Mountain Rescue in Translation

This brief essay, drawn from my historical research for “The Volunteers,” the first installment of Hidden Cabinet’s “Tending the Wounded” series, appeared today on the website of the Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies.

90% and beyond

The non-profit video production company that I founded, Hidden Cabinet Films, which includes a fantastic Board of Directors, is hosting a fundraiser for our latest project, “Tending the Wounded: A Social and Political Theory of Emergency Medical Services”:

The brave men and women of Emergency Medical Services (EMS) are heroes of the medical world, but can we also understand what they do in social and political terms? Can the way that emergency medics tend to the wounded show us how to organize our societies better? What do they have to teach us about how liberal democracies can be resilient and endure? We believe that asking these questions is especially important in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic and the divisiveness of our current politics.

The brave men and women of Emergency Medical Services (EMS) are heroes of the medical world, but can we also understand what they do in social and political terms? Can the way that emergency medics tend to the wounded show us how to organize our societies better? What do they have to teach us about how liberal democracies can be resilient and endure? We believe that asking these questions is especially important in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic and the divisiveness of our current politics.

In two weeks we have raised 90% of our fundraising goal, bringing us very close as a 501(c)(3) to being able to absorb two significant institutional grants. Can you help us reach the finish line? All gifts are tax deductible. Contributions can be made by credit card by clicking “Donate” on our GoFundMe page, via PayPal, or by check (contact me for details). Small donations stand right alongside larger ones in helping us remain a publicly supported organization and enabling us to bring “Tending the Wounded” to fruition.

Our previous major video project was a set of five films for the exhibition “Law’s Picture Books” for the Grolier Club, including “A Philosophical Question.” 

EMS for Democracy

My article “EMS for Democracy: The Case of Människan Bakom Uniformen“ appeared today as the cover story in the fall issue of the UK-based, European-wide magazine Ambulance Today (see the link at page nine). The article is the first in a series that will consider emergency medical services, especially the work of ambulance personnel, from the perspective of democratic social and political theory.

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Update 1/29/20: for the next article in this series, see the latest issue of Ambulance Today. This article considers the significance of EMS volunteerism, and is accompanied by four interviews with EMS practitioners in Sweden, Austria, Israel and the United States.

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Update 2/20/20: I recently gave a talk about EMS and social theory at a conference on mutual aid sponsored by the journal Telos. The talk can be found here.