CONCEPT: Mitigation

Mitigation: As McLoughlin (1985 170-71) sees it, mitigation involves measures or activities intended to prevent or, as a minimum, reduce the magnitude of “long-term risk” or actual harm (or damage) to “human life and property from natural or [human-caused] hazards” or events. Such measures include “building codes, disaster insurance, land-use management [principles/rules], risk mapping, safety codes, and tax incentives or disincentives.” We may add to these armed escort/security, surveillance or monitoring devices, quality assurance measures or processes, and “flow”-control installations or infrastructure. 

Ericson (1999: 243) adds that mitigation includes a range of measures whose effect is to prevent, control and contain, and minimize risk. For him, mitigation measures serve two ends: (a) hazard reduction: that is, minimizing potential harm or damage from “any substance, situation, or condition”; and, (b) risk reduction: that is, minimizing exposure to specified hazards (Ericson, 1999: 239).  

In general, argues Ericson (1999: 239-243), the goals of a mitigation undertaking are to: (a) minimize the number of incidents that require an emergency response by managers and regulatory agencies, (b) “minimize the magnitude of incidents”, (c) prevent “natural disasters from becoming human-made disasters”, and (d) collate and distil experience-based evidence for purposes of teaching emergency managers how to enhance their effectiveness against future emergencies.

CONCEPT: Risk

Risk: Reed (1992: v) observes that "Risks are often quantified in aggregated ways (e.g. a probability of 1 in 23,000 per year of an individual dying in an earthquake in Iran)." American Society for Industrial Security (ASIS), on the other hand, defines risk as "The potential for causing losses due to the presence of a threat and vulnerability. A risk is derived from the analysis of a threat and corresponding vulnerabilities along with the probability of their interaction" (ASIS, 1994:77)

Perrin (1996: 342) observes, importantly, that AThe definition of risk must be associated with the idea of probability, which can be applied at two different levels: either to the phenomenon itself (the probability that a harmful event, such as an earthquake, flood, or conflict, will occur), or to that phenomenon=s impact on the population and its environment. Although risk is commonly equated with the disaster itself, it really should be linked to the probability of the disaster=s occurring.@ Thus we always have to specify our meaning when we use the word risk, and there are thus two definitions:

B Arisk of a… phenomenon occurring@ = Threat (Perrin, 1996: 343)

B Arisk of a disaster occurring@ = The impact of a phenomenon on a population,  which depends on the latter=s vulnerability to the phenomenon@ (Perrin, 1996: 343).

A risk equation to summarize the foregoing has been given by USAID Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (1997: WB 3-1) as: Risk = Hazard x Vulnerability.

CONCEPT: Self-Concept

What follows below is an excerpt of a longer article titled Components of Social Control, which I posted on this blog on May 8th, 2012. It is published here as a stand-alone piece to spotlight a concept -- that is, Self-Concept -- that's at the centre of anyone's idea of who one is, or even who one really is in the increasing complexity, indeed the 'cauldron', of social life.

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1.1. Self-Concept:

Concerning self-concept, Saul McLeod (2008) starts off by noting that “To be aware of oneself is to have a concept of oneself.” To be aware of oneself, thus, is not only to perceive that one is but also to have a sense of who’s the one who is. This should usually include the realization that one is not, in the place one is, alone – but with another or others in a surrounding. Citing Lewis (1990), McLeod points out that self-concept has two components: (a) the existential self, and, (b) the categorical self.

The existential self is in fact the self characterized in the above lines. It represents the most elementary awareness of one’s existence. It refers to the individual – an infant to start with – being aware that he/she exists and is alive as a separate and distinct entity or human being, standing apart from any other. This awareness of self as a separate identity, is at the core of the individual’s capacity to distinguish between “me” and “not me”, and to know that “I” am “me” and not, for example, the ‘other” whom the infant will soon enough come to know as mummy or daddy or sister or brother.  

To have self-concept is to be self-conscious. Only a ‘fully’ conscious mind can be fully self-conscious, but this capacity grows with age, though it is frequently lost in some to the influence of alcohol, other drugs and certain diseases or illnesses. Thus, for an infant: to be self-conscious, and therefore to have self-concept, is to know, for example, that the feeling of discomfort or contentment that I am feeling right now is not only a true feeling but my own feeling as well, and not another’s. It is to know that the sense of fear or exhilaration that I am enduring or having is my sense; or that the unfamiliar faces all around are indeed unfamiliar to me and around me; or that the playful other who’s alone with me right here is playing with none other than me – and that it is I who’s experiencing all this playfulness in return.

