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541. Cloth Face Masks Should be Used in the Community, Not by Health Care Workers in Health Facilities

Author:
Ronald Gobina
Publication Date:
04-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
The Nkafu Policy Institute
Abstract:
Wearing face masks are an essential aspect of the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Although medical face masks are reportedly in very short supply in many countries especially low-income countries, cloth face masks seem to be gaining ground in terms of popularity and usage. In Cameroon, where the government has mandated wearing face masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19, with hefty fines for violators, cloth face masks are becoming more and more ubiquitous. They are a natural choice for community face mask users due to the ease of access (relatively low cost of production, accessibility of materials), potential reusability, and esthetic variability. The usefulness of cloth face masks to prevent the spread of respiratory viruses, however, has been subject to a lot of debate. The scientific community is torn between outright restriction of use because of a lack of evidence supporting protective ability and the ethical dilemma of appearing to prefer a ‘no face masks’ policy (where medical masks are unavailable).
Topic:
Health, Coronavirus, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Africa and Cameroon

542. Predictors of school dropout across Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam

Author:
Santiago Cueto, Claudia Felipe, and Juan Leon
Publication Date:
07-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Group for the Analysis of Development (GRADE)
Abstract:
In this paper the authors utilize the five rounds of Young Lives household surveys across four countries (Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam) to study the characteristics of children who had dropped out of school by 22 years of age. While most children in the longitudinal sample go to primary school, they tend to drop out more often and earlier in Ethiopia. In India most children complete the early grades of school but drop out later, particularly in grades 11 and 13. Researchers find that in all countries, except Vietnam, there is a considerable number of children who drop out of school but at some point return to it, either to complete secondary or drop out again. The reasons provided by children for dropping out across the countries are oftentimes related to poverty: for example, the need to work, or care or provide for family. The multivariate analysis shows that indeed in many cases the wealth level of the family at an early age predicts later dropout, as does maternal education level, students’ early skills and residence in certain regions of each country. There are also some variations across countries; for example, boys are more likely to drop out of school in Ethiopia and Vietnam, and children who have repeated a grade are more likely to drop out of school in Peru. However, having high educational aspirations at early ages seems to be a protective factor against dropping out. This suggests that the value that children place on education may be an important preventative factor against dropping out. Overall, these results suggest the need to act early through education and social protection interventions to target young children who are at risk of dropping out, and the follow their trajectories, providing support as needed to specific groups and even individuals, so that all children may fulfill their right to complete at least secondary education.
Topic:
Education and Children
Political Geography:
Africa, India, Asia, Vietnam, Ethiopia, and Peru

543. COVID-19 and External Shock: Economic Impacts and Policy Options

Author:
Miguel Jaramillo and Hugo Nopo
Publication Date:
06-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Group for the Analysis of Development (GRADE)
Abstract:
Latin America is currently suffering from two independent but related shocks: the impact of COVID-19 and the shock of commodity prices. Peru, we argue, is a case in which the strongest impact comes from the pandemic. Peru was the first country in Latin America to react and implement sanitary and economic measures against the coronavirus. The country has been in mandatory quarantine since Monday, March 16. This carries very important challenges for all economic actors. Global and national activity has suffered a sudden stop with direct implications for: (i) the income generating capacity of independent workers, (ii) the jobs of formal and informal and informal workers, and (iii) the survival of small, medium and large companies. In this note we consider the situation of Peruvian households in the face of the pandemic, exploring their vulnerabilities through an analysis of their main source of income generation: work. We also consider the situation of the companies that employ the workers under analysis. We present an overview of what the government’s main action have been so far and offer some recommendations.
Topic:
Economics, Political Economy, Economic Policy, Coronavirus, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Latin America and Peru

544. Toynbee Coronavirus Series: Dominic Sachsenmaier on China, geopolitics, and global history post-COVID-19

Author:
Dominic Sachsenmaier
Publication Date:
06-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
The Toynbee Prize Foundation
Abstract:
Living through historically unprecedented times has strengthened the Toynbee Prize Foundation's commitment to thinking globally about history and to representing that perspective in the public sphere. In this multimedia series on the covid-19 pandemic, we will be bringing global history to bear in thinking through the raging coronavirus and the range of social, intellectual, economic, political, and scientific crises triggered and aggravated by it. Dominic Sachsenmaier, the President of the Toynbee Prize Foundation, is Chair Professor of Modern China with a Special Emphasis on Global Historical Perspectives in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Göttingen. His expertise centers on global and transnational Chinese history, with a focus on Chinese concepts of society and multiple modernities, among other topics. He is co-editor of the Columbia University Press book series “Columbia Studies in International and Global History“ and an elected member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts.
Topic:
Health, International Affairs, Geopolitics, Global Focus, Coronavirus, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
China, Asia, and Global Focus

545. Toynbee Coronavirus Series: Erez Manela on the WHO, smallpox eradication, and the need for renewed internationalism

Author:
Erez Manela
Publication Date:
06-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
The Toynbee Prize Foundation
Abstract:
Living through historically unprecedented times has strengthened the Toynbee Prize Foundation's commitment to thinking globally about history and to representing that perspective in the public sphere. In this multimedia series on the covid-19 pandemic, we will be bringing global history to bear in thinking through the raging coronavirus and the range of social, intellectual, economic, political, and scientific crises triggered and aggravated by it. Erez Manela researches international society and the modern international order. Recently he has written about smallpox and the globalization of development, illuminating the power structures and international infrastructure that underwrote the World Health Organization’s (WHO) smallpox eradication program from 1965 to 1980. Professor of History at Harvard University, Prof. Manela teaches the history of the United States in the world and modern international history, and is the Director of Graduate Programs at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard and co-chair of the Harvard International and Global History seminar. He co-edits the Cambridge University book series ‘Global and International History.’
Topic:
Health, World Health Organization, Geopolitics, Public Health, Coronavirus, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Global Focus

