Voluntary Isolation Research Articles

Leveraging Africa's preparedness towards the next phase of the COVID-19 pandemic

Leveraging Africa's preparedness towards the next phase of the COVID-19 pandemic

Does 'Staying at Home' Save Lives? An Estimation of the Impacts of Social Isolation in the Registered Cases and Deaths by COVID-19 in Brazil

This article uses daily state information of the Social Isolation Index (SII) and recorded cases and deaths by COVID-19 for the period between March 13 and April 25, 2020 to estimate elasticities that relates these variables in Brazil. The results indicate that there was an adjustment period for social isolation to affect the number of cases and deaths in Brazil. From April, the estimated elasticity-isolation sat between -1.37 and -2.62 for COVID-19 cases, i.e., states that had a higher Social Isolation Index of 10% compared to others had on average 26.2% fewer COVID-19 cases. For deaths, the estimated elasticity-isolation is -1.79, i.e., states with a Social Isolation Index higher by 10% compared to another had on average 17.9% fewer deaths caused by COVID-19. Based on these results, the article concludes that measures that encourage voluntary social isolation are important to contain the spread of the virus, but that these measures should always be evaluated according to cost-benefit analysis.

Voluntary collective isolation as a best response to COVID-19 for indigenous populations? A case study and protocol from the Bolivian Amazon

SummaryIndigenous communities worldwide share common features that make them especially vulnerable to the complications of and mortality from COVID-19. They also possess resilient attributes that can be leveraged to promote prevention efforts. How can indigenous communities best mitigate potential devastating effects of COVID-19? In Bolivia, where nearly half of all citizens claim indigenous origins, no specific guidelines have been outlined for indigenous communities inhabiting native communal territories. In this Public Health article, we describe collaborative efforts, as anthropologists, physicians, tribal leaders, and local officials, to develop and implement a multiphase COVID-19 prevention and containment plan focused on voluntary collective isolation and contact-tracing among Tsimane forager-horticulturalists in the Bolivian Amazon. Phase 1 involves education, outreach, and preparation, and phase 2 focuses on containment, patient management, and quarantine. Features of this plan might be exported and adapted to local circumstances elsewhere to prevent widespread mortality in indigenous communities.

Nonpharmaceutical Measures for Pandemic Influenza in Nonhealthcare Settings-Social Distancing Measures.

Influenza virus infections are believed to spread mostly by close contact in the community. Social distancing measures are essential components of the public health response to influenza pandemics. The objective of these mitigation measures is to reduce transmission, thereby delaying the epidemic peak, reducing the size of the epidemic peak, and spreading cases over a longer time to relieve pressure on the healthcare system. We conducted systematic reviews of the evidence base for effectiveness of multiple mitigation measures: isolating ill persons, contact tracing, quarantining exposed persons, school closures, workplace measures/closures, and avoiding crowding. Evidence supporting the effectiveness of these measures was obtained largely from observational studies and simulation studies. Voluntary isolation at home might be a more feasible social distancing measure, and pandemic plans should consider how to facilitate this measure. More drastic social distancing measures might be reserved for severe pandemics.

La protection internationale du droit à la santé des peuples autochtones en période pandémique

Protecting the right to health of indigenous peoples in the context of a major pandemic crisis, such as the one caused by Covid-19, implies specific obligations for States under international law. These obligations arise from the implementation of a culturally sensitive interpretation of the right to health, which requires the enactment of differentiated measures to ensure the maintenance of indigenous peoples’ cultural identity. As the study of the practice surrounding the management of the health crisis in Brazil illustrates, the requirements of international law are reinforced in the context of protecting the right to health of indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation.

