Dilemmas in Mutual Aid: Lessons for Crisis Informatics from an Emergent Community Response to the Pandemic

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has exposed the wide gaps in South Africa’s formal social safety net, with the country’s high levels of inequality, unemployment and poor public infrastructure combining to produce devastating consequences for a vast majority in the country living through lockdown. In Cape Town, a movement of self-organising, neighbourhood-level community action networks (CANs) has contributed significantly to the community-based response to COVID-19 and the ensuing epidemiological and social challenges it has wrought. This article describes and explains the organising principles that inform this community response, with the view to reflect on the possibilities and limits of such movements as they interface with the state and its top-down ways of working, often producing contradictions and complexities. This presents an opportunity for recognising and understanding the power of informal networks and collective action in community health systems in times of unprecedented crisis, and brings into focus the importance of finding ways to engage with the state and its formal health system response that do not jeopardise this potential.

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Unknown and Under-Researched: The Anatomy of Drinking Under Control Programs

SUCHT - Zeitschrift für Wissenschaft und Praxis / Journal of Addiction Research and Practice ◽

10.1024/0939-5911/a000504 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 63 (5) ◽

pp. 277-288

Author(s):

Harald Klingemann ◽

Justyna Klingemann

Keyword(s):

Quality Of Life ◽

Harm Reduction ◽

Evaluation Studies ◽

Mission Statements ◽

Community Response ◽

Limited Resources ◽

Admission Criteria ◽

Control Programs ◽

Institutional Order

Abstract. Introduction: While alcohol treatment predominantly focuses on abstinence, drug treatment objectives include a variety of outcomes related to consumption and quality of life. Consequently harm reduction programs tackling psychoactive substances are well documented and accepted by practitioners, whereas harm reduction programs tackling alcohol are under-researched and met with resistance. Method: The paper is mainly based on key-person interviews with eight program providers conducted in Switzerland in 2009 and up-dated in 2015, and the analysis of reports and mission statements to establish an inventory and description of drinking under control programs (DUCPs). A recent twin program in Amsterdam and Essen was included to exemplify conditions impeding their implementation. Firstly, a typology based on the type of alcohol management, the provided support and admission criteria is developed, complemented by a detailed description of their functioning in practice. Secondly, the case studies are analyzed in terms of factors promoting and impeding the implementation of DUCPs and efforts of legitimize them and assess their success. Results: Residential and non-residential DUCPs show high diversity and pursue individualized approaches as the detailed case descriptions exemplify. Different modalities of proactively providing and including alcohol consumption are conceptualized in a wider framework of program objectives, including among others, quality of life and harm reduction. Typically DUCPs represent an effort to achieve public or institutional order. Their implementation and success are contingent upon their location, media response, type of alcohol management and the response of other substance-oriented stake holders in the treatment system. The legitimization of DUCPs is hampered by the lack of evaluation studies. DUCPs rely mostly – also because of limited resources – on rudimentary self-evaluations and attribute little importance to data collection exercises. Conclusions: Challenges for participants are underestimated and standard evaluation methodologies tend to be incompatible with the rationale and operational objectives of DUCPs. Program-sensitive multimethod approaches enabled by sufficient financing for monitoring and accompanying research is needed to improve the practice-oriented implementation of DUCPs. Barriers for these programs include assumptions that ‘alcohol-assisted’ help abandons hope for recovery and community response to DUCPs as locally unwanted institutions (‘not in my backyard’) fuelled by stigmatization.

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Family preservation and prevention of neglect, abuse and violence through community child protection mechanisms: Addressing the challenges for effective community response to counter the continuum of gender based violence against children in Senegal

PsycEXTRA Dataset ◽

10.1037/e500792015-269 ◽

2014 ◽

Author(s):

Cheikh Amadou Bamba Diaw Bamba

Keyword(s):

Child Protection ◽

Community Response ◽

Family Preservation ◽

Gender Based Violence ◽

Violence Against Children ◽

Protection Mechanisms ◽

Effective Community ◽

Gender Based ◽

The Continuum

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Hospitals could be better linked with other community response teams to manage public health emergencies

PsycEXTRA Dataset ◽

10.1037/e558912006-014 ◽

2006 ◽

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Community Response ◽

Public Health Emergencies

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Cultural perspectives on suicide from a rural Athabascan Alaska Native community: Wellness teams as a strengths-based community response.

Rural Mental Health ◽

10.1037/rmh0000066 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 41 (1) ◽

pp. 4-16 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Peter A. de Schweinitz ◽

Cyndi Nation ◽

Christopher R. DeCou ◽

Tracy J. Stewart ◽

James Allen

Keyword(s):

Alaska Native ◽

Community Response ◽

Native Community ◽

Cultural Perspectives ◽

Community Wellness

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312. Community Response to an Occupational Health Disaster

10.3320/1.2766249 ◽

2002 ◽

Author(s):

N. Maher ◽

C. Shrigley ◽

J. Brophy ◽

M. Keith ◽

M. Gilroy

Keyword(s):

Occupational Health ◽

Community Response

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Copepod community response to variable upwelling conditions off central-southern Chile during 2002-2004 and 2010-2012

Marine Ecology Progress Series ◽

10.3354/meps11001 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 515 ◽

pp. 83-95 ◽

Cited By ~ 13

Author(s):

P Pino-Pinuer ◽

R Escribano ◽

P Hidalgo ◽

R Riquelme-Bugueño ◽

W Schneider

Keyword(s):

Community Response ◽

Southern Chile ◽

Copepod Community

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Kropotkin

10.3366/edinburgh/9780748642298.001.0001 ◽

2016 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Ruth Kinna

Keyword(s):

Political Theory ◽

Human Nature ◽

Political Change ◽

Direct Action ◽

The State ◽

Social Analysis ◽

Mutual Aid ◽

Special Character ◽

Revolutionary Politics

This book is designed to remove Peter Kropotkin from the framework of classical anarchism. By focusing attention on his theory of mutual aid, it argues that the classical framing distorts Kropotkin's political theory by associating it with a narrowly positivistic conception of science, a naively optimistic idea of human nature and a millenarian idea of revolution. Kropotkin's abiding concern with Russian revolutionary politics is the lens for this analysis. The argument is that his engagement with nihilism shaped his conception of science and that his expeditions in Siberia underpinned an approach to social analysis that was rooted in geography. Looking at Kropotkin's relationship with Elisée Reclus and Erico Malatesta and examining his critical appreciation of P-J. Proudhon, Michael Bakunin and Max Stirner, the study shows how he understood anarchist traditions and reveals the special character of his anarchist communism. His idea of the state as a colonising process and his contention that exploitation and oppression operate in global contexts is a key feature of this. Kropotkin's views about the role of theory in revolutionary practice show how he developed this critique of the state and capitalism to advance an idea of political change that combined the building of non-state alternatives through direct action and wilful disobedience. Against critics who argue that Kropotkin betrayed these principles in 1914, the book suggests that this controversial decision was consistent with his anarchism and that it reflected his judgment about the prospects of anarchistic revolution in Russia.

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