This paper offers a critical analysis of the work of western humanitarian NGOs operating in the African continent. We argue that in most cases, NGOs and their supporters are deaf to the actual wants, needs, and desires ? or, in other words, the agency ? of those they are trying to aid. We do this by first offering a series of ways of understanding the ideological commitments that inform the work of many humanitarian NGOs and those who donate to them. (...) In this, we expose the reasons leading to the failure of such individuals and organizations to recognize and take account of the agency of those they seek to help. Second, we offer evidence of the problematic outcome of this failure when coupled with a lack of recognition of the wider context of many of the conflicts that lead to the suffering of those that such NGOs intend to aid. In doing this, we expose the ways in which an NGO's own position can reinforce and contribute to the continuance of this suffering. This, we argue results from the simplified, inaccurate, and de-politicized ways in which NGOs tend to portray the problem of suffering both to those they solicit for donations and in their own conception of the problems and the ?moral? role that the organization itself plays in its work. (shrink)

Economics is privileged in contemporary government policy such that all human transactions are seen as economic forms of exchange. Education has been discursively restructured according to the logic of the market, with education policy being increasingly colonised by economic policy imperatives. This paper explores some of the consequences of this reframing which draws upon metaphors from industrial and business domains. This paper examines a significant dimension of teaching that currently has marginal presence in official discourse: social contingency. We argue that (...) social contingency is characterised by a variety of distinctive features that include unpredictability, relationality and ethical demands. The significance of social contingency is highlighted by a comparison with industrial production, which is organisationally contingent, and craft production, which is characterised as materially contingent. We argue that the different nature of contingency in these domains makes them inappropriate as metaphors for teaching. We explore the nature of social contingency and some of the practical and ethical consequences of the failure to articulate this in official discourse. Its absence in such discourse is illustrated by consideration of competence statements in the Initial Teacher Education context. We argue that the neglect of social contingency is founded on assumptions of teacher sovereignty that are both philosophically and ethically unsustainable. (shrink)

Science once had an unshakable faith in its ability to bring the forces of nature—even human nature—under control. In this wide-ranging book Anson Rabinbach examines how developments in physics, biology, medicine, psychology, politics, and art employed the metaphor of the working body as a human motor. From nineteenth-century theories of thermodynamics and political economy to the twentieth-century ideals of Taylorism and Fordism, Rabinbach demonstrates how the utopian obsession with energy and fatigue shaped social thought across the ideological spectrum.

Background The concept of “health security” is often used to motivate public health responses, yet the ethical values that underpin this concept remain largely unexamined. The recent Australian responses to COVID-19 serve as an important case study by which we can analyse the pre-existing literature to see what ethical values shaped, and continue to shape, Australia’s response. Methods We conducted a critical interpretive literature review of academic and grey literatures within key databases, resulting in 2,220 sources. After screening for duplicates (...) and relevance, we analysed ninety-six sources. Results First, risk and uncertainty are a leading focus, with a heavy concentration on risks to life and health. Second, free movement, safety, and security were recurringly emphasized, albeit narrowly focused upon the safety of the population. Third, legitimacy was a recurring theme, and it is here that discussions of “health security” figured highly. Conclusion Discussions of harm from government and associated official bodies fail to adequately distinguish between various senses of harm. Moreover, while the literature often discusses the balancing of rights, the steps involved in the weighing of these rights is rarely adequately explained and defended. We suggest that decision-makers should endeavour to clearly identify and defend the values undergirding their decisions in the public sphere. (shrink)

These essays by eminent European intellectual and cultural historian Anson Rabinbach address the writings of key figures in twentieth-century German philosophy. Rabinbach explores their ideas in relation to the two world wars and the horrors facing Europe at that time. Analyzing the work of Benjamin and Bloch, he suggests their indebtedness to the traditions of Jewish messianism. In a discussion of Hugo Ball's little-known _Critique of the German Intelligentsia_, Rabinbach reveals the curious intellectual career of the Dadaist and antiwar activist (...) turned-nationalist and anti-Semite. His examination of Heidegger's "Letter on Humanism" and Jaspers's _The Question of German Guilt_ illuminates the complex and often obscure political referents of these texts. Turning to Horkheimer and Adorno's _Dialectic of Enlightenment_, Rabinbach offers an arresting new interpretation of this central text of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School. Subtly and persuasively argued, his book will become an indispensable reference point for all concerned with twentieth-century German history and thought. (shrink)