McLeod characterizes the categorical self as follows: “Having realized that he or she exists as a separate experiencing being, the child next becomes aware that he or she is also an object in the world. Just as other objects including people have properties that can be experienced (big, small, red, smooth and so on) so the child is becoming aware of him or her self as an object which can be experienced and which has properties. The self too can be put into categories such as age, gender, size or skill.”

The Mosby’s Medical Dictionary (2009) defines self-concept as “the composite of ideas, feelings, and attitudes that a person has about his or her own identity, worth, capabilities, and limitations. Such factors as the values and opinions of others, especially in the formative years of early childhood, play an important part in the development of the self-concept.” On the other hand, the American Heritage Medical Dictionary (2007) sees it as “An individual's assessment of his or her status on a single trait or on many human dimensions using societal or personal norms as criteria” (for both definitions, click here). These definitions certainly allude to self-concept as more consciously grasped later in life.

David Demo (1992: 309) argues that self-concept is not static, but changes over time: “…the content and structure of self concept change with each stage of self-development, and with each stage there is evidence of both stability and malleability from one context to another.” It is, in other words, “situationally variable” (Demo, 1992:  306). He insists that:

“to understand self-concept we must conceptualize it as a moving baseline with fluctuations across situations…and life stages. This involves recognizing that the self-concept is simultaneously a complex structure and a process, that it is stable, but that it is also dynamic” (Demo, 1992: 304).

Reckless (1967, 1973) suggests that self-concept is an internal quality in the individual, and (in Williams’ words) argues that “those individuals with a strong and favourable self-concept were [are] best insulated against the drives and pulls towards criminality. A favourable self-concept might be illustrated by saying that the individuals view themselves in a positive way: as having values to live up to; as being law-abiding; and as having an idea of being of use and value to society and those in it” (Williams, 1997: 372).

Self-concept is thus the springboard of self-esteem, the latter trending high or low in tandem with the former.

CONCEPT: Hunger

Hunger: It is the rare individual who has never felt the pangs of hunger at some point, between 'breakfast' and supper (or supper and 'breakfast'), during the recurrent 24-hour cycles of Earth Day. Feeling hungry, like feeling thirsty, is part of the human condition. It is the reason we routinely eat, or drink water. But the hunger that draws public attention is a significant threshold beyond that cycle; even though, unlike famine, it is generally individual-specific or household-specific, and more localized. 

Hunger does not necessarily result in a famine situation, even in areas where it is practically endemic. But all too periodically, still, famine sneaks in under the guise of such hunger -- even as alarm bells begin to ring. And then it 'breaks out' into a 'season' of extreme deprivation and death which --recognized as such by the humanitarian community due to a persisting food shortage over Time and across Space -- engulfs whole communities, regions of a country, or blocks of countries within particular 'regions' or geographical areas. 

CONCEPT: Hazard

Hazard: A hazard is a potential source of harm to individuals, groups or a wide array of processes, systems or ‘things’ of crucial value to us as individuals, groups, communities, organizations, institutions or society. A hazard is a ‘benign’ threat ready to ‘happen’ at any 'opportune' time. As Kasperson and Pijawka (1985: 8) see it, “Hazards may be broadly defined as threats to humans and what they value – life, well-being, material goods, and environment”. 

In a way, a hazard exists "out there" -- linked to a sort of trip-wire. It becomes a risk as we approach and encounter it within its 'sphere of influence' -- or range of 'attack'. In many instances, certainly not all, we can 'contain' or remain safe from that sphere or range of attack simply by not tripping the wire. That is, by staying away -- at a safe distance, or 'completely'. And yet, 'completely' is a relative term here.

A useful example in this context is the hazard that landmines pose. They are a hazard to those (herders, farmers, hunter-gatherers, children-at-play and the like) who live in the vicinity of mined areas, and a risk to those among them who actually venture into those (marked or unmarked) areas -- as in Angola and Mozambique in the recent past -- or where floods have shifted the deadly weapons of war to areas that state officials, citizens and aid workers can only guess at and attempt to re-map. Of course, such a shift turns what was hitherto a 'manageable' hazard into a new and potentially catastrophic risk for any victims.

