Elysée Nouvet | McMaster University (original) (raw)
Papers by Elysée Nouvet
Film review for "Turtles never die of old age" (dir. Hind Benchekroun, Sami Mermer
This paper maps key research questions for humanitarian health ethics: the ethical dimensions of ... more This paper maps key research questions for humanitarian health ethics: the ethical dimensions of healthcare provision and public health activities during international responses to situations of humanitarian crisis. Development of this research agenda was initiated at the Humanitarian Health Ethics Forum (HHE Forum) convened in Hamilton, Canada in November 2012. The HHE Forum identified priority avenues for advancing policy and practice for ethics in humanitarian health action. The main topic areas examined were: experiences and perceptions of humanitarian health ethics; training and professional development initiatives for humanitarian health ethics; ethics support for humanitarian health workers; impact of policies and project structures on humanitarian health ethics; and theoretical frameworks and ethics lenses. Key research questions for each topic area are presented, as well as proposed strategies for advancing this research agenda. Pursuing the research agenda will help strengthen the ethical foundations of humanitarian health action.
Mita is sixty two and strong on the good days: on the days her kidneys don't feel like they're on... more Mita is sixty two and strong on the good days: on the days her kidneys don't feel like they're on fire, cutting her inhalations short and turning her face to ash. 1 Mita grew up in the city, helping her mother earn a living by taking in laundry, doing seasonal plantation work, and gathering firewood. When Mita began to have children, she continued to live at home. Her "husbands" were "malos" (rotten), coming and going as they pleased. Like herself, Mita's children started working at a young age to help sustain the family, never attending school. When Mita's mother died in the mid-1980s, the small family home went to Mita's older sister. After squatting in the city for several years, Mita was finally granted a subsidized mortgage from the municipality for a plot of land in Barrio los Heroes.
Visual Anthropology Review, 2011
This article draws on the authors' experience making a film about pesticide-afflicted ex-banana p... more This article draws on the authors' experience making a film about pesticide-afflicted ex-banana plantation workers in Nicaragua. Addressed are the practical, ethical, and aesthetic possibilities and challenges of visualizing the bodily dimensions of social inequality through film. How can one represent bodily dimensions of structural violence given the particularity of all visceral knowledge? How can one, in the making of films that travel across cultural and class boundaries, make local epistemologies of suffering felt? Susan Sontag has noted that the West has developed a pornographic appetite for the suffering of others. This appetite connects into a wider economy Gomez-Peña has called the "mainstream bizarre," one in which all that is different-bodies, experiences, persons-in their infinite guises and regardless of their authors' intentions, are consumed in a manner in which they are emptied of political agency. While acknowledging the representational risks and potential pitfalls associated with the graphic showing of affliction, the authors present their strategies and reasoning for doing just this. It is the presence, rather than the absence, of the suffering body that can communicate Nicaraguan pesticide-afflicted protesters' intention of making their pain visible and mediate local body-centered epistemologies of social inequality. [evocation, Nicaragua, pain, pesticide, the senses, suffering, visual representation]
American Anthropologist, 2010
Film review for "Turtles never die of old age" (dir. Hind Benchekroun, Sami Mermer
This paper maps key research questions for humanitarian health ethics: the ethical dimensions of ... more This paper maps key research questions for humanitarian health ethics: the ethical dimensions of healthcare provision and public health activities during international responses to situations of humanitarian crisis. Development of this research agenda was initiated at the Humanitarian Health Ethics Forum (HHE Forum) convened in Hamilton, Canada in November 2012. The HHE Forum identified priority avenues for advancing policy and practice for ethics in humanitarian health action. The main topic areas examined were: experiences and perceptions of humanitarian health ethics; training and professional development initiatives for humanitarian health ethics; ethics support for humanitarian health workers; impact of policies and project structures on humanitarian health ethics; and theoretical frameworks and ethics lenses. Key research questions for each topic area are presented, as well as proposed strategies for advancing this research agenda. Pursuing the research agenda will help strengthen the ethical foundations of humanitarian health action.
Mita is sixty two and strong on the good days: on the days her kidneys don't feel like they're on... more Mita is sixty two and strong on the good days: on the days her kidneys don't feel like they're on fire, cutting her inhalations short and turning her face to ash. 1 Mita grew up in the city, helping her mother earn a living by taking in laundry, doing seasonal plantation work, and gathering firewood. When Mita began to have children, she continued to live at home. Her "husbands" were "malos" (rotten), coming and going as they pleased. Like herself, Mita's children started working at a young age to help sustain the family, never attending school. When Mita's mother died in the mid-1980s, the small family home went to Mita's older sister. After squatting in the city for several years, Mita was finally granted a subsidized mortgage from the municipality for a plot of land in Barrio los Heroes.
Visual Anthropology Review, 2011
This article draws on the authors' experience making a film about pesticide-afflicted ex-banana p... more This article draws on the authors' experience making a film about pesticide-afflicted ex-banana plantation workers in Nicaragua. Addressed are the practical, ethical, and aesthetic possibilities and challenges of visualizing the bodily dimensions of social inequality through film. How can one represent bodily dimensions of structural violence given the particularity of all visceral knowledge? How can one, in the making of films that travel across cultural and class boundaries, make local epistemologies of suffering felt? Susan Sontag has noted that the West has developed a pornographic appetite for the suffering of others. This appetite connects into a wider economy Gomez-Peña has called the "mainstream bizarre," one in which all that is different-bodies, experiences, persons-in their infinite guises and regardless of their authors' intentions, are consumed in a manner in which they are emptied of political agency. While acknowledging the representational risks and potential pitfalls associated with the graphic showing of affliction, the authors present their strategies and reasoning for doing just this. It is the presence, rather than the absence, of the suffering body that can communicate Nicaraguan pesticide-afflicted protesters' intention of making their pain visible and mediate local body-centered epistemologies of social inequality. [evocation, Nicaragua, pain, pesticide, the senses, suffering, visual representation]
American Anthropologist, 2010