The Irvine AtlasSt Andrews Undergraduate Journal of Geography and Sustainable Development Volume 2, Issue 2 May 2020 1 2 3 The Irvine Atlas 2 3 Note from the Editors We bring this issue of The Irvine Atlas to you at what is a rather complicated and tense time across the globe. In the few months leading up to the issue’s publication, we have seen our editorial team, our friends and our colleagues struggle to navigate the new social landscape carved out by the Covid-19 pandemic. This is a struggle which continues on, this note itself being written in two separate places across Scotland - West Kilbride and the Isle of Arran. We sit in isolation, reflecting on the progress of this journal over the past year. This issue was made with hard-work, determination, and an abundance of interesting articles, as with all the previous editions. However, unlike them, the latter half of our editorial process was completed by com- mittee members and authors, locked down in different places all across the globe (with thanks to modern technology). This is a testament to the resilience, dedication and high-standard of work produced by our editorial team and contributing authors. It would have been easy to let the stress and uncertainty of this time cloud our need to complete this journal, but we worked together and continued on. It is sad that there will be no formal celebration in St Andrews or a chance to flip through the freshly printed pages of this issue, but we encourage all of the contributors to this issue to take pride in the work we have accomplished. The Irvine Atlas has been a large part of our lives, and with our well wishes, we are excited to see where it goes over the next few years as we pass the torch on to next year’s committee. Abbie Lily Fairclough and Imogen Anne Armstrong Co-Editors in Chief 4 5 Committee List Imogen Armstrong Co-editor in Chief Abbie Fairclough Co-editor in Chief Charlotte Evans Human Editor Lea Fourchault Sustainable Development Editor Marisa Hensey Physical Editor Joanna O’Flynn Features Editor Frances MacKinnon Head of Layout Jessey Read Layout Team Morven MacSwan Publicity Officer Salah-Dean Satouri Publicity Officer Michaela Habartova Recruitment Officer Tom Saunders Secretary Chandler Yorke-Edgell Treasurer Mina Anderson Content Editors Emilia Cardente Eleanor Fraser John Michael Gregg Akshika Kandage Rebekah Kaufman Charlotte Marquand Hanna Mirgorodschi Delaney Murray Bhavya Palugudi Amy Roberts Sabina Sulikova Charlotte Tang Stephanie Wong Fiona Bruce Copy Editors Natasha Colvine Rosie Landon Samiyah Lunat Alicia Marley 4 5 Table of Contents The Racialised Discourse surrounding Coronavirus – An Interview with Dr Christos Lynteris 8 By Charlotte Evans and Abbie Fairclough Poverty and HIV/AIDS: A Fundamental Connection 12 By Jordan White The Gendered Spaces of Pregnancy 17 By Sophie Tyler Seeing the invisible: An investigation into ‘difference’ through exploring art inspired by Guantana- mo Bay Detention Centre 21 By Amber French The city is what it is not: how representations of contrast (re)shape the vision of China’s city 27 By Ally Mair “We’re the new blacks”: Life after 9/11 for Arab-Americans 30 By Mark Edwards The Rustenburg Underground - An Account of an Underground Mining Internship in North West Province, South Africa 36 By Charlotte Barlow The Road to a Low Carbon Future through the Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement and the Energy Justice Framework 39 By Aneleen de Ruiter Disinvestment Movement on Fossil Fuels 44 By Kaenat Kohli Spiritual Practices and Indigenous Knowledge: Possible Auxiliaries in the Pursuit of a Sustainable Society 47 By Lea Fourchault Familial Behaviours and Personal Food Waste in Relation to Food Waste Discourse 51 By Megan Beattie En Camino 56 By Alexandra Weiler An analysis of vegetation change recorded in three palaeoecological records from Amazonian Peru 59 By Sophie Conyngham Greene Harmful Algal Blooms: A Review of Causes and Consequences for Developing Countries 65 By Lea Fourchault Exploring the Possibility of Reintroducing Wolves to the Scottish Highlands as a means of Ecologi- cal Conservation 70 By Rosie Landon A POSTnote on Natural Climate Change 74 By Freddie Goldstone 6 7 6 7 The Racialised Discourse surrounding Coronavirus: An Interview with Dr Lynteris Abbie Fairclough (Fourth Year) and Charlotte Evans (Second Year) In conversation with Abbie Fairclough (Edi- es, explores the ways in which a disease vector can tor-in-Chief) and Charlotte Evans (Human Geog- become a ‘zoonotic villain’ in the public eye. His raphy Editor), Dr. Christos Lynteris discusses dis- project takes the “global war against the rat” as the courses of race, securitisation, and the notion of foundation on which epidemiological reasoning (the existential threat that the novel Coronavirus may way we think about epidemics) developed. He re- pose… ferred