These essays by eminent European intellectual and cultural historian Anson Rabinbach address the writings of key figures in twentieth-century German philosophy. Rabinbach explores their ideas in relation to the two world wars and the horrors facing Europe at that time. Analyzing the work of Benjamin and Bloch, he suggests their indebtedness to the traditions of Jewish messianism. In a discussion of Hugo Ball's little-known _Critique of the German Intelligentsia_, Rabinbach reveals the curious intellectual career of the Dadaist and antiwar activist (...) turned-nationalist and anti-Semite. His examination of Heidegger's "Letter on Humanism" and Jaspers's _The Question of German Guilt_ illuminates the complex and often obscure political referents of these texts. Turning to Horkheimer and Adorno's _Dialectic of Enlightenment_, Rabinbach offers an arresting new interpretation of this central text of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School. Subtly and persuasively argued, his book will become an indispensable reference point for all concerned with twentieth-century German history and thought. (shrink)

In this interfaith and multicultural fable, eloquent representatives of all members of the animal kingdom—from horses to bees—come before the respected Spirit King to complain of the dreadful treatment they have suffered at the hands of humankind. During the ensuing trial, where both humans and animals testify before the King, both sides argue their points ingeniously, deftly illustrating the validity of both sides of the ecology debate. The ancient antecedents of this tale are thought to have originated in India, with (...) the first written version penned in Arabic sometime before the 10th century in what is now Iraq. Much later, this version of the story was translated into Hebrew in 14th century France and was popular in European Jewish communities into the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This exquisite English translation, illustrated with 12 original color illumination plates, is useful in introducing young and old alike to environmental and animal rights issues. (shrink)

Hope and Memory: Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Tzvetan Todorov; David Bellos The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia by Richard Overy Stalinism and Nazism: History and Memory Compared by Henry Rousso; Lucy B. Golsan Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison by Ian Kershaw; Moshe Lewin Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? Five Interventions in the use of a Notion by Slavoj Zizek.

According to Pickering, Newton-Howes, and Young, the harmfulness of decisions does, and should, factor into determining patients' decisional competence. As they claim, decision-making proces...

Christina Morina, The Invention of Marxism: How an Idea Changed Everything (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023) 557 pp.

Are we rapidly approaching the end of the work-centered society? This article contends that at the century's end we may witness the disappearance of the great productivist utopias of the 1920s and 1930s. The crisis of productivist systems and ideologies may be far more significant than the more narrowly defined crisis of communism, or of `Fordism', that many critics have identified. Shifts in the forms of metaphor and the technology of work are taking place which call into question traditional notions (...) of the biopolitics of work. Modern productivism - the productivism of the industrial revolution - was governed by the belief that human society and nature are linked by the primacy and ultimate interchangeability (convertibility) of all productive activity. It presupposes a metaphor of the motor which first appeared during the first quarter of the 19th century. With the eclipse of the metaphor of the human motor, we can ask whether the end of the `work-centered model of society' might be attributed to the decline of its most compelling metaphor. If the body no longer occupies the central metaphor of productivism, what does this mean for the new configuration of labor and the model of labor based on information processing rather than the generation of things or the conversion of force? (shrink)

Studies of social media and its uses have focused on how it shapes behavior but less so with emotion. Overcoming this limitation, this article investigates the role of emotion in understanding and shaping actions online, and how, conversely, different uses of social media are leveraged to manage and express emotions, focusing on Facebook and Instagram. To this end, this article draws on 24 in-depth interviews with youth users in Hong Kong to excavate practices of emotional labor and management online, which (...) reveal (1) strategies to manage emotional reactions, centering on critical distance; (2) strategies to manage emotional conveyance by manipulating the temporality of the content they produce; and (3) the creation of a digital blasé that consisted of the atmosphere of Facebook and Instagram, sustained by general emotional detachment, the perceived need to detach, and a sense of “watchedness”. Throughout, emotional detachment was the default state that users entered into when using Facebook and Instagram, as an anticipatory reaction to the emotional exhaustion imposed by imagined content and into which they inevitably returned. (shrink)

Motor control schemes should have an element of control and an element of coordination. The former is a source of initiative and a zroduct of the brain's work (mind, intelligence, or ) while the latter can be viewed as a process with constraints emerging at a hierarchically lower, autonomous level. Limiting scientific analysis to an object smaller than the universe necessarily leads to a hierarchical (cybernetic) approach.