scholarly journals Of Genes and Germs: The Agenda of Health in Contemporary Hollywood

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 154-171
Author(s):  
Elwin John

Within the digital labyrinth, our telling of the medical present and future is also mediated as expected, by a web of technological upgradations. Science and technology may have strengthened the health security of its citizens and so did the old villains/attackers of the human body which have become more powerful. Deadlier viruses have penetrated into the complex genomic structures of the human race which have paved the way for invention of human supportive vaccinations and also destructive possibilities of biological warfare. Through this paper, I study this tensely and anxious predicament of human beings as conceived and represented in popular cinema. With the help of certain select texts, Steven Soderbergh Contagion (2011), Wolfgang Petersen’s Outbreak (1995), Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s 28 Weeks Later (2007) and Marc Forster’s World War Z (2013), I explore the sabotage of a specific individual agency- the human body and the ensuing chaos and disorder. While this paper will encompass the fear of the malign agent or the contagion and the cultural representation of health, I argue that the agenda of health may not localise/concentrate the workings of power to a privileged minority, but rather because of being a common requirement, this agenda can control and disrupt the entire social order of the world. The possibilities of this paper are limited within the framework of ‘virus’ as the agent, ‘health’ as the agenda and the human ‘body’ as the agency where various mediations could occur.

Author(s):  
Mary Elise Sarotte

This chapter examines the Soviet restoration model and former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl's revivalist model. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) hoped to use its weight as a victor in the Second World War to restore the old quadripartite mechanism of four-power control exactly as it used to be in 1945, before subsequent layers of Cold War modifications created room for German contributions. This restoration model, which called for the reuse of the old Allied Control Commission to dominate all further proceedings in divided Germany, represented a realist vision of politics run by powerful states, each retaining their own sociopolitical order and pursuing their own interests. Meanwhile, Kohl's revivalist model represented the revival, or adaptive reuse, of a confederation of German states. This latter-day “confederationism” blurred the lines of state sovereignty; each of the two twenty-first-century Germanies would maintain its own political and social order, but the two would share a confederative, national roof.


2020 ◽  
pp. 79-92
Author(s):  
Burhanettin Duran

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the domestic and foreign policy agendas of all countries have been turned upside down. The pandemic has brought new problems and competition areas to states and to the international system. While the pandemic politically calls to mind the post-World War II era, it can also be compared with the 2008 crisis due to its economic effects such as unemployment and the disruption of global supply chains. A debate immediately began for a new international system; however, it seems that the current international system will be affected, but will not experience a radical change. That is, a new international order is not expected, while disorder is most likely in the post-pandemic period. In an atmosphere of global instability where debates on the U.S.-led international system have been worn for a while, in the post-pandemic period states will invest in self-sufficiency and redefine their strategic areas, especially in health security. The decline of U.S. leadership, the challenging policies of China, the effects of Chinese policies on the U.S.-China relations and the EU’s deepening crisis are going to be the main discussion topics that will determine the future of the international system.


2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 41
Author(s):  
Patricia Ellis

Glanders, although known to be endemic in certain regions/countries of the Old and New Worlds for centuries, had been largely overlooked as a threat to equine and human health until the disease re-emerged in the Middle East in 2004. The exponential growth in international horse movements, both legal and illegal, mainly for performance purposes, has enhanced the risk of global spread of glanders in the Middle East and elsewhere. Ever since the First World War, the glanders bacillus has been recognised as a potential biological warfare agent.


2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Finlay

AbstractHow do members of the general public come to regard some uses of violence as legitimate and others as illegitimate? And how do they learn to use widely recognised normative principles in doing so such as those encapsulated in the laws of war and debated by just war theorists? This article argues that popular cinema is likely to be a major source of influence especially through a subgenre that I call ‘Just War Cinema’. Since the 1950s, many films have addressed the moral drama at the centre of contemporary Just War Theory through the figure of the enemy in the Second World War, offering often explicit and sophisticated treatments of the relationship between thejus ad bellumand thejus in bellothat anticipate or echo the arguments of philosophers. But whereas Cold War-era films may have supported Just War Theory’s ambitions to shape public understanding, a strongly revisionary tendency in Just War Cinema since the late 1990s is just as likely to thwart them. The potential of Just War Cinema to vitiate efforts to shape wider attitudes is a matter that both moral philosophers and those concerned with disseminating the law of war ought to pay close attention to.


Sociology ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 52 (5) ◽  
pp. 898-914 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristian Frisk

The article challenges the thesis that western societies have moved towards a post-heroic mood in which military casualties are interpreted as nothing but a waste of life. Using content analysis and qualitative textual analysis of obituaries produced by the Royal Danish Army in memory of soldiers killed during the Second World War (1940–1945) and the military campaign in Afghanistan (2002–2014), the article shows that a ‘good’ military death is no longer conceived of as a patriotic sacrifice, but is instead legitimised by an appeal to the unique moral worth, humanitarian goals and high professionalism of the fallen. The article concludes that fatalities in international military engagement have invoked a sense of post-patriotic heroism instead of a post-heroic crisis, and argues that the social order of modern society has underpinned, rather than undermined, ideals of military self-sacrifice and heroism, contrary to the predominant assumption of the literature on post-heroic warfare.


