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To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2006.06.002 Byline: Eric D. Carter Abstract: This study traces the evolution of social-environmental models of malaria control in Northwest Argentina. Beginning in the 1890s, the rationale for malaria control hinged on a narrative that placed malaria as the root cause of the Northwest's chronic backwardness. Insalubrious rural and urban landscapes, underutilized agricultural potential, unproductive labor, and even racial decay were all bound together as a public health problem. The framework for understanding malaria in the environment was derived from miasmatic theory and medical geography, anchoring the disease firmly in particular landscapes. Wetlands, representing both economic waste and a public health hazard, were singled out as targets for reclamation. Thus 'environmental sanitation' techniques, especially wetland drainage, became the preferred strategy for the federal government's malaria campaign, initiated in 1907. The 'socio-ecological' orientation of the Italian malaria campaign under Fascism, in which large-scale wetland reclamation for malaria control seemed to produce a comprehensive transformation of rural land and life, had a strong influence in Argentina, further entrenching environmental sanitation methods. By the 1930s, however, it became apparent that Italy's wetlands served poorly as landscape analogues for Argentina's Northwest. In particular, the main mosquito vector in the region turned out not to be a stereotypical 'swamp breeder,' rendering pointless most wetland drainage efforts. A counter-model, which adopted the framework of ecological science, proved to be more sensitive to the behaviors and microenvironments of different mosquito species, while disentangling malaria control from the broader and mostly unrealistic social development goals of the older model. Author Affiliation: Geography Department, Millersville University of Pennsylvania, PO Box 1002, Millersville, PA 17551-0302, USA

The mosquito-borne arboviral diseases dengue, chikungunya, and Zika are major public health burdens in Latin America. To analyze the socio-environmental dynamics of these diseases, we apply a political ecology of health and disease framework that is attentive to local etiological frameworks, structural sociopolitical conditions, processes of identity construction, and the contested, politicized nature of public health work. We use multiple qualitative methods to analyze perceptions and interactions with the local environment in relation to mosquito-borne disease across three small communities in Manabí Province, Ecuador. We find that participants' perceptions and practices are complex and multilayered: subjects possess a mixed theory of causation, where these diseases are caused not only by mosquitoes, but also by people's interactions with a changing environment; most environmental management to control vector mosquitoes is carried out informally by women as part of domestic routines; and contrary to public health messaging that stresses the importance of individual agency, participants prefer some of the most invasive techniques for mosquito control (i.e. fumigation with insecticides). However, individual agency in disease control is constrained by poor water infrastructure and lack of public health coordination. Our approach advocates for recognition of local knowledges and sociopolitical constraints in the development of public health messages and interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Covid-19 pandemic has stimulated new appraisals of how social cohesion, including neighborhood-level social capital, fosters resilience in the face of crisis. Several studies suggest better health outcomes in neighborhoods with higher level of social capital, in general and during the pandemic. Building on a growing body of research which suggests that those who live in close-knit neighborhoods have fared better during the pandemic, this article analyzes how social capital influences individual and collective perceptions and attitudes about the experiences of the Covid-19 pandemic in Tucumán, Argentina. To assess this question, we used a mixed-methods approach, combining focus groups, semi-structured interviews, and an online survey (n = 701 respondents) conducted in September 2021. We find widespread experiences of resilience in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, in spite of difficult socioeconomic conditions and perceived poor government performance. Results from logistic regression analysis indicate that perceptions of high neighborhood social capital are associated with more positive outcomes in many dimensions, including personal resilience, ability to cope with uncertainty, perceptions of community solidarity, and reported compliance with public health measures. We further argue that conceptualizations of social cohesion need to be adjusted to local or national-level cultural norms to accurately capture the experience of countries of the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the ideological and political origins of a place-based and commercial health promotion effort, the Blue Zones Project (BZP), launched in Iowa in 2011. Through critical discourse analysis, I argue that the BZP does reflect a neoliberalization of public health, but as an “actually existing neoliberalism” it emerges from a specific policy context, including dramatic health sector policy changes due to the national Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare; a media discourse of health crisis for an aging Midwestern population; and an effort to refashion Iowa cities as sites of healthy and active living, to retain and attract a creative class of young entrepreneurs. The BZP employs many well-known mechanisms of neoliberal governance: the public-private partnership; competition among communities for “public” funds; promotion of an apolitical discourse on individual responsibility and ownership of health; decentralizing governance to the “community” level; and marketing, branding, and corporate sponsorship of public projects. The BZP exemplifies the process of “neoliberal governmentality,” by which individuals learn to govern themselves and their “life projects” in line with a market-based rationality. However, with its emphasis on “nudging” individuals towards healthy behaviors through small changes in the local environment, the BZP reflects the rise of “libertarian paternalism,” a variant of neoliberalism, as a dominant ideology underlying contemporary health promotion efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Recently, geographers and other scholars have reappraised the state’s spatial properties, roles, and strategies. According to these interpretations, modern states seek to control their subjects and coordinate economic development through various “rational” and “scientific” strategies that involve the standardization, transformation, and bureaucratization of space, territory, and landscape. Through this process social relations are increasingly configured through state discourses and institutions. The role of public health institutions in the development of state spatialities has been relatively underappreciated. This paper explores the establishment and early action of a malaria control campaign in Northwest Argentina, in the early twentieth century. I make three arguments: first, in creating a malaria control program, the Argentine state did not merely respond to a given “social fact” but rather was the key participant in constructing the “malaria problem”. Second, in response to this problem the Argentine state created a new technical-administrative territory, “the malarious zone”, which encompassed several provinces and defined the federal government’s jurisdiction for public health action. Finally, state actors came to understand the malaria problem, and potential solutions to it, through specific “rational” practices of the modern state: surveying, mapping, measurement, and statistical compilation. In its early years, the malaria campaign did not so much control the disease itself, as much as establish control over the “malaria question”, making it indisputably a state project. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]