546. Toynbee Coronavirus Series: Dipesh Chakrabarty on zoonotic pathogens, human life, and pandemic in the age of the Anthropocene

Author:
Dipesh Chakrabarty
Publication Date:
06-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
The Toynbee Prize Foundation
Abstract:
Living through historically unprecedented times has strengthened the Toynbee Prize Foundation's commitment to thinking globally about history and to representing that perspective in the public sphere. In this multimedia series on the covid-19 pandemic, we will be bringing global history to bear in thinking through the raging coronavirus and the range of social, intellectual, economic, political, and scientific crises triggered and aggravated by it. Toynbee Prize Awardee Dipesh Chakrabarty is the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor of History, South Asian Languages and Civilizations, and the College at University of Chicago. He is a founding member of the editorial collective of Subaltern Studies, a consulting editor of Critical Inquiry, a founding editor of Postcolonial Studies, and has served on the editorial boards of the American Historical Review and Public Culture, among others. His distinctions, publications, and awards are too numerous to mention; the landmark work for which he is perhaps best known, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, 2000; second edition, 2008), has been translated into Italian, French, Polish, Spanish Turkish, and Korean and is being brought out in Chinese. Included among his vast range of research interests are the implications of climate change science for historical and political thought and, most relevant for our discussion today, the Anthropocene.
Topic:
Climate Change, Coronavirus, Pandemic, COVID-19, Ecology, and Anthropocene
Political Geography:
Global Focus

547. Toynbee Coronavirus Series—Global History Forum: Jeremy Adelman, Or Rosenboim, Jamie Martin, Cindy Ewing, and Akita Shigeru

Author:
Jeremy Adelman, Or Rosenboim, Jamie Martin, Cindy Ewing, and Akita Shigeru
Publication Date:
06-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
The Toynbee Prize Foundation
Abstract:
Living through historically unprecedented times has strengthened the Toynbee Prize Foundation's commitment to thinking globally about history and to representing that perspective in the public sphere. In this multimedia series on the COVID-19 pandemic, we will be bringing global history to bear in thinking through the raging coronavirus and the range of social, intellectual, economic, political, and scientific crises triggered and aggravated by it.
Topic:
Geopolitics, Coronavirus, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Global Focus

548. The Philippine Revolution constructs ‘Asia’ and Civilization from the periphery

Author:
Nicole CuUnjieng Aboitiz
Publication Date:
06-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
The Toynbee Prize Foundation
Abstract:
Filipinos, on the whole, are famously pro-American. In 2014, the Philippines topped the Global Attitudes Survey with regard to global public approval of the United States, coming in with a ninety two percent favorability rating. In 2013, a higher percentage of surveyed Filipinos held America favorably and had confidence in the US President, including the former president George W. Bush, than Americans themselves held and had. The entrenched, orthodox Philippine narrative of the Second World War presents the Japanese occupation of the islands as a Dark Age shattering the golden period of American colonial peace, prosperity, and tutelage toward independence. Reynaldo C. Ileto wrote that Pres. Sergio Osmeña “spoke of Douglas MacArthur’s return as a repetition of his father Arthur’s arrival in 1898 to free the Philippines from Spain,” and that Pres. Elpidio Quirino asked Filipinos “[w]hat was the ‘Death March’. . . if not the common pasyon or Christ-like suffering and death, of Filipinos and Americans?” Yet not all Filipinos viewed Douglas MacArthur’s fulfilled promise in 1945 as the redemptive return of their liberating savior. Though they were a minority, it is nevertheless worth exploring those narratives—and asking how they came to be a minority.
Topic:
Imperialism, Post Colonialism, Colonialism, Empire, and Independence
Political Geography:
Philippines and Southeast Asia

549. Toynbee Coronavirus Series—Global Historians Analyze the Pandemic: Glenda Sluga, Jie-Hyun Lim, Lauren Benton, and Hsiung Ping-chen

Author:
Glenda Sluga, Jie-Hyun Lim, Lauren Benton, and Hsiung Ping-chen
Publication Date:
05-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
The Toynbee Prize Foundation
Abstract:
Living through historically unprecedented times has strengthened the Toynbee Prize Foundation's commitment to thinking globally about history and to representing that perspective in the public sphere. In this multimedia series on the COVID-19 pandemic, we will be bringing global history to bear in thinking through the raging coronavirus and the range of social, intellectual, economic, political, and scientific crises triggered and aggravated by it.
Topic:
History, Geopolitics, Coronavirus, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Global Focus

550. Liberalism in Pre-revolutionary Russia: An interview with Susanna Rabow-Edling

Author:
Susanna Rabow-Edling
Publication Date:
08-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
The Toynbee Prize Foundation
Abstract:
The Russian Empire has often been associated with autocracy, illiberalism and backwardness. However, Russian liberal intellectuals worked to modernise and liberalise their country, while preserving its international influence and position as a world power. In Liberalism in Pre-revolutionary Russia: State, Nation, Empire (Routledge, 2018), Susanna Rabow-Edling looks at the history of liberal nationalism in the Russian Empire, covering the period between the Decembrist revolt in 1825 and the October Revolution in 1917. She examines liberal tendencies in the Empire and how they are intertwined with notions of nation and empire. Susanna Rabow-Edling is Associate Professor in Political Science and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Uppsala University in Sweden. In our conversation, we discussed the development of different Russian liberal theories, the role of nationalism in a multi-ethnic empire, and the parallels between Russian and Western liberal ideologies.
Topic:
State Formation, Empire, Revolution, Nation-State, Liberalism, and Russian Revolution
Political Geography:
Russia