2005 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
David P. Setran

AbstractIn the years between World War I and World War II in the United States, public and religious educators engaged in an extended struggle to define the appropriate nature of character education for American youth. Within a post-war culture agonizing over the sanctions of moral living in the wake of mass violence and vanishing certitudes, a group of conservative educators sought to shore up traditional values through the construction of morality codes defining the characteristics of the “good American.” At the same time, a group of liberal progressive educators set forth a vigorous critique of these popular character education programs. This article analyzes the nature of this liberal critique by looking at one leading liberal spokesperson, George Albert Coe. Coe taught at Union Theological Seminary and Teachers College, Columbia University, and used his platform in these institutions to forge a model of character education derived from the combined influences of liberal Protestantism and Deweyan progressive education. Coe posited a two-pronged vision for American moral education rooted in the need for both procedural democracy (collaborative moral decision making) and a democratic social order. Utilizing this vision of the “democracy of God,” Coe demonstrated the inadequacies of code-based models, pointing in particular to the anachronism of traditional virtues in a world of social interdependence, the misguided individualism of the virtues, and the indoctrinatory nature of conservative programs. He proposed that youth be allowed to participate in moral experimentation, adopting ideals through scientific testing rather than unthinking allegiance to authoritative commands. Expanding the meaning of morality to include social as well as personal righteousness, he also made character education a vehicle of social justice. In the end, I contend that Coe's democratic model of character education, because of its scientific epistemological hegemony and devaluing of tradition, actually failed to promote a truly democratic character.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 407-419
Author(s):  
Makmudi Makmudi

Man consists of two elements, namely body and spirit, so that human beings are jasiman and ruhiyah at once. Hummans are also part of one element of the elements that exist in an educational process. Three element include the soul, the mind, the heart, and the human body. Humman and education, can not be separated from each other. Both are an interconnected entity, human as the perpetrator and education as a syistem in the process to achieve the goal of education itself.  Mental health education requires alignment and harmony in various stages and sectors as well as attention to the three elements that exist in the human self that is the physical element (psychomotor) which includes body building, skill (skill) and sexual education, the spiritual element (affective) which includes the formation of faith, and iradah (the will), the element of reason (cognitive) which includes the coaching of intelligence and the provision of knowledge. The purpose of writing this research is to know and analyze thoughts about the concept of life education perspective Ibn Qayyim al-Jauziyyah. Soul education is considered successful, if one's soul has reached the degree of nafs muthmainnah, which has three main characteristics that mutually reinforce one another, namely; (1) a faithful soul to God, (2) a patient soul, (3) a soul that is self-serving to Allah (tawakal). Through the process of mental education which includes: the foundation of theology, the purpose of mental education, integrated curriculum / manhaj at-takamul, appropriate methods and applicable according to its stages, such as: takhliyah stages, tahliyah stages, muhasabah an-nafs, dzikrullah, and tahqiq 'ubudiyah. So that from the process will give birth ihsan attitude, and will increase the piety in worship, both related to God and those related to humans and the surrounding natural environment. Because, the essence of ihsan attitude itself is upholding 'ubudiyah.


Author(s):  
Rohit Rastogi ◽  
Mamta Saxena ◽  
Mayank Gupta ◽  
Akshit Rajan Rastogi ◽  
Pradeep Kumar ◽  
...  

From ancient times, humans are striving for being healthy and to live with mental peace with family and society. In the previous centuries also, some manmade and mostly natural disasters have disturbed the pace of human life. There have been times when the whole human race has been in terror, danger, and utmost worry. The electrical gadgets also have made the human life comfortable, but also machines have dominated its consciousness. The stress, aggression, depression, and many more issues are also showing presence in all our lives. The chapter is a trial to establish the effect of yagna and mantra science over human calmness and its effect on human health irrespective to gender and age. The article also elaborates the effect of Sanskrit sound and mantra chanting on emission of radiations from electronic gadgets. It also presents the effect of spiritual practices on the human body and soul after the terror, stress, grief created due to COVID-19.


Author(s):  
Paul Franks

This article examines three moments of the post-Kantian philosophical tradition in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: Kantianism, Post-Kantian Idealism, and Neo-Kantianism. It elucidates the distinctive methods of a tradition that has never entirely disappeared and is now acknowledged once again as the source of contemporary insights. It outlines two problematics—naturalist scepticism and historicist nihilism—threatening the possibility of metaphysics. The first concerns sceptical worries about reason, emerging from attempts to extend the methods of natural science to the study of human beings. Kant’s project of a critical and transcendental analysis of reason, with its distinctive methods, should be considered a response. The second arises from the development of new methods of historical inquiry, seeming to undermine the very possibility of individual agency. Also considered are Kant’s successors’ revisions of the critical and transcendental analysis of reason, undertaken to overcome challenges confronting the original versions of Kant’s methods.


2018 ◽  
Vol 07 (03) ◽  
pp. 176-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arushi Kumar ◽  
Raj Kumar

AbstractNeurosciences in Buddhist era was mainly based on power of mind and thoughts. It emphasized mainly about the power of mind, control of thoughts, purification, and modifications of erroneous thought process, which should result in truthful and correct practices and subsequent actions by human beings to remain happy. Buddhism believes that most diseases of human body are secondary to mind and that these can be healed by controlling the erroneous thoughts and practices of Dhamma. Though the treatment for neurologic disorders such as headache, stress, and anxiety was primitive, it was mainly based on purification of mind and righteous pathway of Dhamma followed by medicines, modification in dietary and other living habits, etc. Enough evidence (including operated case-based commentary) shows that cranial surgery was also performed following appropriate diagnosis. The concept of diagnosis, preoperative evaluation, explanation to the patient, operative procedure, perioperative care, and follow-up was also present in that era.


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