CONCEPT: Emergency

Emergency: In addition to the conceptualization of an emergency given above in connection with the notion of Disaster, we can see an emergency as any out of the ordinary event which threatens to do harm or actually does harm to human well-being, life and property; or to the natural environment. All disasters are emergencies, but not all emergencies are disasters. 

Another definition, once offered by FEMA to a business gathering, is that an emergency is: "any unplanned [we may add, or planned] event that can cause deaths or significant injuries to employees, customers or the public; or that can shut down your business, disrupt operations, cause physical or environmental damage, or threaten the facility's financial or public image."

FEMA's examples of emergency events -- which have served as an initial point of reference for many individuals and organizations just getting into the more conceptual aspects of their work -- include: fire, hazardous material incident, flood or flash flood, hurricane, tornado, winter storm, earthquake, communications failure, radiological incident, civil disturbance, loss of key supplier or customer and explosion.

UNHCR (2000: 4), true to its global mandate, defines Refugee Emergency as "any situation in which the life or well-being of refugees will be threatened unless immediate and appropriate action is taken, and which demands an extraordinary response and exceptional measures."

CONCEPT: Expert/Abstract Systems

Expert/Abstract Systems: These are systems (which increasingly subsume the notion of Artificial Intelligence, or AI) designed and built by technical or professional experts to (a) mimic and 'internalize' the expertise of experts and related rules of human reasoning, and (b) actualize semantic nets for classifying and organizing knowledge generated through such 'artificial' reasoning into 'actionable' forms and formats. All of this is intended to make key structures, processes and functions more predictable/ dependable and more efficient and robust, and life itself more livable (see Mike Harry, 2001: 119)

Giddens (1991: 27-8) sees expert systems in a broader sense as either "systems of technical accomplishment" or "professional expertise that organize large areas of the material and social environments in which we live." He includes among these systems the professions of law, architecture and medicine; and the technologies of auto and aircraft construction -- as well as the modalities which make both highway driving and air travel routine. 

There are many other expert systems, of course, such as: Remote Sensing and GIF, the Internet, Internet of Things, driverless automobiles, Social Media (such as Twitter, WhatsApp, Facebook), ride-share systems, CCTV monitoring, satellite communication, drone-based deliveries, mobile-money, and the like.

CONCEPT: Emergency Toolkit

Emergency Toolkit: A toolkit is more than one tool. It is a combination (collection, array or repertoire) of tools. In the context of emergency and disaster management, a combination of complementary tools is used to respond to or preempt or otherwise manage all the interrelated components of the critical event in question. But, given the practical challenges typically faced in emergency situations, there will probably be frequent need for something bigger than a kit -- that is, something like a toolchest, or a container, or even a convoy of container-loads.

Thus, broadly speaking, the term tool refers to a range of practical resources: technologies – hardware, software and orgware (and even spiritware) – systems, processes, methods, procedures ("How Tos"), templates, standards, indicators, questionnaires, checklists, guidelines, forms, formats, formulae, plans, blueprints, manuals, records, reports and references.

An emergency toolkit is therefore a basket of emergency management resources available for use by specialized staff and others involved in the various stages of an emergency: mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery.

In an Emergency Toolkit Laboratory of one kind or another, participants are called upon to scrutinize, open up, dissect, dismantle, unpack (= disassemble, take apart or un-bundle in a controlled way), test, tinker with, experiment with and/or repackage (= re-assemble in a value-adding way) high-value resources.

Furthermore, lab participants endeavour to:
(a) catalogue and describe the tools that we can identify from our readings, discussions or experiences;

(b) "un-package" available tools and critically evaluate them as a preamble to modifying them or re-packaging them, or coming up with better or entirely new ones; and

(c) following all that, put together various toolkits and specify their uses based on (or in relation to) certain emergency scenarios that they (the participants) concurrently develop, or cases that they cite, interrogate and draw informed inference from.

Note:
1. Orgware = the organizational contexts and/or ownership claims attached to specific tools or technologies of interest.
2. Spiritware = The spiritual dimensions, preconditions and/or connotations that emergency actors of one kind or another may attach to certain technologies or their use thereof.

CONCEPT: Early Warning

Early Warning: All early warning actions or instances involve, in the first place, the identification by certified or acknowledged experts (or expert systems) -- or organizations -- of a likely or impending emergency or disaster event. Such identification increasingly involves a considerable amount of predictive analytics, though some warnings must be given on very short notice -- of a few days and sometimes even hours. 

