‘The evil of our collective soul’: Zombies, medical capitalism and environmental apocalypse

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resources ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Human Tissue ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
Human Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mythical Origin

Though frequently comprehended as a vehicle for social satire or post-cultural speculation, zombie fictions also demonstrably mobilize the climatic unease of the current Anthropocene. Focusing in particular upon Max Brooks’s 2006 novel World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, this article considers the complex politics which have frequently underwritten a mythical origin for pandemics in the Othered East, and their contemporary reproduction in western concerns regarding unregulated surgery and the capitalism of human tissue. The article then proposes that the deterioration of human culture consequent upon the fictional zombie pandemic interrogates the contemporary understanding of integrated nationhood and problematizes the dichotomy structured between geographically stable and refugee populations. The sudden eclipse of the competitive Anthropocene by a mindless Zombicene brings not renewal for a planet no longer supporting agriculture and industry but rather a hastening of perceived environmental collapse, where unregulated hunting and the uncontrolled burning of natural resources accelerate climatic deterioration, imperilling further the survival of residual humanity. As a type of apocalyptic fiction, the zombie narrative thus poses questions with regard to the persistence of conventional human behaviours, even in a post-capitalist environment, where the political concepts structuring nationhood have come to function as little more than a memory.

scholarly journals LABOR DAILY LIFE OF THE SOVIET ELITE IN LENINGRAD IN THE ERA OF LATE STALINISM

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 65-83
Author(s):  
A.A. Amosova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
Main Attention ◽  
History Of Emotions ◽  
Postwar Reconstruction ◽  
History Of ◽  
Leading Cadres

The article presents the research of the working norms and practices of the Soviet elite in the 1945-1950. The main attention is paid to the political biographies of the chairmen of Leningrad local government (Soviets). The research is based on methods of the oral history and the history of emotions; its source base includes documents from the archives of St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Crimea. The studied generation of Leningrad leading cadres came to government positions in the late 1930s, after the repressions of the "Great Terror". The members of the Soviet elite passed the testing of their professional skills during World War II and the Blockade of Leningrad, and directed the forced postwar reconstruction of the national economy. In the late 1940s, they became victims of the so-called “Leningrad affair”.

The Shaping of a Nation: Palestinians in the Last Century of Ottoman Rule

1994 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 75-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel S. Migdal ◽  
Baruch Kimmerling
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War I ◽  
Social Boundaries ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
British Mandate ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Political Boundaries ◽  
History Of

No period was more decisive in the modern history of Palestine than the British Mandate, which lasted from the end of World War I until 1948. Not only did British rule establish the political boundaries of Palestine, the new realities forced both Jews and Arabs in the country to redefine their social boundaries and self-identity. But the cataclysmic events that continued through 1948, with the creation of Israel and what Arabs called al-Nakba (the catastrophe of dispersal and exile), took shape in the wake of key changes stretching over the last century of Ottoman rule. What was to be Palestine after World War I became increasingly more integrated territorially during the nineteenth century. And Arab society in the last century of Ottoman rule underwent critical changes that paved the way for the emergence of a Palestinian people in the twentieth century.

scholarly journals World War II in modern interpretations of Russian and Polish politicians

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 82-90
Author(s):  
Boris Valentinovich Petelin ◽  
Vladilena Vadimovna Vorobeva
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
European Countries ◽  
The Political ◽  
Mutual Respect ◽  
World War ◽  
Red Army ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
The Military

In the political circles of European countries attempts to reformat the history of World War II has been continuing. Poland is particularly active; there at the official level, as well as in the articles and in the speeches of politicians, political scientists and historians crude attacks against Russia for its commitment to objective assessments of the military past are allowed. Though, as the authors of this article mention, Russian politicians have not always been consistent in evaluation of Soviet-Polish relationships, hoping to reach a certain compromise. If there were any objections, they were mostly unconvincing. Obviously, as the article points, some statements and speeches are not without emotional colouring that is characteristic, when expressing mutual claims. However, the deliberate falsification of historical facts and evidence, from whatever side it occurs, does not meet the interests of the Polish and Russian peoples, in whose memory the heroes of the Red Army and the Polish Resistance have lived and will live. The authors point in the conclusions that it is hard to achieve mutual respect to key problems of World War II because of the overlay of the 18th – 19th centuries, connected with the “partitions of Poland”, the existence of the “Kingdom of Poland” as part of the Russian Empire, Soviet-Polish War of 1920. There can be only one way out, as many Russian and Polish scientists believe – to understand the complex twists and turns of Russo-Polish history, relying on the documents. Otherwise, the number of pseudoscientific, dishonest interpretations will grow.