Voluntary and Mandatory Social Distancing: Evidence on COVID-19 Exposure Rates from Chinese Provinces and Selected Countries

This paper estimates time-varying COVID-19 reproduction numbers worldwide solely based on the number of reported infected cases, allowing for under-reporting. Estimation is based on a moment condition that can be derived from an agent-based stochastic network model of COVID-19 transmission. The outcomes in terms of the reproduction number and the trajectory of per-capita cases through the end of 2020 are very diverse. The reproduction number depends on the transmission rate and the proportion of susceptible population, or the herd immunity effect. Changes in the transmission rate depend on changes in the behavior of the virus, reflecting mutations and vaccinations, and changes in people's behavior, reflecting voluntary or government mandated isolation. Over our sample period, neither mutation nor vaccination are major factors, so one can attribute variation in the transmission rate to variations in behavior. Evidence based on panel data models explaining transmission rates for nine European countries indicates that the diversity of outcomes results from the non-linear interaction of mandatory containment measures, voluntary precautionary isolation, and the economic incentives that governments provided to support isolation. These effects are precisely estimated and robust to various assumptions. As a result, countries with seemingly different social distancing policies achieved quite similar outcomes in terms of the reproduction number. These results imply that ignoring the voluntary component of social distancing could introduce an upward bias in the estimates of the effects of lock-downs and support policies on the transmission rates. The full set of estimation results and the replication package are available on the authors' websites.

Against Self-Isolation as a Human Right of Indigenous Peoples in Latin America

Advocacy of an indigenous right to isolation in the Latin American context responds to multiple depredations, above all to plundering by extractivists. Two prominent international instruments declare a human right to indigenous self-isolation and articulate a principle of no contact between indigenous peoples and the non-indigenous majority population: Indigenous Peoples in Voluntary Isolation and Initial Contact in the Americas and Guidelines on the Protection of Indigenous Peoples. In analyzing both, (1) I argue against the notion of a human right to indigenous isolation and for limited, controlled contact between the indigenous peoples and a narrow segment of the larger society. (2) I propose relational human rights as rights that connect people, as rights-bearers, across borders and differences. They would allow for limited outside observation for possible human rights violations within indigenous communities. I then articulate relational human rights of indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation as rights to (3) agency, (4) health, (5) territory, and (6) identity.

The Spanish Influenza Pandemic: a lesson from history 100 years after 1918.

SummaryIn Europe in 1918, influenza spread through Spain, France, Great Britain and Italy, causing havoc with military operations during the First World War. The influenza pandemic of 1918 killed more than 50 million people worldwide. In addition, its socioeconomic consequences were huge.“Spanish flu”, as the infection was dubbed, hit different age-groups, displaying a so-called “W-trend”, typically with two spikes in children and the elderly. However, healthy young adults were also affected.In order to avoid alarming the public, several local health authorities refused to reveal the numbers of people affected and deaths. Consequently, it was very difficult to assess the impact of the disease at the time.Although official communications issued by health authorities worldwide expressed certainty about the etiology of the infection, in laboratories it was not always possible to isolate the famous Pfeiffer’s bacillus, which was, at that time, deemed to be the cause of influenza.The first official preventive actions were implemented in August 1918; these included the obligatory notification of suspected cases and the surveillance of communities such as day-schools, boarding schools and barracks.Identifying suspected cases through surveillance, and voluntary and/or mandatory quarantine or isolation, enabled the spread of Spanish flu to be curbed. At that time, these public health measures were the only effective weapons against the disease, as no vaccines or antivirals were available.Virological and bacteriological analysis of preserved samples from infected soldiers and other young people who died during the pandemic period is a major step toward a better understanding of this pandemic and of how to prepare for future pandemics.

Populism or Petrostate?: The Afterlives of Ecuador’s Yasuní-ITT Initiative

In 2007, the Government of Ecuador announced the Yasuní-ITT Initiative: a proposal to forego exploiting 20% of its oil reserves located in the Yasuní National Park – home to one of the earth’s most biodiverse places and several indigenous groups living in voluntary isolation. In exchange, Ecuador asked the international community for $3.6 billion, roughly half the projected revenues of conventional oil extraction. Five years later, Ecuador received less than 10% of the required pledges and the initiative was canceled. Many accounts emphasized the then President Rafael Correa’s perceived untrustworthiness as key in explaining the initiative’s failure. This article instead examines the role of entrenched institutions of the petrostate, emphasizing how the initiative defied expectations by offering a post-extractivist path for Ecuador. Despite its failure, this horizon continues to orient debates on development and extractivism, forming “afterlives” of a call to mitigate climate change by leaving oil in the ground.