Identification is of necessity followed by a notification, the "sounding" of an 'alarm', or setting off of a dedicated and familiar alarm system, primarily targeting the groups or populations whose lives and/or livelihoods are likely to be significantly affected by the event -- or, simply, those most at risk. An early warning is not early enough, or good enough, if it arrives at the same time as the misfortune which befalls the victims it was supposed to alert and give time to get to safety, or simply out of danger. 

Early warnings trigger 'responses' across a variety of 'actors', each guided by specific contingency plans and preparedness measures. Their respective competencies and formal/informal responsibilities will more often than not require smart coordination with others for optimal effect. 

In relation to a refugee emergency, UNHCR (2000: 36) defines early warning, rather unsatisfactorily, as "the collection, analysis and use of information in order to better understand the current situation as well as likely future events." In principle, moreover, contingency planning should not be triggered by a specific early warning, contrary to what UNHCR (2000: 36) suggests. It should instead be one of the latter's anchors -- and validating factors. 

Still, all this depends, of course, on the amount of time that 'responders' have to work with between the 'moment' that a coming danger is first confirmed and the 'moment' it is expected to arrive. The longer the 'lead time', the more worthy of emergency managers' time and sense of purpose will contingency planning appear to be. The shorter and shorter it is, the less and less consequential, and doable, will such planning prove to be. 

CONCEPT: Desertification

Desertification: This is a long-term process brought about and sustained primarily by climate change. It occurs gradually in the form of a retreat of forest cover and grasslands in the wake of significantly diminished rains as well as the depletion of ground water. The causal factors in desertification are widely documented in scientific research. One thing is certain, however: the great deserts of the world -- such as the Sahara, the Gobi and the Middle East deserts -- are not the products of "the human hand". And yet "the human hand" has now become a crucial driver in the spread of deserts.  

A well-known characteristic of deserts is the almost invariable absence of vegetation and animal life. So deforestation is inescapably built into our conception of deserts. This is certainly so in contemporary conversations about what we see happening, and what the media report. 

Besides deforestation and the historical ebb and flow of climate change, however, three forms of "poor land use", as Reed (1992: 115) suggests, can also trigger (or exacerbate) desertification. These triggers or exacerbators, she tells us, are: overcultivation, overgrazing and "poor irrigation practices". 

But she 'forgets', here, two equally crucial ones: (a) the rapid growth of human populations increasingly resident in sprawling urban centres with a manifestly insatiable thirst for water; and, (b) a rapacious demand for wood as a key input in many things. There is a practically 'unlimited demand' for it in, inter alia, the construction of homes and other kinds of buildings and shelters; meeting our fuel-consumption needs, our demand for furniture and frequent need for caskets to bury the dead; and the manufacture of paper, paper products and packaging material. 

CONCEPT: Property Protection

Property Protection: All management activity related to policy, planning, prevention, mitigation, response and/or recovery from emergencies and disasters revolves in very specific and detailed ways around securing human well-being, and the protection of both property and the environment. Property, both private and public, exists in a multiplicity of forms. Furthermore, it ranges very widely in terms of the subjective and/or market valuations of its specific representations. All of these are a legitimate and necessary concern for those formally assigned property protection duties -- and for those who have property to protect.

A cardinal rule for emergency managers and more direct responders is to recognize that whatever the quantity, quality and range of property items that individuals, families and communities have is of some value to them. The same obviously goes for corporate identities. Consequently, the owners must be helped or facilitated, as far as possible, to protect their property against damage or loss before (if possible), during and after an emergency or, even more so, a disaster. Certain broad modalities have been identified for doing this, as the following examples broadly demonstrate:

Mitigation Strategies: These include: (a) insurance, (b) building standards and codes, (c) professional codes of ethics, (d) early-warning systems, (e) manufacturing, packaging and disposal standards, (f) quarantine/isolation capabilities, and, (g) preventive maintenance. 

Protection Systems and Hazard-Response Capacities: These include (a) Inspection, surveillance/intelligence and counter-intelligence, (b) armed security, and (c) alarm systems and their various uses.

