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Sanitation is entangled with material infrastructure, policy landscapes and everyday practices, encompassing underpinning value, belief and norm systems. In this chapter, I argue that sanitation must be studied as more than an engineered system in order to design targeted interventions towards more sustainable futures. I reflect on the ways in which ideals of the networked city have perpetuated urban governance, planning and design and look at the ways in which they are embedded within China’s ongoing Toilet Revolution. I then propose that practice theory, in
Many current assumptions about health provision in medieval English cities derive not from the surviving archival or archaeological evidence but from the pronouncements of Victorian sanitary reformers whose belief in scientific progress made them dismissive of earlier attempts to ameliorate the quality of urban life. Our own tendency to judge historical responses to disease by the exacting standards of modern biomedicine reflects the same anachronistic attitude, while a widespread conviction that England lagged centuries behind Italy in matters of health and hygiene seems to reinforce presumptions of ‘backwardness’ and ‘ignorance’. By contrast, this paper argues that a systematic exploration of primary source material reveals a very different approach to collective health, marked by direct intervention on the part of the crown and central government and the active involvement of urban communities, especially after the Black Death of 1348-49. A plethora of regulations for the elimination of recognized hazards was then accompanied by major schemes for environmental improvement, such as the introduction of piped water systems and arrangements for refuse collection.
where many families incorporated tiny convenience stores (known as sari-sari stores) into the front facade of their homes. Others included backyard gardening and livestock ( Flinn and Echegaray, 2016 ). Adequate and appropriate bathrooms, toilets and kitchens improve health through better sanitation and the removal of smoke. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), 3.4 million people die each year from waterborne disease, the single most deadly cause of death by disease. 1.3 million die prematurely from acute lower respiratory infections caused by indoor
Ancient medical and healing systems are currently attracting considerable interest. This issue includes interdisciplinary studies which focus on new perceptions of some ancient and medieval medical systems, exploring how they related to each other, and assessing their contribution to modern society. It is shown that pre-Greek medicine included some rational elements, and that Egyptian and Babylonian medical systems contributed to a tradition which led from classical antiquity through the Middle Ages and beyond. The reliability of sources of evidence is considered, as well as the legacy of the ancient healing environments (temples and healing sanctuaries) and disease treatments (including surgical procedures and pharmaceutical preparations). Finally, where documentation survives, the legacy of social attitudes to health and disease is considered. Overarching principles directed policies of social medicine and healthcare in antiquity and the Middle Ages: for example, the causes and transmission routes of infectious diseases, as well as the basic principles of sterilization, were unknown, but nevertheless attempts were made to improve sanitation, provide clean water, and ensure access to trained physicians. In some cases, the need to limit the size of the population prompted the use of contraceptive measures, and surviving information also illuminates attitudes to deformity, disability and the treatment of the terminally ill.
DPRK since 1995, with over 230 groups working in the shared spaces for collaboration where regime and humanitarian interests overlap, e.g. boosting agricultural capacity ( Zadeh-Cummings, 2019 ). Food security has continued to elude the DPRK. The country has struggled to provide adequate nutrition, healthcare, disaster prevention and recovery, and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) facilities for its citizens. The Glossary of Humanitarian Terms ( ReliefWeb 2008 : 21) defines an emergency as ‘a sudden and usually unforeseen event that calls for immediate
, 2012 : 1376–7). Under the leadership of a new local federal quarantine officer, a public health campaign was launched based on improving wider sanitation patterns in Chinatown. Rats were trapped, rubbish was removed, houses and rat burrows were disinfected, footpaths and flooring were concreted to minimise contact between rats and humans, and positive relations between health authorities and Chinatown inhabitants were prioritised ( Blue, 1909 : 8; Risse, 2012 : 170
. The meeting captured the community’s priorities and conveyed the sense that the government needed to be held accountable for the welfare of local populations even in the Ebola emergency. District 6 inhabitants’ principal issue was sanitation and waste-water management, as sewage from the stadium bathrooms drained directly into the neighbouring communities. Residents were also worried about the economic impact of opening an ETU inside the stadium
2020 ). Government of India ( 2018 ), Report 584: National Sample Survey Office Report on Drinking Water, Sanitation, Hygiene, and Housing Condition: NSS 76th Round, July 2018–December 2018 , mospi.nic.in/recent-reports (accessed 4 January 2021
and national engineers and technicians were involved in water, sanitation and construction work in 39 countries. These projects catered for the needs of some 14,249,000 people worldwide (IDPs [internally displaced persons], returnees, residents – in general, people living in rural areas and/or areas difficult to reach owing to insecurity and/or lack of infrastructure – and people deprived of their freedom). Around 32% and 41
has spawned a narcissistic culture of bodily fitness, healthy lifestyles and making good choices, while in the South, a post-humanitarian ethic has disaggregated, medicalised and reduced precarity to the basic nutritional, energy, health, sanitation, education, financial and psychic requirements needed to maintain bodily functioning ( Jaspars, 2015 ). Everywhere, resilience, or the injunction to endlessly adapt before unmediated market and environmental forces, has become the zeitgeist of late-modernity ( Evans and Reid, 2014 ). As the