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This book develops an examination and critique of human extinction as a result of the ‘next pandemic’ and turns attention towards the role of pandemic catastrophe in the renegotiation of what it means to be human. Nested in debates in anthropology, philosophy, social theory and global health, the book argues that fear of and fascination with the ‘next pandemic’ stem not so much from an anticipation of a biological extinction of the human species, as from an expectation of the loss of mastery over human/non-humanl relations. Christos Lynteris employs the notion of the ‘pandemic imaginary’ in order to understand the way in which pandemic-borne human extinction refashions our unders...
This collection of essays, by some of the most distinguished public intellectuals and cultural critics in America explores various dimensions of what it means to live in the age of debt. They ask, what is the debt age? For that matter, what is debt? Is its meaning transhistorical or transcultural? Or is it imbued in ideology and thus historically contingent? What is the relationship between debt and theory? Whose debt is acknowledged and whose is ignored? Who is the paradigmatic subject of debt? How has debt affected contemporary academic culture? Their responses to these and other aspects of debt are sure to become required reading for anyone who wants to understand what it means to live in the debt age.
As a juggler the author likes to finish his performances with a stunt that combines props and techniques from a variety of juggling disciplines. Imagine him idling on a giraffe unicycle, while balancing a spinning basketball on a mouth stick, and toss-juggling a sword, a toilet plunger, and a rubber chicken. As a mathematician he is also interested in the treasure trove of beautiful mathematics used to model the different activities in a juggler's repertoire. In this book he provides an intellectually stimulating collection of mostly self-contained mathematical essays that introduce the reader to many elegant results and techniques from a wide range of mathematical disciplines such as combinatorics, graph theory, knot theory, mechanics, differential equations, control theory, and robotics. "The Mathematics of Juggling" is the first comprehensive account summarizing and expanding the results in the literature on juggling tricks and skills, as well as the mathematics behind these tricks and skills. Anybody who is not put off by the word "mathematics" in the title of this book should have a good time reading it.
Benin is now perceived of as a model of democracy in Africa because it has successfully established a democratic political system based on consensus and regular and fair elections, and it continues to improve its electoral and parliamentary systems. Since its democracy it has taken important steps towards laying the foundation for the rule of law by establishing stable political institutions that can withstand the test of time. It has also engaged in an important legal, institutional, and regulatory reform to establish a more favorable environment for private initiative. The fourth edition of Historical Dictionary of Benin covers its history through a chronology, an introductory essay, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 900 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Benin.
In Hospital Land USA, Wendy Simonds analyzes the wide-reaching powers of medicalization: the dynamic processes by which medical authorities, institutions, and ideologies impact our everyday experiences, culture, and social life. Simonds documents her own Hospital Land adventures and draws on a wide range of U.S. cultural representations — from memoirs to medical mail, from hospital signs to disaster movies — in order to urge critical thinking about conventional notions of care, health, embodiment, identity, suffering, and mortality. This book is intended for general readers, medical practitioners, undergraduate and graduate students in courses on medical sociology, medicine, medical ethics, nursing, public health, carework, visual culture, cultural studies, and gerontology.
Madagascar’s constitution of August 19, 1992 brought hope to a population exhausted by economic failures associated with a failed experiment in scientific socialism and years of mismanagement. The repetition of transparent elections and the promulgation of “good governance” in the years that followed appeared to serve as an indicator of institutional strengthening and, by extension, progress. Unfortunately, a broader institutional analysis points toward a series of shocks to the political system by way of legal, but highly detrimental, juridical and constitutional shifts to the system. These shocks were meant to serve particularized political networks with long clientalistic roots and ...
Since its enactment in 1970, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), has become one node of a massive, sprawling, multibillion-dollar regime that is considered essential to slowing the proliferation of nuclear weapons and weapons technology. However, according to Shampa Biswas, these well-intentioned efforts to halt the spread of nuclear weapons deflect attention from a hierarchical global nuclear order dominated by powerful states and capitalist interests that benefit from the status quo. In Nuclear Desire, Biswas proposes that pursuit and production of nuclear power is sustained by this unequal global order whose persistent and daily harmful effects are experienced by some of the most ...
The counterterrorism policies following September 11, 2001, brought the definition and legitimacy of torture to the forefront of political, military, and public debates. This timely volume explores the question of torture through multiple lenses by situating it within systems of belief, social networks of power, and ideological worldviews. Individual essays examine the boundaries of what is deemed legitimate political violence for the sake of state security, the immediate and long-term effects of torture on human and social bodies, the visual and artistic representations of torture, how certain people are dehumanized to make it acceptable to torture them, and how we understand complicity in and the ethical boundaries of torture.
Cover -- Germ Wars -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Introduction: Political Ecologies of Bioterror -- 1. "Smallpox Is Dead": The Public Health Campaign to (Almost) Eradicate a Species -- 2. Microbes for War and Peace: On the Military Origins of Containment -- 3. The Wild Microbiological West: Fighting Ticks and Weighing Risks -- 4. Agents of Care: Bioterrorism Preparedness at the CDC -- 5. Simulation Science: Securing the Future -- 6. Bioterror Borderlands: Of Nature and Nation -- Conclusion: "Freaked Out Yet?"--Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Selected Bibliography -- Index
During the early Cold War, thousands of Canadians attended events organized by the Canadian-Soviet Friendship Society (CSFS) and subscribed to its publications. The CSFS aimed its message at progressive Canadians, hoping to convince them that the USSR was an egalitarian and enlightened state. Attempting to soften, define and redirect the antagonistic narratives of the day, the CSFS story is one of propaganda and persuasion in Cold War Canada. The CSFS was linked to other groups on the Canadian political left and was consistently lead by Canadian communists. For many years, its leader and best known member was the enigmatic Dyson Carter. Raised in a religious family and educated as a scientis...