Facilities at Risk and Related Shutdown, Evacuation/ Relocation and Security Procedures: These facilities include (a) bridges, (b) harbours, (c) power-generation plants and power grids; (d) telecommunication hubs and grids, (e) a variety of 'holding' or 'storage' facilities such as dams, reservoirs, warehouses and silos, (f) hospitals, (g) factories, (h) banks, (i) sports arenas and recreational facilities (j) public buildings and private homes. 

Preservation of Records and the Cultural Heritage: Covered here are, inter alia, (a) heritage sites and related historical buildings, (b) cultural centres and museums, (c) data banks or depositories, private/public records and document storage, and related transmission lines.

CONCEPT: Ethics in Emergency and Disaster Management

As a concept, Ethics is derived from the Greek word ethikos (meaning 'arising from habit'). Ethikos in turn arose from an older Greek word ethos (which refers to the custom, character, disposition or core values of a given social entity -- which may range from the individual to the corporate group). Ethics is about conduct. Conduct, Herbert Spencer (1892: 10) pointed out, was the opposite of "purposeless actions"; which was straightforward enough, and yet sufficiently intriguing to catch thoughtful attention. But Spencer (1820-1903), whom we should all read these days, worried that attempts to see good conduct as an ethical ideal might degenerate into a tautology, equating it with a purposefulness and perfection of action. Perfection need not be the 'culminating' ideal, but here is the case he made:

"It is strange that a notion so abstract as that of perfection, or a certain ideal completeness of nature, should ever have been thought one from which a system of guidance can be evolved; as it was in a general way by Plato and more distinctly by Jonathan Edwardes. Perfection is synonymous with goodness in the highest degree; and hence to define good conduct in terms of perfection, is indirectly to define good conduct in terms of itself." (Spencer, 1892: 33)

He suggested that there was only one way out of this logjam -- the means-ends way. Thus: "...the notion of perfection like the notion of goodness can be framed only in relation to ends" (Spencer, 1892: 33). In the diverse fields of scientific and emergency management work, the concept of ethics pertains, certainly from the Spencerian perspective, to any or all dimensions of professional conduct in terms of its conformity with, threats to, or violations of, the highest value propositions of a given field of practice. 

For present purposes, then, ethics -- or more specifically, professional ethics -- refers to a code of acceptable conduct or practice on the part of an individual, group or corporate entity as guided by the highest normative principles or best traditions, or collective 'hopes', of a discipline or profession. Thus, Weber (1964: 129-130) points out, inter alia, that:

"From a sociological point of view an 'ethical' standard is one to which [people] attribute a certain type of value and which, by virtue of this belief, they treat as a valid norm governing their action. In this sense it can be spoken of as defining what is ethically good in the same way that action which is called beautiful is measured by aesthetic standards. It is possible for ethically normative beliefs of this kind to have a profound influence on action in the absence of any sort of external guarantee. This is often the case when the interests of others would be little affected by their violation."

Weber continued to say that 'ethical beliefs' could also be 'guaranteed' by religion, or firmly adhered to on account of the "disapproval of violations and the consequent boycott"; or by the probability of, or actual, legal action (Weber, 1964: 130).

The entire value-chain of humanitarian response and related emergency and disaster management work is in principle guided by implicit and explicit ethical standards. All these fall under the 'umbrella' goal of delivering "the greatest good for the greatest number" of people in actual or impending distress. A number of key concepts interrogated in the present series speak to certain elements of those standards. Among these concepts are: Climate Change, Contamination, Contingency, Deforestation, Disaster, Emergency, Entitlement, Famine, Hunger, Non-Refoulement, Pollution, Response, The Precautionary Principle and Triage.  

NOTE: The bulk of the above text is extracted, with some changes, from a longer discourse on ethics as a pivotal standard of scientific research, as referenced below. 

READ: "Ethics ~ The Apex Standard of Scientific Research..."

CONCEPT: Resilience

Resilience: This refers to a capacity for, or degree of, hardiness or self-renewal observable in a variety of organisms, species-types or systems when confronted with disturbances, attacks emanating from their environments, or from within them. Resilience does not mean freedom from disturbance or attack or change, but rather that the organism or entity so challenged has the capacity or ingenuity to survive and recover from them -- or to adjust and adapt. It does so using resources from within itself, or from a broadly conceived environment. 

Resilient entities and systems are thus to be understood as sufficiently adaptable, durable and/or innovative when confronted with even extreme stress. They are not necessarily stable and unchanging regardless of the challenges (see, for example, Burnes, 2000: 206). 

