bharatvenkat.bsky.social
I study climate change, health, and inequality
Associate Professor, UCLA
Institute for Society & Genetics / History /Anthropology
Director, UCLA Heat Lab
bharatvenkat.net
Wrote AT THE LIMITS OF CURE (Duke University Press)
Writing SWELTER (Crown, Picador)
107 posts
719 followers
268 following
Prolific Poster
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This is not a case of federal ICE agents versus non-immigrant-hating local police, despite what the NYT reports. It's all part of the same system of overtly violent repression
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jesus, anthropologists have been writing about this clearly racist trope for decades (e.g. www.jstor.org/stable/64548...)
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Part of a forthcoming special issue of History + Technology that I co-edited with Rafico Ruiz and Jih-Fei Cheng on the "Reservoir Concept" (3/3) -- check out the other articles on racial ressentiment, financial contagion, energetics, reproduction, vital fluid, and more! (3/3)
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We focus specifically on the entailments of the reservoir concept for the ways we think and write about disease & epidemics. That is to say, the reservoir is a complex biological entity that inflects historical accounts through a distinctive logic of change. (2/3)
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thanks for reading and sharing!
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We show that the legal framework around carceral heat exposure foregrounds survivability and an insistence that heat must be more than uncomfortable. Yet, as Anna Terwiel argues, a “standard of humane treatment focused on mere survival ... even when realized, sanctions dehumanizing violence." (5/5)
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We argue that AC is necessary to save lives in the moment, but ultimately, an air-conditioned prison is still a prison, with all of its attendant harms to health, longevity, lifetime earning potential, and even to non-incarcerated family members. (4/5)
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Exposure to debilitating heat doesn't represent a failure of the carceral system–rather, it's how the carceral system has been built to function. As abolitionist scholars have argued for decades, the horridness of prison conditions does not mean that prisons are broken. It's how they work. (3/5)
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Our analysis examines the many factors that increase this vulnerability, from the siting of carceral facilities, materials used in building, lack of AC, widespread prescription of drugs that impede thermoregulation, barriers to healthcare and legal remedy, & cost of commissary goods like fans (2/5)