Identificación y dinámica de los Pueblos Indígenas en Aislamiento Voluntario (PIAV) en el Yasuní

The situation of the Indigenous Peoples in Voluntary Isolation (PIAV) in Ecuador is complex, since they are under the pressure of agricultural frontier expansion, a shared and conflictive use of the same hunting and gathering territory with Waorani families, who are their tribal enemies, other Amazonian indigenous groups (Shuar, Kichwa), and finally settlers-peasants. This article proposes to identify the spaces of mobility and dynamics of the PIAV, especially of the Tagueiri-Taromenane, analyze their parental and linguistic affiliation with families of the Waorani cultural group, with whom they coexist within the Yasuni national park. It also raises the problem of the impact of extractive activities, mainly oil, which have created a real siege on the territory where PIAV are mobilized, this has generated violent confrontations and massacres that have endangered the survival of the last families in the Ecuadorian Amazon in voluntary isolation.

Oil, Revolution, and Indigenous Citizenship in Ecuadorian Amazonia by Flora Lu, Gabriela Valdivia, and Néstor L. Silva

with planetary extinction. The author turns to stories and close ethnographic accounts from oil workers of what it means to live and dieinthewebofthecarbonindustry.Further, Hughes“studiesup”throughanethnography of Trinidad’s oil experts and the elite class. These oil technocrats possess what I call an “extractive view” or what the author calls a “simplified view of the world” that ignores climate change to instead improve the efficiency of oil production systems (67). This, then, is a powerful and urgent book, one that furthers an understanding of global interconnectedness , not as a neoliberal project of unity, but through a web of danger, unequal outcomes, and a matrix of complicity. Macarena Gómez-Barris Social Science & Cultural Studies Pratt Institute Flora Lu, Gabriela Valdivia, and Néstor L. Silva Oil, Revolution, and Indigenous Citizenship in Ecuadorian Amazonia New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017. xvii + 296 pp. References, index, illustrations. $89.00 electronic (ISBN 978–1–137–53362–3), $119.99 cloth (ISBN 978–1–137–56462–7). Oil, Revolution, and Indigenous Citizenship in Ecuadorian Amazonia is a unique work on an important topic: the relationship between a marginalized indigenous people (the Waorani of Amazonian Ecuador), one of Latin America’s most celebrated “NewLeft”administrations(theEcuadorian state under Rafael Correa from 2007 to 2017), and the socio-ecological complexities of life within an oil-based political economy . Flora Lu, Gabriela Valdivia, and Néstor L. Silva take the reader on a detailed tour of Ecuador under the Correa regime. In doing so,theyproduceacomprehensiveaccountof whatEcuador’sexperimentwith“21st-Centurysocialism ”hasmeantforsomeofcountry’s most vulnerable citizens. Althoughmuchofthebookfocusesonthe experiences of an indigenous people, it is a collaborative, interdisciplinary effort rather than a conventional ethnography: Lu was trained in ecology, Valdivia teaches geography , and Silva is completing his doctorate in anthropology. In the introduction, the authors state that the book traverses a variety of “geographic and social scales to integrate information from multiple sources and perspectives : scholarship, media accounts, as well as ethnographic research” (4). In doing so, it challenges any simplistic context/topic distinction; each chapter includes detailed discussions of national policy, political shifts within and beyond Ecuador, and the particulars of the Waorani experience. The authors state that the first half of the book views “Amazonia from Quito” by describing the history of Ecuadorian indigenous citizenship (Chapter 2), shifts in oil policy (Chapter 3), and Correa’s battle against poverty through his so-called “Citizens’ Revolution ” (Chapter 4). The second half views “QuitofromAmazonia”byprivilegingamore Waorani-focused perspective on the risks of petroleum-based development (Chapter 5), a failed government proposal to exchange untapped oil for international dollars (Chap16 Journal of Latin American Geography ter 6), and the complex responses to encounters with the Taromenane, a Waorani-related group who live in voluntary isolation (Chapter 7). The central argument of the book is that despite the Correa administration’s stated objectiveofmakingenvironmentalconservation ,humanrights,andsocioeconomicequality national priorities, the government’s continuedrelianceonnaturalresourceextraction risked “repeating and deepening cycles of poverty and marginalization,” thereby perpetuating and even exacerbating “socio-ecological conflict” (23–24). Lu, Valdivia, and Silva assert that Correa’s progressive programs depended on oil rents, making the Citizens’ Revolution “the state-led response to state-caused problems, a political project funded by the very same practices it seeks to challenge” (93). In short, the authors allege, Correa’s administration represented no radical break from past political-economic modelsandinsomewaysmadelifeevenworsefor such citizens as the Waorani. Oil, Revolution, and Indigenous Citizenship in Ecuadorian Amazonia has many strengths. It contains one of the most thorough accounts of Ecuadorian politics and economics in the new millennium. The overview of Correa’s vision is extensive and accurate. The discussion of the programs of the Citizens ’ Revolution is an important resource for any scholar of Ecuador. I wish I had access to it while writing my own book on oil in Amazonian Ecuador (Cepek 2018), as I was often perplexed by many Correa-era institutions that directly affected my subjects. The authors also employ a mixed-methods approach that includes household economic analysis and risk-mapping—techniques that are absent from most cultural-anthropological accounts. The quantitative data are accompaniedbyreflectionsonimportantsocial and political theorists, including Giorgio Agamben , Judith Butler, Antonio Gramsci, and Donna Haraway. Finally, Lu, Valdivia, and Silvaenliventheirstudywithtellingvignettes concerning Correa...

