The role of socio-economic conditions has been largely implicit in mathematical epidemiological models. However, measures to address the current pandemic, specifically the relevant interventions proposing physical distancing, have highlighted how social determinants affect contagion and mortality dynamics of COVID-19. For the most part, these social determinants are not present in either policy discussions or in relevant epidemiological models. We argue for the importance of incorporating relevant social determinants of health into the modelling dynamics of COVID-19, and show how
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variation of these conditions may be integrated into relevant models. In doing so, we also highlight a key political economy aspect of reproduction dynamics in epidemics.
This article explores the role of liberalized real estate markets in shaping financialsector development in the Arab Gulf region. Since 2001, record oil revenues and the inflow of repatriated wealth into the region have generated immense demand for new, productive destinations for surplus capital. Gulf Cooperation Council states have subsequently undergone rapid growth that is intimately tied to the regulatory transformation of urban real estate markets and the circulation of surplus capital from oil rents to the 'secondary circuit' of the built environment. With an emphasis on the city of Dubai, we employ the notion of diversification by urbanization to trace the re-regulation of real estate markets and highlight how these strategies have subsequently shaped Gulf financial markets. Through an examination of the impacts of real estate mega-project development on local banking credit, equities and Islamic financial markets, we reframe recent urbanization in the region as a process of financial re-engineering, and identify the emergence of capital groups whose accumulation activities are tightly connected to both the real estate and financial circuit.
The occupied Palestinian territories (oPt) are a major recipient of global aid flows, ostensibly aimed at improving development outcomes for the Palestinian population. This article presents a critical analysis of the ways that development is being conceived and practiced by major actors in the oPt. By analyzing different conceptions of power, the article examines how dominant approaches to development hide the ongoing reality of Israeli settler colonialism by dehistoricizing Zionism and its project; incorporating the structures of Israeli occupation into official Palestinian development strategy; and promoting an economic perspective that views development as an objective and disinterested process operating above (and outside) power relations. After considering some of the ramifications of current approaches to development, the article concludes with brief remarks on how this critique can help to reframe and articulate an alternative strategy. Israel's effective control over the Palestinian population and not to an appreciable lessening of Israeli suzerainty despite the establishment of the PA and the vast amount of foreign technical and financial support allocated for its institution-building. Thus, both the intense amounts of aid and attention to development that have been directed at the oPt have resulted in a failure of development, a circumstance better described by Sara Roy as " de-development." 7 This article contends that the concept of development as understood by key actors in the oPt is a major reason for that failure. International organizations-and many local Palestinian NGOsproject a view of development divorced from the power relations at play under Israeli settler colonialism. Advocates of this view conceive development as a neutral technocratic process whose success hinges on the right technical and financial support from donors, a negotiated reduction in Israeli-imposed restrictions, and the implementation of appropriate state-building policies on the part of the PA. This mainstream perspective considers development in a vacuum, unaffected by power relations, as a positive-sum game. In this regard, it is the lack of coordination between stakeholders, and not the power relations completely structured around Israel's ongoing colonization of the area, that stands as a major obstacle to development. As a result, the dominant development framework obfuscates, and thereby strengthens, the reality of Israeli settler colonialism in the oPt.
Palestinian Aid Dependency and Israeli Settler ColonialismIn exploring the ideas outlined above, this article begins by tracing different conceptions of power in the settler-colonial context and counterposing these to the notion of empowerment prevalent in Palestinian development discourse. The article then examines how development approaches hide the ongoing reality of Israeli settler-colonial power by: dehistoricizing Zionism and its project; incorporating the structures of occupation into official Palestinian development strategy; and foisting economic neol...
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