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Studies of vulnerability often focus on the differential susceptibility of marginalised groups to the effects of disaster. This paper considers how vulnerability is also associated with the characteristics of place, especially the social setting of the informal settlement. In this light, it assesses specifically how cultural, historical, and political economic forces resulted in increased vulnerability to Ebola virus disease (EVD) within informal settlements in Sierra Leone during the epidemic of 2014–16. Key informant and community member interviews and focus‐group discussions in two communities revealed that increased vulnerability to EVD could, at least in part, be attributed to a set of place‐based social factors pertaining to 'community beliefs and practices' (importance of family ties, funeral rites, traditional healing) and 'structural poverty and low socioeconomic status' (poor healthcare provision, mobility patterns, overcrowding). Together, these different factors demonstrate how multiple and intersecting vulnerabilities contribute to the spatial production of disease risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's views on his works as a disciplined sociologist with reference to the future of sociological theory. Topics discussed include his works in the faculty of Environmental Studies at York University, importance of social theory and pedagogical perspective on sociological theory.

The scholarship of Frantz Fanon has been recognized across numerous disciplines as a unique and necessary intervention for critical analyses of the (post)colonial condition. Yet, thus far, his oeuvre has largely been ignored in global health research. In this article we introduce and demonstrate the relevance of Fanon's work for the field of global health. To illustrate, we draw from Fanon's conceptual framework and observations to analyze the 2014–16 Ebola Virus Disease outbreak response in West Africa. During this Ebola epidemic, although not necessarily as widespread as Western media made it seem, numerous instances of "resistance"—sometimes violent—were levied by members of the community toward foreign outbreak response teams. In this article, we argue that the keen insights proffered by Fanon more than half a century ago help facilitate a deeper understanding of some of the reactions of community members and public health officials during the Ebola response. In calling attention to colonial histories and structural relations of power, poverty, and violence, Fanon's work can help us to effectively move towards "decolonizing" global health interventions, thus providing a framework with which to better understand and more humanely intervene in future epidemic outbreaks in the Global South. • Introduces Frantz Fanon's scholarship to the field of global health. • Demonstrates the effectiveness of Fanon's work in "decolonizing" global health. • Uses the West African Ebola Virus to explore (post)colonial power relations. • Considers colonialism's impact on (dis)trust, resistance, rumors, poverty, healthcare. • Fanon's work provides a framework for understanding epidemics in the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mobility that is associated with homelessness creates various challenges to those endeavouring to contain a tuberculosis outbreak or otherwise manage the disease. It is argued that one important dimension missing from current tuberculosis management initiatives is an understanding of how the larger social context influences the mobility of the homeless and creates conditions that are conducive to the spread of this disease. I address this relationship by situating the experiences of the homeless in Toronto within a broader discussion of agency, structure, and the regulatory politics of mobility and place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prejudicial linking of infection with ethnic minority status has a long-established history, but in some ways this association may have intensified under the contemporary circumstances of the "new public health" and globalization. This study analyzes this conflation of ethnicity and disease victimization by considering the stigmatization process that occurred during the 2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in Toronto. The attribution of stigma during the SARS outbreak occurred in multiple and overlapping ways informed by: (i) the depiction of images of individuals donning respiratory masks; (ii) employment status in the health sector; and (iii) Asian-Canadian and Chinese-Canadian ethnicity. In turn, stigmatization during the SARS crisis facilitated a moral panic of sorts in which racism at a cultural level was expressed and rationalized on the basis of a rhetoric of the new public health and anti-globalization sentiments. With the former, an emphasis on individualized self-protection, in the health sense, justified the generalized avoidance of those stigmatized. In relation to the latter, in the post-9/11 era, avoidance of the stigmatized other was legitimized on the basis of perceiving the SARS threat as a consequence of the mixing of different people predicated by economic and cultural globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in Toronto and other cities in 2003 showed a heightened sensitivity of places in the global economy to rapid changes brought on by the acceleration of social and ecological relationships. The spread of the SARS virus may be a predictable consequence of these processes. The paper investigates how processes of globalisation have affected the transmission and response to SARS within the context of the global cities network. Little work has been done on the relationship of global city formation and the spread of infectious disease. Arguing that this relationship may be central to understanding the intricate capillary structures of the globalised network, the paper focuses on how pathogens interact with economic, political and social factors. These relationships exist both in the network and in global cities themselves, thereby posing new issues for public health and epidemiological efforts at disease containment and tracking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The socio-political context of modern environmental health disasters tends to be defined as being outside the scope of official public health and epidemiological investigations into the causes of such disasters. On the other hand, popular accounts of these disasters tend to focus exclusively on the role of particular individuals and/or political actors, while minimizing the role of ecological factors. It is argued that an exclusive focus on either set of causal factors gives an incomplete or distorted picture of the origins of an environmental health disaster. In this paper, a socio-ecological analysis is developed to demonstrate how the largest outbreak of waterborne E. coli O157:H7 in Canadian history was the emergent product of a complex interplay and intertwining of social and ecological processes. The socio-ecological autopsy approach that is developed here traces the social and ecological chain of events that ultimately led to the outbreak and demonstrates, in particular, the need for investigative analysis to focus on the socio-ecological “incubation” of an environmental health disaster. Drawing from both the social sciences (particularly, the sociology of disasters and organizational sociology), and from the ecological sciences (particularly disease ecology), the analysis developed here responds to the call for the application of a more transdisciplinary approach to the study of contemporary environmental health problems. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The case of a large toxic fire occurring at the Plastimet plastics recycling facility in Hamilton. Ontario is used as an empirical referent to investigate the structural origins involved in the incubation of a technological disaster. Hamilton is known as the "recycling center of Canada," and this paper examines the role of the broader socio-historical forces that led to this development and then relates this to the general issue of how specialized communities with a narrow economic base may become particularly vulnerable to the onset of technological disasters. As such, a political economy of place is developed to help understand how historically based regulatory, industrial, political, economic and social processes may interact in a complex manner to produce devastating results. Specifically, this paper identifies and discusses several particularly important features involved in disaster incubation, including: (i) a lax regulatory and enforcement framework related to land use, as well as, building and property codes at the local level: (ii) a legal loophole in the regulatory policy that governs materials recycling: (iii) the market dynamics of materials recycling: (iv) the transformation of spatial fix; and most notably, (v) the deviant industrial practice of "sham recycling." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A social construction perspective is applied in the analysis of the risk management controversies that arose in response to a large toxic fire that occurred at a Hamilton, Ontario plastics recycling facility. By focussing on the claimsmaking processes involved in the interaction of government officials, environmental movement actors, technical experts, and residents, it was found that an overly narrow focus on technical matters led to the exclusion of lay concerns based on cultural rationality, thereby resulting in a very contentious and divisive setting for interaction. Implications of the empirical findings for the risk society thesis and risk communication theory are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines how environmental risk factors were examined in the search for a landfill site conducted in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. Challenges in locating a landfill site; Discussion of the risk-society perspective on environmental protection; Overview of the Guelph Landfill Search Process (GLSP); Criteria used to identify potential landfill sites in the GLSP; Importance of environmental protection in waste management policies.