Here below is a useful definition of resilience from ICLEI (= Local Governments for Sustainability). It is written with specific reference to the idea of a 'Resilient City' in today's context of climate change, but is in many ways generic in its applications:

"A 'Resilient City' is prepared to absorb and recover from any shock or stress while maintaining its essential functions, structures, and identity as well as adapting and thriving in the face of continual change. Building resilience requires identifying and assessing hazard risks, reducing vulnerability and exposure, and lastly, increasing resistance, adaptive capacity, and emergency preparedness" (see ICLEI)

READ: Program for Resilient Cities 2018

CONCEPT: Triage

Triage: Sometimes called surgical triage (see Perrin, 1996: 226-232), triage has been defined as the “classification of the injured... undertaken by medical or paramedical personnel on site on the bases of seriousness of the injury and the chances of recovery" (UNDRO, 1984: 63-64). Likewise, WHO points out that "The underlying principle of triage is allocation or resources in a manner ensuring the greatest health benefits for the greatest number". 

As a principle, triage gives care givers, in situations of widespread trauma and shortage of care, the power and authority to decide who will be given available medication or surgery or other kind of help ( first or at all) and who will not -- based on their professional assessment of the course(s) of action that will do the most good. Thus, if they determine that a person is dying anyway, they may choose to withhold further medication. This principle extends to deciding, for example, who in a danger zone (or war zone, or sinking ship, or refugee camp) will be evacuated first, and who will have to wait; who, in a famine situation, will be fed first, or at all, and who will not.

The humanitarian community has been accused of being slow to translate that principle (or concept) into firm standards for classifying injuries and prioritizing the injured for emergency medical care. However, attempts have been made to rectify this. 
Indeed, during the 1980 earthquake in Algeria's El Asnam region, for example, four triage categories were adopted to prioritize medical care for the victims -- under conditions of severe supplies, HR and facilities constraints. 

Ranked by assessed need for urgent attention, these now iconic categories were specified as follows: 
1) Vital organs affected; 
2) Serious injuries which, after 'adequate' first aid (given by nurses and trained volunteers, under "general supervision"), could wait for up to 12 hours for an operation; 
3) Hopeless cases "needing comfort as much as treatment"; and 
4) Slightly injured persons whose fretting and noisy demand for attention might cause panic within the triage facility or camp (UNDRO, 1984: 63-4).  

READ: Pierre Perrin (1996) Handbook on War and Public Health. Geneva: ICRC


Updated: March 31, 2018

CONCEPT: Logistics

Logistics: This is the art and science of moving, transporting and/or delivering things (material, hardware, equipment or supplies), services or even people across geographical space. Crucial considerations here include: efficiency, coordination, timeliness, security and cost; or, in general, the appropriateness of the means in relation to the mission. Vehicular breakdown and safety of passage are, likewise, always a twin-concern requiring management's 'unblinking' attention and capacity for effective response and even 'networked' intervention.

To have good logistics, you must in the first place have clarity of purpose and a good strategy to realize it. Otherwise, whatever carriers and other transportation resources, routes, personnel or passion and related communication mechanisms that you may have will be of little avail. Thus, the adage that "if you don't know where you're going, you won't get there" tells us less than half the truth. You must have the means (of necessity dependable) to get there, as well. As a minimum, then, strategy should be based on a robust form of  SWOT analysis or its equivalent. In, a robust and pro-active 'supply chain management' system is a necessity for consistent success.

Partly driven by considerations of security (against international terrorism, in particular, as well as piracy) and of efficiency, logistics and IoT have increasingly become intertwined in 'heavy-duty' commercial shipping around the world. In hindsight, one can see that IoT was always implicit in both commercial (for example, in the worldwide cargo-delivery 'transactions' of FedEx and DHL) and humanitarian airfreight (for example in UNHCR and Red Cross operations). It was even there, in its 'infancy', in passenger air-travel -- and most pronounced in long-haul flight. 

But there has been, through it all, a periodically morphing sort of reverse 'cultural lag' (see, also, Godin) here -- between a 'driving' adaptive culture (that is, growing safety and security concerns and needs) and a 'responding' material culture (for example, as alluded to already, the technologies required to give assurance of passenger and shipping-line security). Quaintly, the intuitive tail was wagging the material dog here. With recent advances, however,  IoT's value-proposition has caught up with the need (the demand) for it. This proposition has indeed become more and more explicit and even routine in its effect.

