ABSTRACT Medical Uniforms date back from medieval times. Nursing uniforms were based on nuns clothes whereas doctors used the famous “plague costumes” and black “frock” coats from about 15th to early 19th century. In latter half 19th century medical uniforms started to change. Nursing uniforms gradually lost their similarities to religious outfits. Doctors started to use white clothing. With great emphasis on hygiene and sanitation, the idea of personal protective equipment (PPE) started to evolve with William Stewart Halsted introducing the use of rubber gloves in 1889. In the 1960s-1970s it became more usual to wear green and blue `scrubs in order to look for a greater contrast in clothing with the all-white hospital environment. In contemporary times, some specialties even stopped using specific uniforms, while others still use them. At the same time, PPE became more and more important, up to nowadays “plague costume” in the combat of the COVID-19 epidemics.
The analysis of recent social transformations in two Angolan cities -Luanda and Ondjivahighlights the maintenance and strengthening of groups and social networks based on family ties on the one hand and, on the other, the construction of new solidarities and identities derived from a traditional framework and recreated in the urban context in recent decades. Family solidarity and reciprocity in the post-independence, post-war context in Luanda and Ondjiva are the basis of social strategies, and the new forms of urban extended family have supported individuals during rapid urban growth and socio-economic uncertainty in multiple ways: providing economic support, a main point for social reference and security, among other things. In Luanda this organisation has generated an atomised social structure, and in Ondjiva the urban social tissue that was completely erased during invasion and war relied for many years on rural solidarity ties. However, with the gradual yet massive migration towards the capital city, the return of displaced populations and the arrival of new migrants in Ondjiva, newer, broader and more complex forms of solidarity and social identity have emerged in recent years. The increasing complexity, along with the decrease in the capacity to sustain reciprocity and dependency networks, tends to lead to the formation of clearer social strata and the preponderance of new criteria. Both in Luanda and in Ondjiva, the urban reference -the integration, adoption and practice of an urban/modern lifestyle -together with the consolidation of a market economy and economic stratification, generates new social differentiation and tends to produce different layers within the urban population. In both urban centres, urban/cosmopolitan references tend to assume a central role in the formation of social differentiation, producing new forms of social identity and social status.
Keywords: youth, Angola, war, modernity, social change
Resumo
As experiências de vida da juventude angolana na actualidade são moldadas pelo conflito e por novas esperanças. Isso aplica-se tanto aos que nasceram e foram criados em áreas rurais -as mais afectadas pela guerra -como à juventude urbana, com mais acesso
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