Oil, Revolution, and Indigenous Citizenship in Ecuadorian Amazonia by Flora Lu, Gabriela Valdivia, and Néstor L. Silva

Reviewed by: Oil, Revolution, and Indigenous Citizenship in Ecuadorian Amazonia by Flora Lu, Gabriela Valdivia, and Néstor L. Silva Michael Cepek Flora Lu, Gabriela Valdivia, and Néstor L. Silva Oil, Revolution, and Indigenous Citizenship in Ecuadorian Amazonia New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017. xvii + 296 pp. References, index, illustrations. $89.00 electronic (ISBN 978–1–137–53362–3), $119.99 cloth (ISBN 978–1–137–56462–7). Oil, revolution, and indigenous Citizenship in Ecuadorian Amazonia is a unique work on an important topic: the relationship between a marginalized indigenous people (the Waorani of Amazonian Ecuador), one of Latin America’s most celebrated “New Left” administrations (the Ecuadorian state under Rafael Correa from 2007 to 2017), and the socio-ecological complexities of life within an oil-based political economy. Flora Lu, Gabriela Valdivia, and Néstor L. Silva take the reader on a detailed tour of Ecuador under the Correa regime. In doing so, they produce a comprehensive account of what Ecuador’s experiment with “21st-Century socialism” has meant for some of country’s most vulnerable citizens. Although much of the book focuses on the experiences of an indigenous people, it is a collaborative, interdisciplinary effort rather than a conventional ethnography: Lu was trained in ecology, Valdivia teaches geography, and Silva is completing his doctorate in anthropology. In the introduction, the authors state that the book traverses a variety of “geographic and social scales to integrate information from multiple sources and perspectives: scholarship, media accounts, as well as ethnographic research” (4). In doing so, it challenges any simplistic context/topic distinction; each chapter includes detailed discussions of national policy, political shifts within and beyond Ecuador, and the particulars of the Waorani experience. The authors state that the first half of the book views “Amazonia from Quito” by describing the history of Ecuadorian indigenous citizenship (Chapter 2), shifts in oil policy (Chapter 3), and Correa’s battle against poverty through his so-called “Citizens’ Revolution” (Chapter 4). The second half views “Quito from Amazonia” by privileging a more Waorani-focused perspective on the risks of petroleum-based development (Chapter 5), a failed government proposal to exchange untapped oil for international dollars (Chapter [End Page 283] 6), and the complex responses to encounters with the Taromenane, a Waorani-related group who live in voluntary isolation (Chapter 7). The central argument of the book is that despite the Correa administration’s stated objective of making environmental conservation, human rights, and socioeconomic equality national priorities, the government’s continued reliance on natural resource extraction risked “repeating and deepening cycles of poverty and marginalization,” thereby perpetuating and even exacerbating “socio-ecological conflict” (23–24). Lu, Valdivia, and Silva assert that Correa’s progressive programs depended on oil rents, making the Citizens’ Revolution “the state-led response to state-caused problems, a political project funded by the very same practices it seeks to challenge” (93). In short, the authors allege, Correa’s administration represented no radical break from past political-economic models and in some ways made life even worse for such citizens as the Waorani. Oil, Revolution, and Indigenous Citizenship in Ecuadorian Amazonia has many strengths. It contains one of the most thorough accounts of Ecuadorian politics and economics in the new millennium. The overview of Correa’s vision is extensive and accurate. The discussion of the programs of the Citizens’ Revolution is an important resource for any scholar of Ecuador. I wish I had access to it while writing my own book on oil in Amazonian Ecuador (Cepek 2018), as I was often perplexed by many Correa-era institutions that directly affected my subjects. The authors also employ a mixed-methods approach that includes household economic analysis and risk-mapping—techniques that are absent from most cultural-anthropological accounts. The quantitative data are accompanied by reflections on important social and political theorists, including Giorgio Agamben, Judith Butler, Antonio Gramsci, and Donna Haraway. Finally, Lu, Valdivia, and Silva enliven their study with telling vignettes concerning Correa’s television and radio program, the sometimes-tragic failures of development projects, and the authors’ own reception by Waorani communities. The book also has qualities that some scholars might consider weaknesses. Apart from the more descriptive episodes...