CONCEPT: Intelligence

Intelligence: In safety and "security" terms, as broadly conceived -- and, by extension, outside of the field of psychology -- intelligence generally refers to any kind of information or set of data considered crucial to maintaining the status quo (and related advantages), overcoming threats to it, and/or gaining actionable advantage over identified barriers to desired goals. In a much-quoted passage, Stephen Hawking, leaning toward the psychological view and away from the "security" perspective, sees intelligence rather differently -- as "the ability to adapt to change". 

From the safety and "security" perspectives -- that is, in the field of emergency and disaster management, public safety and health, and among others -- intelligence refers to any information, privileged or open-sourced, which gives managers marked advantage over likely, impending, or on-going threats to humans and all things of value to them as individuals and collectivities -- that is, family, belongings, property, community, institutions, ecosystems, society at large and country. 

"Intelligence gathering" has many labels and involves a variety of activities, including: Preparedness, precaution, data gathering (or mining), business intelligence, surveillance, monitoring, SWOT analysis, GIS, observation, investigation, probing, espionage, spying and secret service. Importantly, "Intelligence Communities" of all kinds are quite alive to the insight embedded in the adage that information is power. Interestingly, moreover, Artificial Intelligence (AI), both as a concept and bundle of practices and applications, spans both psychology and safety/"security". 

CONCEPT: Entitlement

Entitlement (or Food Entitlement): Amartya Sen introduced the concept of entitlement into conversations about food scarcity and famine. He pointed out that people suffer famine not because of an absolute scarcity of food, but because of their lack of entitlement to it. In essence, vulnerability to famine is crucially a function of one's relative entitlement to food. 

In his book titled Poverty and Famines, Sen suggested four (clearly unequal) options for gaining access to food: (a) direct production, (b) food procurement via market exchange, (c) food donations or gifts, and (d) working in food-for-work schemes (see also Walker, 1989: 90). Emphasizing the pivotal role that entitlement plays during famine outbreaks, Sen (1981: 1) argued at the very beginning of his book that "Starvation is the characteristic of some people not having enough food to eat. It is not the characteristic of there being not enough food to eat." This proposition has spawned a considerable amount of argumentation, systematic review and empirical investigation.

Buchanan-Smith and Davies (1995: 3), for example, concur with Sen that the search for workable solutions to famine outbreaks must shift attention to the demand-side of food access -- that is, from "food availability decline (FAD) to food entitlement decline (FED)". They add, however, that even Sen's solution requires refinement anchored on more recent empirical evidence from Africa. That evidence suggests that epidemic diseases kill more people than starvation per se. This suggests that the factor of universal health cover, or entitlement/access to comprehensive health services, must be brought in through robust public policy measures.

Moreover, they argue, economist Sen's preoccupation with market exchange masks the role that "a wider bundle of entitlements" can play -- incorporating "investments, stores and claims", as well as insurance and sale of assets; even though these can in turn attract more mouths, or the unwanted attention of powerful 'claimants' to the private property of the less powerful. 

In addition to (and perhaps above) all that, conflict and war have become a major and stubborn cause of famine across Africa (Buchanan-Smith and Davies, 1995: 3-4). Their effects pose a serious challenge to Sen's entitlement meme. Perhaps we should see how we incorporate peace into the basket of entitlements -- or an entitlement equation. 

But, to be fair to Sen, he did concede that not having enough food to eat may in fact be the result of there being not enough to go around in the first place. His point was that the actual linkages must be empirically investigated, not simply assumed. Subsequent investigations in that direction are most likely the reason that conflicts (including those involving terrorism), war, epidemic outbreaks and  "a winder bundle of entitlements" have more recently assumed the significance they have as explanations for starvation and famine -- in Africa and elsewhere.  The idea of entitlement has clearly morphed. To what extent, one may ask, are epidemic outbreaks also a function of entitlement?

[For an account of certain critiques of Sen's entitlement theory, read Stephen Devereux's 2001 paper titled "Sen's Entitlement Approach: Critiques and Counter-Critiques"]

CONCEPT: Conflict

Conflict: Ancient Chinese philosophers, the Taoists specifically,  saw conflict as the ever-recurring but forward-leaning dialectical spiral of Night and Day -- that is, of Yin and Yang. It was a 'fatal embrace' of sorts destined to always produce Tomorrow, and never yesterday. Plato, the Greek philosopher, likewise saw conflict as a dialectical engagement. In his case, it was a clash between good and evil; and, indeed, he held that "each thing has its evil and good". This dichotomy between 'good' and 'evil' (or Self and Other) characterized (and still does) certain conceptions of the phenomenology of conflict situations. 

