Omar Dewachi's guest appearances

Omar Dewachi

POMEPS Middle East Political Science Podcast

Anthropological Airwaves

Jason Brownlee

Alexander Thurston

Steven Cook

Colin Kahl

Nathan Brown

Carolyn Sufrin

Kevan Harris

Narges Bajoghli

Wendy Pearlman

Shiraz Maher

Amaney Jamal

Joe Masco

Laleh Khalili

Pete Moore

Frederic Wehrey

OwlTail

Omar Dewachi talks about his latest book, Ungovernable Life: Mandatory Medicine and Statecraft in Iraq, with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. The book presents the history of healthcare in Iraq, the rise and fall of Iraqi medicine, and the role of healthcare in the making and unmaking of the infrastructure of the state.Dewachi explains, “For four decades the state [of Iraq] invested in training doctors and building better health care institutions. Regardless of the ideology of the ruling parties…there was constant interest in developing the health care infrastructure.”He expands, “The war platform was very important in the 1980s and actually both Iraq and Iran showed…a lot of investment and mobilization of the population to respond to the possible health fallout from the war. So in both countries actually you see cutting down of infant mortality rates, maternal mortality rates, and the mobilization of the population to actually do public health on a grassroots level.”“What you get in the 1990s [is] a very disturbing war project where you destroy the infrastructure of the country and then you put an entire population under sanctions. And that experiment soon in a very quick way begins to undermine the functioning of a relatively powerful state infrastructure…Which basically also means a kind of a dismantlement of human infrastructure of expertise and knowledge and training networks. So all of this gets completely dismantled in relationship to the lack of available supplies and deterioration in hospital sanitation and increases in in poverty and inequality,” explains Dewachi.Dewachi is an Associate Professor at Rutgers University’s Department of Anthropology. Dewachi graduated from Harvard University with a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology in 2008. His research focuses on the biomedical, environmental, and social experiences of war injury, displacement, and the rise of Anti-Microbial Resistance (AMR) across different conflict-settings and therapeutic geographies in the Middle East. His work has culminated in the inauguration of the Conflict Medicine Program at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon.Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.

Omar Dewachi talks about his latest book, Ungovernable Life: Mandatory Medicine and Statecraft in Iraq, with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. The book presents the history of healthcare in Iraq, the rise and fall of Iraqi medicine, and the role of healthcare in the making and unmaking of the infrastructure of the state. Dewachi explains, “For four decades the state [of Iraq] invested in training doctors and building better health care institutions. Regardless of the ideology of the ruling parties…there was constant interest in developing the health care infrastructure.” He expands, “The war platform was very important in the 1980s and actually both Iraq and Iran showed…a lot of investment and mobilization of the population to respond to the possible health fallout from the war. So in both countries actually you see cutting down of infant mortality rates, maternal mortality rates, and the mobilization of the population to actually do public health on a grassroots level.” “What you get in the 1990s [is] a very disturbing war project where you destroy the infrastructure of the country and then you put an entire population under sanctions. And that experiment soon in a very quick way begins to undermine the functioning of a relatively powerful state infrastructure…Which basically also means a kind of a dismantlement of human infrastructure of expertise and knowledge and training networks. So all of this gets completely dismantled in relationship to the lack of available supplies and deterioration in hospital sanitation and increases in in poverty and inequality,” explains Dewachi. Dewachi is an Associate Professor at Rutgers University’s Department of Anthropology. Dewachi graduated from Harvard University with a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology in 2008. His research focuses on the biomedical, environmental, and social experiences of war injury, displacement, and the rise of Anti-Microbial Resistance (AMR) across different conflict-settings and therapeutic geographies in the Middle East. His work has culminated in the inauguration of the Conflict Medicine Program at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (<a href="https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and</a> Instagram (<a href="https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page</a>.

Ungovernable Life: A Conversation with Omar Dewachi (S. 8, Ep. 12)

In the fourth and final episode of the series, "The Military Present," anthropologist and physician Omar Dewachi (American University of Beirut) discusses war as a form of governance, drawing on years of ethnographic research on the breakdown of health care in Iraq as well as the travelling wounds of injured Iraqi patients forced to seek medical treatment in other Middle Eastern countries. Dewachi traces the historical formation and effects of global discourses casting Iraq as ungovernable and connects the construction of Iraq as ungovernable to the emergence of the multi-drug resistant Acinetobacter baumannii. Dewachi offers fascinating insights into how war is fueling antimicrobial resistance and generative suggestions about the kinds of ethnographic objects that can help anthropologists talk about war without reproducing the distinction between the direct and indirect effects of war. Hosted by Vasiliki Touhouliotis and Emily Sogn, this four-part series on the “military present” features interviews with scholars of war and militarism that explore how our present is shaped by the technologies, logics, histories, and economy of war. Full episode transcript.   Image Caption: Berm remains at Fao, Iraq, the site of one of the bloodiest battles of the Iran Iraq-war (1980-1988). Photograph taken by Omar Dewachi (2015).  Featured Audio: P.J. Harvey - "The Glorious Land" 

In the fourth and final episode of the series, "The Military Present," anthropologist and physician Omar Dewachi (American University of Beirut) discusses war as a form of governance, drawing on years of ethnographic research on the breakdown of health care in Iraq as well as the travelling wounds of injured Iraqi patients forced to seek medical treatment in other Middle Eastern countries. Dewachi traces the historical formation and effects of global discourses casting Iraq as ungovernable and connects the construction of Iraq as ungovernable to the emergence of the multi-drug resistant Acinetobacter baumannii. Dewachi offers fascinating insights into how war is fueling antimicrobial resistance and generative suggestions about the kinds of ethnographic objects that can help anthropologists talk about war without reproducing the distinction between the direct and indirect effects of war. Hosted by Vasiliki Touhouliotis and Emily Sogn, this four-part series on the “military present” features interviews with scholars of war and militarism that explore how our present is shaped by the technologies, logics, histories, and economy of war. <a href="https://www.americananthropologist.org/podcast/military-present-episode-04" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Full episode transcript</a>.  Image Caption: Berm remains at Fao, Iraq, the site of one of the bloodiest battles of the Iran Iraq-war (1980-1988). Photograph taken by Omar Dewachi (2015). Featured Audio: <a href="//www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1lFM1K8R1s" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">P.J. Harvey - "The Glorious Land"</a>

Special Feature "The Military Present" - Episode 4 (Feat. Omar Dewachi)