„Kiri ütleb, et peab tuginema vene teadusele…“ ÜK(b)P Keskkomitee 16. juuli 1947. aasta kinnine kiri professorite N. Kljujeva ja G. Roskini süüasjas ja selle ajaloolisest kontekstist / Closed letter of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of July 16, 1947: Its historical context

„Kiri ütleb, et peab tuginema vene teadusele…“ ÜK(b)P Keskkomitee 16. juuli 1947. aasta kinnine kiri professorite N. Kljujeva ja G. Roskini süüasjas ja selle ajaloolisest kontekstist / Closed letter of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of July 16, 1947: Its historical context

Community Mitigation Guidelines to Prevent Pandemic Influenza - United States, 2017.

SummaryWhen a novel influenza A virus with pandemic potential emerges, nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) often are the most readily available interventions to help slow transmission of the virus in communities, which is especially important before a pandemic vaccine becomes widely available. NPIs, also known as community mitigation measures, are actions that persons and communities can take to help slow the spread of respiratory virus infections, including seasonal and pandemic influenza viruses.These guidelines replace the 2007 Interim Pre-pandemic Planning Guidance: Community Strategy for Pandemic Influenza Mitigation in the United States — Early, Targeted, Layered Use of Nonpharmaceutical Interventions (https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/11425). Several elements remain unchanged from the 2007 guidance, which described recommended NPIs and the supporting rationale and key concepts for the use of these interventions during influenza pandemics. NPIs can be phased in, or layered, on the basis of pandemic severity and local transmission patterns over time. Categories of NPIs include personal protective measures for everyday use (e.g., voluntary home isolation of ill persons, respiratory etiquette, and hand hygiene); personal protective measures reserved for influenza pandemics (e.g., voluntary home quarantine of exposed household members and use of face masks in community settings when ill); community measures aimed at increasing social distancing (e.g., school closures and dismissals, social distancing in workplaces, and postponing or cancelling mass gatherings); and environmental measures (e.g., routine cleaning of frequently touched surfaces).Several new elements have been incorporated into the 2017 guidelines. First, to support updated recommendations on the use of NPIs, the latest scientific evidence available since the influenza A (H1N1)pdm09 pandemic has been added. Second, a summary of lessons learned from the 2009 H1N1 pandemic response is presented to underscore the importance of broad and flexible prepandemic planning. Third, a new section on community engagement has been included to highlight that the timely and effective use of NPIs depends on community acceptance and active participation. Fourth, to provide new or updated pandemic assessment and planning tools, the novel influenza virus pandemic intervals tool, the Influenza Risk Assessment Tool, the Pandemic Severity Assessment Framework, and a set of prepandemic planning scenarios are described. Finally, to facilitate implementation of the updated guidelines and to assist states and localities with prepandemic planning and decision-making, this report links to six supplemental prepandemic NPI planning guides for different community settings that are available online (https://www.cdc.gov/nonpharmaceutical-interventions).

