown. Lives directly lost to the disease continue to mount, while related health, livelihood and wellbeing impacts are still being felt, and the wider ramifications across society, politics and the economy are yet to fully materialise. What is known about these costs though, is that they have been unequally distributed both within and between countries. Preparedness plans proved inadequate in many settings – especially when it came to protecting those most vulnerable, including those marginalised by geography, poverty, or exclusion along the lines of religion, ethnicity or gender. The top-down, surge-style, biomedically dominated and technologically driven preparedness approach that has dominated global health thinking and which was propelled into action with Covid-19 was found wanting not only on the grounds of effectiveness, but also of social justice. This presents both a challenge and an opportunity for a convergence of the preparedness and development agendas. Drawing on a growing body of social science evidence, this report contends that securing health in the face of today’s uncertain disease threats in often unpredictable settings means making social, economic and political priorities as core to the preparedness agenda as biological and technological ones. We present here a framework for a vision of pandemic preparedness for the real world – one that accepts that context is paramount, embraces inclusivity and justice, shifts power centres and rejects simplistic, one-size-fits-all solutions.

This paper argues for a rethinking of disease preparedness that puts incertitude and the politics of knowledge at the centre. Through examining the experiences of Ebola, Nipah, cholera and COVID-19 across multiple settings, the limitations of current approaches are highlighted. Conventional approaches assume a controllable, predictable future, which is responded to by a range of standard interventions. Such emergency preparedness planning approaches assume risk - where future outcomes can be predicted - and fail to address uncertainty, ambiguity and ignorance - where outcomes or their probabilities are unknown. Through examining the experiences of outbreak planning and response across the four cases, the paper argues for an approach that highlights the politics of knowledge, the constructions of time and space, the requirements for institutions and administrations and the challenges of ethics and justice. Embracing incertitude in disease preparedness responses therefore means making contextual social, political and cultural dimensions central.

The Myanmar Pig Partnership piloted two approaches to farmer training in Yangon Region: one participatory, one more advisory. The work offers useful practical advice which can help inform further initiatives. It also highlights the limitations training interventions alone offer.

Pilot research findings from the Myanmar Pig Partnership show increasing antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in pig farming in Yangon Region, Myanmar. They highlight challenges in AMR awareness, antibiotic use and disease prevention relating to farmers, slaughterhouse workers, vets and others in the pig meat supply chain. Decision makers need to consider these challenges at all levels.

Research findings reveal that disease-causing bacteria, including Salmonella, are widespread on pig farms of all sizes in Yangon Region, Myanmar, as well as in pig meat sold to consumers in the city and rural areas. This evidence provides a snapshot of how intensification in pig production can affect food safety – and points to potential responses.

The UN Security Council's response to Ebola in 2014 legitimised militarised responses. It also influenced responses to COVID-19 in some African countries. Yet, little is known about the day-to-day impacts for ordinary citizens of mobilising armies for epidemic control. Drawing on 18 months ethnographic research, this article analyses militarised responses to COVID-19 during, and following, two lockdowns at contrasting sites in Uganda: a small town in Pakwach district and a village in Kasese district. Both field sites lie close to the border of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Although the practice of health security varied between sites, the militarised response had more impact than the disease in these two places. The armed forces scaled back movement from urban conurbations to rural and peri-urban areas; while simultaneously enabling locally based official public authorities to use the proclaimed priorities of President Museveni's government to enhance their position and power. This led to a situation whereby inhabitants created new modes of mutuality to resist or subvert the regulations being enforced, including the establishment of new forms of cross-border movement. These findings problematise the widely held view that Uganda's response to COVID-19 was successful. Overall, it is argued that the on-going securitisation of global health has helped to create the political space to militarise the response. While this has had unknown effects on the prevalence of COVID-19, it has entrenched unaccountable modes of public authority and created a heightened sense of insecurity on the ground. The tendency to condone the violent practice of militarised public health programmes by international and national actors reflects a broader shift in the acceptance of more authoritarian forms of governance.

International audience; Global debates about vaccines as a key element of pandemic response and future preparedness in the era of Covid-19 currently focus on questions of supply, with attention to global injustice in vaccine distribution and African countries as rightful beneficiaries of international de-regulation and financing initiatives such as COVAX. At the same time, vaccine demand and uptake are seen to be threatened by hesitancy, often attributed to an increasingly globalised anti-vaxx movement and its propagation of misinformation and conspiracy, now reaching African populations through a social media ‘infodemic’. Underplayed in these debates are the socio-political contexts through which vaccine technologies enter and are interpreted within African settings, and the crucial intersections between supply and demand. We explore these through a ‘vaccine anxieties’ framework attending to both desires for and worries about vaccines, as shaped by bodily, societal and wider political understandings and experiences. This provides an analytical lens to organise and interpret ethnographic and narrative accounts in local and national settings in Uganda and Sierra Leone, and their (dis)connections with global debates and geopolitics. In considering the socially-embedded reasons why people want or do not want Covid-19 vaccines, and how this intersects with the dynamics of vaccine supply, access and distribution in rapidly-unfolding epidemic situations, we bring new, expanded insights into debates about vaccine confidence and vaccine preparedness.

International audience; This article shares findings on COVID-19 in Africa across 2020 to examine concepts and practices of epidemic preparedness and response. Amidst uncertainties about the trajectory of COVID-19, the stages of emergency response emerge in practice as interconnected. We illustrate how complex dynamics manifest as diverse actors interpret and modify approaches according to contexts and experiences. We suggest that the concept of "intersecting precarities" best captures the temporalities at stake; that these precarities include the effects of epidemic control measures; and that people do not just accept but actively negotiate these intersections as they seek to sustain their lives and livelihoods.