The History of Modern Japanese Law

Japanese Law ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 11-23
Author(s):  
Hiroshi Oda
Keyword(s):  
Social System ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
The People ◽  
The Us ◽  
Major Reform ◽  
History Of ◽  
Japanese Law ◽  
Second World

Japan built its modern legal system on the basis of the codes imported from Europe, namely Germany and France. After the Second World War, there was some influence of US law, e.g. the Constitution and the Code of Criminal Procedure. The new Constitution, which remained unchanged until today, has introduced significant changes in the political and social system of Japan. It was proclaimed that sovereignty rested with the people and not the emperor. The Diet elected by universal election became the supreme body of the state. Another major reform was triggered by the US-Japan Structural Impediments Talks in 1989–1990.

Latin America between the Second World War and the Cold War: Some Reflections on the 1945–8 Conjuncture

1988 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie Bethell ◽  
Ian Roxborough
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Political ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second World

The importance of the years of political and social upheaval immediately following the end of the Second World War and coinciding with the beginnings of the Cold War, that is to say, the period from 1944 or 1945 to 1948 or 1949, for the history of Europe (East and West), the Near and Middle East, Asia (Japan, China, South and East Asia), even Africa (certainly South Africa) in the second half of the twentieth century has long been generally recognised. In recent years historians of the United States, which had not, of course, been a theatre of war and which alone among the major belligerents emerged from the Second World War stronger and more prosperous, have begun to focus attention on the political, social and ideological conflict there in the postwar period – and the long term significance for the United States of the basis on which it was resolved. In contrast, except for Argentina, where Perón's rise to power has always attracted the interest of historians, the immediate postwar years in Latin America, which had been relatively untouched by, and had played a relatively minor role in, the Second World War, remain to a large extent neglected. It is our view that these years constituted a critical conjuncture in the political and social history of Latin America just as they did for much of the rest of the world. In a forthcoming collection of case studies, which we are currently editing, the main features of the immediate postwar period in Latin America, and especially the role played by labour and the Left, will be explored in some detail, country by country.1In this article, somewhat speculative and intentionally polemical, we present the broad outlines of our thesis.

Money and the Ghetto, Money in the Ghetto

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 494-499
Author(s):  
Destin Jenkins
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
Post World War Ii ◽  
Racial Capitalism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Forms Of Violence ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

This essay revisits Making the Second Ghetto to consider what Arnold Hirsch argued about the relationship between race, money, and the ghetto. It explores how Hirsch’s analysis of this relationship was at once consistent with those penned by other urban historians and distinct from those interested in the political economy of the ghetto. Although moneymaking was hardly the main focus, Hirsch’s engagement with “Vampire” rental agencies and panic peddlers laid the groundwork for an analysis that treats the post–World War II metropolis as a crucial node in the history of racial capitalism. Finally, this essay offers a way to connect local forms of violence to the kinds of constraints imposed by financiers far removed from the city itself.

Field, capital and habitus: An oral history of women in accounting in Australia during World War II

2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Ikin ◽  
Leanne Johns ◽  
Colleen Hayes
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Oral History ◽  
World War ◽  
History Of

The Political History of American Food Aid

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Riley
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Political Support ◽  
Food Aid ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Agriculture Sector ◽  
History Of

This book discusses the 220-year history of the political and humanitarian uses of American food as a tool of both foreign and domestic policy. During these years, food aid has been used as a weapon against the expansion of bolshevism after World War I and communism after World War II, a cudgel to force policy changes by recalcitrant recipient governments, a method for balancing disputes between Israel and Egypt, a backdoor means of increasing military aid to Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, a signal of support to friendly governments, and a resource to help achieve economic development in food-insecure countries. At home, international food aid has, at times, been used to dump troublesome food surpluses abroad and has served politicians as a tool to secure the votes of farming constituents and the political support of agriculture-sector lobbyists, commodity traders, transporters, and shippers. Most important in the minds of many, it has been the most visible—and most popular—means of providing humanitarian aid to tens of millions of hungry men, women, and children confronted, on distant shores, by war, terrorism, and natural cataclysms and the resulting threat—if not the reality—of famine and death. The book investigates the little-known, not well-understood, and often highly contentious political processes that have converted fields of grains, crops of pulses, and herds of livestock into the tools of U.S. government policy.

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