Huaorani Transformations in Twenty-First-Century Ecuador: Treks into the Future of Time. Laura Rival. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2016, 352 pp. $65.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8165-0119-9.

<i>Huaorani Transformations in Twenty-First-Century Ecuador: Treks into the Future of Time</i>. Laura Rival. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2016, 352 pp. $65.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8165-0119-9.

The Effect of Contact Investigations and Public Health Interventions in the Control and Prevention of Measles Transmission: A Simulation Study.

BackgroundMeasles cases continue to occur despite its elimination status in the United States. To control transmission, public health officials confirm the measles diagnosis, identify close contacts of infectious cases, deliver public health interventions (i.e., post-exposure prophylaxis) among those who are eligible, and follow-up with the close contacts to determine overall health outcomes. A stochastic network simulation of measles contact tracing was conducted using existing agent-based modeling software and a synthetic population with high levels of immunity in order to estimate the impact of different interventions in controlling measles transmission.Methods and FindingsThe synthetic population was created to simulate California`s population in terms of population demographics, household, workplace, school, and neighborhood characteristics using California Department of Finance 2010 census data. Parameters for the model were obtained from a review of the literature, California measles case surveillance data, and expert opinion. Eight different scenarios defined by the use of three different public health interventions were evaluated: (a) post-exposure measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine, (b) post-exposure immune globulin (IG), and (c) voluntary isolation and home quarantine in the presence or absence of public health response delays. Voluntary isolation and home quarantine coupled with one or two other interventions had the greatest reduction in the number of secondary cases infected by the index case and the probability of escape situations (i.e., the outbreak continues after 90 days).ConclusionsInterrupting contact patterns via voluntary isolation and home quarantine are particularly important in reducing the number of secondary cases infected by the index case and the probability of uncontrolled outbreaks.

Influence of smartphone addiction proneness of young children on problematic behaviors and emotional intelligence: Mediating self-assessment effects of parents using smartphones

In this study, we verified the effects of smartphone addiction proneness of young children (ages one to six) on problematic behaviors and emotional intelligence. We investigated whether parental self-assessment of smartphone usage affects the way in which children's smartphone addiction impacts their behaviors and emotional intelligence. Smartphone addiction proneness sub-factors interfere with daily life and compulsory control through voluntary isolation and personality distortion. Differences exist in daily-life interference according to parental ages, voluntary isolation according to parental occupations, and personality distortion according to parental academic backgrounds. Among attributes of young children's smartphone usage, differences exist in compulsory control needs and personality distortion starting from a young age, and compulsory control needs according to the child's daily smartphone usage. Moreover, no correlations exist between independent variables of daily-life interference and the emotional intelligence outcome variable. All addictive tendencies have significant positive effects on problematic behaviors, and significant negative effects on emotional intelligence. The greater the degree to which parents are self-evaluative of their smartphone usage, the lower is the influence of children's smartphone addiction proneness on their problematic behaviors. This study suggests that parents' self-reflective attitude towards smartphone usage can undermine the negative effects of smartphone overuse by young children.

