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Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor

Pathologies of Power delves into the complex relationship between health and human rights, analyzing the effects of societal policies on vulnerable populations. The author critically assesses the challenges faced by the poor in accessing healthcare and the broader implications of power imbalances in these areas. more

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Paul Farmer
Paul Farmer

Paul Farmer is an American medical anthropologist born on October 26, 1959. He has had a profound impact in the field of global health, particularly in the research and policy of tropical diseases and public health. Farmer is known for his work in providing medical services and advocating for social justice in impoverished areas. more

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“The poor are almost fashionable. And this idea of intermediate technology has become an aspect of that fashion. The cult in India centres on the bullock cart. The bullock cart is not to be eliminate; after three thousand or more backward years Indian intermediate technology will now improve the bullock cart. 'Do you know,' someone said to me in Delhi, 'that the investment in bullock carts is equivalent to the total investment in the railways?' I had always had my doubts about bullock carts; but I didn't know until then that they were not cheap, were really quite expensive, more expensive than many second-hand cars in England, and that only richer peasants could afford them. It seemed to me a great waste, the kind of waste that poverty perpetuates. But I was glad I didn't speak, because the man who was giving me these statistics went on: 'Now, if we could improve the performance of the bullock cart by ten per cent ...' What did it mean, improving the performance by ten per cent? Greater speed, bigger loads? Were there bigger loads to carry? These were not the questions to ask, though. Intermediate technology had decided that the bullock cart was to be improved. Metal axles, bearings, rubber tyres? But wouldn't that make the carts even more expensive? Wouldn't it take generations, and a lot of money, to introduce these improvements? And, having got so far, mighn't it be better to go just a little further and introduce some harmless little engine? Shouldn't intermediate technology be concentrating on harmless little engines capable of short journeys bullock carts usually make?”

PovertyTechnologyDevelopmentIndiaInnovation
Book:India: A Wounded Civilization
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“Writing a decade later, in the essay 'Experience and Poverty' of 1933, Benjamin, unsurprisingly, saw the phenomenon differently: 'A generation that had gone to school in horse-drawn streetcars now stood in the open air, amid a landscape in which nothing was the same except the clouds and, at its center, in a force field of destructive torrents and explosions, the tiny, fragile human body. With this tremendous development of technology, a completely new poverty has descended on humankind. And the reverse side of this poverty is the oppressive wealth of ideas that has been spread among people, or rather has swamped them entirely - ideas that have come with the revival of astrology and the wisdom of yoga, Christian Science and chiromancy, vegetarianism and gnosis, scholasticism and spiritualism. For this is not a genuine revival but a galvanization.' If Kracauer maintains the idealist notion that 'concrete communal forms' might arise as the reflection of ideas emanating from a generalized national spirit, Benjamin suggests that the unceasing profusion of this 'wealth of ideas' would actually 'swamp' people - and that a new experiential poverty or constructive divestiture is actually the only appropriate response to the times.”

IdeasWealthPovertyTechnologyModernityDivestiture
Book:Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life
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