The article provides some lessons learned from the 2003 SARS outbreak in Toronto, Ontario. The first lesson learned is that the world is a single entity. The geography of globalization is a geography of disease. The outbreak of diseases reflects and reveals the economic, cultural and social relations that span the globe. Second, people need to understand and accept the diversification of health governance. Third, the outbreak of SARS affected multiculturalism.

This paper argues that contemporary processes of extended urbanisation, which include suburbanisation, post-suburbanisation and peri-urbanisation, may result in increased vulnerability to infectious disease spread. Through a review of existing literature at the nexus of urbanisation and infectious disease, we consider how this (potential) increased vulnerability to infectious diseases in peri- or suburban areas is in fact dialectically related to socio-material transformations on the metropolitan edge. In particular, we highlight three key factors influencing the spread of infectious disease that have been identified in the literature: demographic change, infrastructure and governance. These have been chosen given both the prominence of these themes and their role in shaping the spread of disease on the urban edge. Further, we suggest how a landscape political ecology framework can be useful for examining the role of socio-ecological transformations in generating increased risk of infectious disease in peri- and suburban areas. To illustrate our arguments we will draw upon examples from various re-emerging infectious disease events and outbreaks around the world to reveal how extended urbanisation in the broadest sense has amplified the conditions necessary for the spread of infectious diseases. We thus call for future research on the spatialities of health and disease to pay attention to how variegated patterns of extended urbanisation may influence possible outbreaks and the mechanisms through which such risks can be alleviated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on findings from focus groups and key informant interviews conducted at five sites in Liberia between 2018 and 2019, we explore some of the key factors that influenced people's motivation to travel during the 2014–2016 Ebola Virus Disease (EVD). We discuss how these factors led to certain mobility patterns and the implications these had for EVD response. The reasons for individual mobility during the epidemic were multiple and diverse. Some movements were related to relocation efforts as people attempted to extricate themselves from stigmatizing situations. Others were motivated by fear, convinced that other communities would be safer, particularly if extended family members resided there. Individuals also felt compelled to travel during the epidemic to meet other needs and obligations, such as attending burial rites. Some expressed concerns about obtaining food and earning a livelihood. Notably, these latter concerns served as an impetus to travel surreptitiously to evade quarantine directives aimed specifically at restricting mobility. Improvements in future infectious disease response could be made by incorporating contextually-based mobility factors, for example: the personalization of public health messaging through the recruitment of family members and trusted local leaders, to convey information that would help allay fear and combat stigmatization; activating existing traditional community surveillance systems in which entry into the community must first be approved by the community chief; and increased involvement of local leaders and community members in the provision of food and care to those quarantined so that the need to travel for these reasons is removed. Author summary: Human mobility is an important element of infectious disease outbreaks, both in terms of its spread and control. Understanding and dealing with the complex issue of human mobility warrants serious consideration in efforts to limit the spread of the disease. For these and other reasons, public health responses to infectious disease outbreaks must first be predicated upon a firm understanding of the contextual issues surrounding human movement and agency, especially those pertaining to the social, cultural and political-economic dimensions involved. Focus groups and key informant interviews conducted at five sites in Liberia in 2018/19 offered insight into the reasons people gave to account for their movements during the 2014/16 EVD outbreaks. Based on the understanding of mobility we gained from this study, we recommend that infectious disease response could be improved through the personalizing of public health messaging through the recruitment of family members and trusted local leaders to convey information that would help allay fear and combat stigmatization; activating existing traditional community surveillance systems in which entry into the community must first be approved by the community chief; and increased involvement of local leaders and community members in the provision of food and care to those quarantined so that the need to travel for these reasons is removed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]