Victims and Warriors: Violence, History, and Memory in Amazonia by Casey High

Casey High, Victims and Warriors: Violence, History, and Memory in Amazonia. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015. 230 pp.I distinctly remember when, early in my fieldwork with the Waorani of Amazonian Ecuador, I sat in the communal house in the oppressive afternoon heat talking with a middle aged male. We are civilized now, he said. We accept the word of God.Near your territory, along the oil roads, there are many colonist families coming and settling, I remarked. What will you do if these people come into Waorani lands and start extracting resources without permission?There was no hesitation in the reply: We will spear kill them.His comment speaks to the intersections of missionary influence and contemporary relations with (called kowodi, or non-Waorani), and how these come to via expressions and understandings of violence. In Victims and Warriors: Violence, History, and Memory in Amazonia, Casey High examines these dynamics linking past and present. While a population of a few thousand Native Amazonians in a geographically small South American country may appear to be an esoteric case study, Ecuador is a microcosm for critical contemporary struggles over resource extraction, conservation, human rights, indigenous self-determination, and Latin American geopolitics. High contributes to a growing body of scholarship that situates Native Amazonians within this dynamic milieu.For the Waorani, these struggles have often been characterized by bloodshed, including revenge killings between Waorani, raids between Waorani and kowodi, and high profile spearings of missionaries. Long protected by their belligerence, Waorani homelands correspond to some of the most biodiverse forests not only in Amazonia, but on the planet (Finer et al. 2009). Oil companies seek to drill in the significant remaining reserves in Waorani territory, and loggers aggressively plunder valuable hardwoods. Complicating such extractivism are the subgroups of Waorani who remain in voluntary isolation (i.e., the Tagaeri and Taromenani) and whose existence hangs in the balance, evidenced by a 2013 massacre conducted by a group of heavily armed, contacted Waorani resulting in the deaths of over two dozen Taromenani men, women, and children (Cabodevilla and Aguirre 2013).Clearly, conflict and contestation permeate Ecuador's Amazon region and are formative of Waorani subjectivity. Victims and Warriors examines how the Waorani experience and remember past violence, how violence is a symbolic practice through which Waorani people today understand themselves, their ancestors, and kowodi (3), and how these memories are part of a social and moral practice incorporated into Waorani efforts to negotiate a rapidly changing socio-economic, political, and ecological context (see also Lu et al. 2012). The book includes an Introduction and Afterword plus seven chapters.Chapter 1, Civilized Victims, explores the links between representations of the past-most notably the process of establishing sustained and peaceful contact with via efforts of Protestant missionaries- and Waorani social memory. In keeping with the work of other scholars of Amazonia, High's construction of the past is centrally focused on warfare, where killing functions the prime mechanism for inserting memory into social life (Rival 2002:65), and history is envisioned in the Waorani context as an endless series of predatory attacks perpetuated by cannibal outsiders (Rival 2002:64). High explains how the Waorani of the older generation see themselves victims of violence, prey rather than predators. These understandings help to explain how the Waorani received the message of the missionaries and how they related to the martyrdom of evangelical North Americans similar to the loss of their own kin in intraethnic warfare. Becoming civilized, then, refers to transcending the cycle of revenge killings, acquiring formal schooling, and transitioning to in larger, more permanent, nucleated villages. …

Batata 2 Remote Well Pad: Executing Sustainable Development at a Sensitive Amazon Basin Area--Decommission and Abandonment

Summary In Ecuador (circa 2006-07), PetroOriental (operator of Blocks 14 and 17) concluded a large exploration project with the construction of the Batata 2 well pad and the drilling of two exploratory wells, pursuing the confirmation and development of oil reserves identified during the seismic work started in 2003 by EnCanEcuador (subsidiary of EnCana Corporation) in the northern region of Block 14. All this development occurred within the Yasuní National Park, one of the natural areas in South America with the highest biodiversity, and also a traditional land of peoples living in voluntary isolation (the Tagaeri and the Taromenani). The early planning and execution of this project included the development of a long-term strategy and a set of high-standard social and environmental practices to minimize the company's exposure to social and environmental liabilities and to guarantee the success of this challenging project. Unfortunately, by the first half of 2007, after drilling the previously mentioned exploratory wells, the prospects were declared noncommercial, triggering the process for decommissioning and restoration of the Batata 2 well pad. The loop was closed, and the success of the project was dimmed by the lack of results. This paper summarizes some of the most important elements of the project planning and execution of the Batata 2 well pad by means of a retrospective analysis with the intent to identify some of those practices, highlight them, and present them to our colleagues in the industry. We now have many examples of life-cycle applications, which is our contribution to the discussion, because we believe that life-cycle assessment and life-cycle management are closely linked to sustainable development, a journey that the oil and gas industry is just starting to make.

Voluntary Isolation After the Disaster: The Loss of Community and Family in the Super Aged Society in Japan

In the four years since the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, the number of local elderly persons who live alone in temporary housing has increased. In fact, elderly persons are willing to remain in temporary housing, isolating themselves from family members to join comforting community. This research focuses on why these elderly persons have chosen to isolate themselves.