to the rat as a “charismatic zoonotic villain which preoccupied the entire globe” in the first half Dr Lynteris is a medical anthropologist, spe- of the 20th Century, showing how public percep- cialising in the social and historical dimensions of tions of disease vectors can have societal, even glob- disease epidemics and zoonosis: animal to human al, implications. “The moment when they realised infection. He completed his Undergraduate and that rats spread plague and other diseases. Everyone Postgraduate study at the University of St. Andrews, became obsessed with rats. So across the globe there with a PhD on the anthropology of public health and was the biggest campaign against any animal vector the epidemiological restructuring of China after the we’ve ever known. And that contributed to the basic SARS outbreak in 2003. His focus then shifted to understandings, the very language of zoonotic dis- the bubonic plague, with Postdoctoral study at the eases we have today”. University of Cambridge focusing on how people in When it comes to Covid-19 however, the Mongolia and South Siberia protected themselves ‘zoonotic villain’ is not so clear. As Dr Lynteris from the plague and a European Research Coun- pointed out, although the genome of the disease sug- cil Starting Grant project on the visual representa- gests that it is a zoonotic disease, the main reservoir tions of the third plague pandemic. He joined St of Covid-19 is uncertain (though bats are the likely Andrews’s Department of Social Anthropology in culprit). On top of this, the intermediary host is, as of 2017, and his current 5-year project, funded by the yet, undetermined. This ongoing search for the ani- Wellcome Trust, is on the global war against rats and mal vector responsible comes at an opportune, albe- the epistemic emergence of zoonosis. We meet Dr it unfortunate, time as Lynteris’ recently published Lynteris at a time when zoonotic disease is a very book ‘Framing Animals as Epidemic Villains: His- topical issue - as Covid-19 sweeps the globe. tories of Non-Human Disease Vectors’ covers this With the speed at which the Covid-19 out- phenomenon in great detail1. break is changing our social landscape, it is worth Despite the fact that little has been scientif- mentioning the temporal context of this interview ically proven about the origin of this disease, many and its write up. The interview was conducted on popular media platforms have strongly implicated the 4th of March, when the outbreak of Covid-19 Wuhan’s ‘wet markets’ as the location in which the was very much in the public consciousness but had virus was contracted. We asked Dr Lynteris if the not yet reached pandemic proportions. This was also scientific community share this assumption. “Well prior to lockdown measures being implemented in this is no longer the assumption. The latest scien- the UK. It was written up in the weeks following, up tific data show that the outbreak started outside in a until its last revision on the 7th April. different place, not in the market,” he told us. “The Dr Lynteris began by explaining that his work fact that we have found the virus in the wet market focused on infectious zoonotic epidemics including doesn’t mean that it emerged there...So the problem research in China alongside the Centre for Disease here is that we expect wet markets to be these incu- Control (CDC), which emerged after the SARS out- bators of disease emergence so that we immediately break. It is unsurprising that media such as the New look at them to find it and that blinds us to all oth- York Times, have reached out to Dr Lynteris for his er possibilities.” The particular market referenced expertise during this present Coronavirus pandemic. Dr Lynteris’ present project on the “epistemological 1 Lynteris, C. (2019). Framing Animals as Epidemic building blocks” for understanding zoonotic diseas- Villains: Histories of Non-Human Disease Vectors. London: Palgrave MacMillan. 8 9 here is the Huanan Seafood and Wholesale market, Uncertainty is present not only in the search which was initially implicated as the site of origin for the origin of the virus, but also in the process of the disease. It was later determined however that of developing appropriate responses to the Cov- it was likely only a location in which the virus was id-19 pandemic. International border controls and spread between humans rather than being the origi- securitisation have been high up on the priorities nal source2. of many states in their attempts to quell the spread So why have various media fixated on the of the virus, but is this response an effective one? idea that the Covid-19 outbreak originated in Wu- The usual method of border checks involves the han’s wet markets? Dr Lynteris explained, “The use of thermal cameras to check passengers for fe- media love wet markets because they can exoticise ver symptoms.