Karl Marx, the most consequential proponent of conflict, argued that class struggle was the real driver of epochal change in all human society. This struggle was powered the underlying modes and relations of production/reproduction and distribution in society at large. Those modes and relations were at once unequal, exploitative and unjust -- and contrary to human nature. The contradiction(s) thus build into the relations led to inevitable conflict (in a Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis format) and the pressure to resolve it -- typically and logically in the direction of a new economic and social order. Contradiction, it has been argued even by more recent scholars such as Marcuse, always has (built into it) the drive toward its resolution.

In his paper titled "Social Conflict and the Theory of Social  Change", Lewis Coser explored the functions of conflict (he clearly preferred the term conflict to violence) in the broader context of social change. His exploration focused on: (a) the impact of social conflict on change within enduring social systems, with particular reference to consequences for such concerns as "institutional rigidities, technical progress and productivity", and, (b) the "relation between social conflict and changes [or overhauls/overthrows] of social systems" (Coser, 1957: 197). 

One clear outcome of this exploration was Coser's proposition, inspired by George Sorel, that "conflict prevents the ossification of the social system by exerting pressure for innovation and creativity." He wrapped up his optimistic conception of the operation, and consequence, of social conflict in the following terms:

"The clash of values and interests, the tension between what is and what some groups feel ought to be, the [contest] between vested interests and new strata and groups demanding their share of power, wealth and status...[all of which] have been productive of vitality." 

Georg Simmel has presented perhaps the most intriguing and refreshing post-Marxian characterization of the idea and process of conflict. His version offers, as in a wedding, the opportunity to bring into the conversation "something new and something old, something borrowed and something blue" (that is, something that's not red -- figuratively). 

He argues that conflict is inseparable from social interaction, and thus “sociation”; and is even itself a form of sociation. He sees conflict, indeed, as “one of the most vivid interactions” and, as an example of social interaction, by definition beyond the scope of social acts by the lone individual. Furthermore, conflict is not the cause of some sort of pathology of human interaction, but the resolution or ‘cure’ of such pathology READ MORE

CONCEPT: Community

Community: In sociology, a community is typically a face-to-face group or 'aggregation' of families and individuals living in relatively close proximity with each other and bound together by certain genealogical and/or 'social ties' as well as ecological/geographical factors, or givens, to which their livelihoods are more or less physically tied. All of this generates reasons and opportunities for joint action at the local level, and hence such ideas as "self-help groups" [more accurately harambee (= let's pull together) groups], "the therapeutic community", "mutual-aid groups" and "community policing".

Ferdinand Toennies made a widely acknowledged distinction between Community (Gemeinschaft) and Society (Gesellschaft). By his reckoning, a community displayed the characteristics outlined above, which were typical of all pre-modern (or traditional) and usually rural and isolated collectivities. According to Emile Durkheim, a community thus organized was held together by the centrifugal pull of sameness or similarity; that is , by what one may call the logic of "birds of a feather". 

In contrast, the heterogeneity manifest in a modern society, due principally to widespread division of labour beyond household and community boundaries, was welded together by a crucial byproduct of that very division of labour -- namely, the "mutual dependence" of those who could no longer directly produce the resources required for their own full subsistence, but were now bound together, if more impersonally, by the operations of "market exchange".

In an influential empirical study of respondents' conceptualizations of "community", K. MacQueen et al (2001) identified five core elements of a community. These were: Locus (a sense of place, which can be both located and described by those concerned), Sharing (common interests -- values, norms, mindset, ideology, vision, activities, skin color), Joint action (which serves as a source of cohesion and identity, and includes opportunities/contexts, structures or 'arenas' for socializing, conversation, gossip and get-together), Social ties (interpersonal relations - encompassing sub-elements such as family units, lovers, friends, neighbors and support groups) and Diversity (that is, "social complexity" or heterogeneity due to the presence of sub-communities within or migrants into the community -- sub-communities or migrants characterized by distinct identities such as clan, ethnic group, race, religion, caste, occupational status and unequal family standing) 

[To be updated]