Hope and Play: Jonathan Lear’s Radical Hope and Lars von Trier’s Melancholia

Public Things ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bonnie Honig
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Necessary Conditions ◽  
The World ◽  
Democratic Life

This chapter examines hope and play in relation to the necessary conditions of democratic life by offering a reading of Jonathan Lear's book Radical Hope and Lars von Trier's film Melancholia. Both Radical Hope and Melancholia explore the loss of holding environments and the world-loss that results. Both also pose the question of how and whether attachment to world and to others is possible in the absence of public things. Melancholia may be read as a parable of capitalism or climate change as well as the human alienation and melancholy they engender. Radical Hope brings these possibilities together as it tries to understand the melancholy and resilience of the Crow people who suffered under white conquest, but managed to retain some of their land to this day.

scholarly journals Development of a Shipment Policy for Collection Centers

Mathematics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 1385
Author(s):  
Irais Mora-Ochomogo ◽  
Marco Serrato ◽  
Jaime Mora-Vargas ◽  
Raha Akhavan-Tabatabaei
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Natural Disasters ◽  
Markov Decision Process ◽  
Decision Process ◽  
Necessary Conditions ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Humanitarian Organizations ◽  
The World ◽  
Markov Decision ◽  
Unsatisfied Demand

Natural disasters represent a latent threat for every country in the world. Due to climate change and other factors, statistics show that they continue to be on the rise. This situation presents a challenge for the communities and the humanitarian organizations to be better prepared and react faster to natural disasters. In some countries, in-kind donations represent a high percentage of the supply for the operations, which presents additional challenges. This research proposes a Markov Decision Process (MDP) model to resemble operations in collection centers, where in-kind donations are received, sorted, packed, and sent to the affected areas. The decision addressed is when to send a shipment considering the uncertainty of the donations’ supply and the demand, as well as the logistics costs and the penalty of unsatisfied demand. As a result of the MDP a Monotone Optimal Non-Decreasing Policy (MONDP) is proposed, which provides valuable insights for decision-makers within this field. Moreover, the necessary conditions to prove the existence of such MONDP are presented.

Democracy’s Necessary Conditions

Public Things ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bonnie Honig
Keyword(s):  
Object Relations ◽  
Necessary Conditions ◽  
External World ◽  
Object Permanence ◽  
Transitional Object ◽  
Michael Walzer ◽  
External Reality ◽  
The World ◽  
Democratic Life

This chapter discusses the role of public things in democratic theory and in democratic life. It examines the power of public things to stimulate the object relations of democratic collectivity by drawing on the work of D. W. Winnicott, who argues that objects are central to the developing infant's capacity to relate to the world as an external reality. According to Winnicott, the baby needs its transitional object (the blanket, a toy) to supply it with a kind of object-ivity, or realness. The baby learns about the existence of an external world when it destroys/disavows the object and the object survives. This is object permanence. The chapter also considers the views of Wendy Brown, Michael Walzer, and Hannah Arendt in the context of decades of charting the almost always already overness of democracy's (or of politics') necessary conditions.

The World Economic Forum Principles on "Climate Governance on Corporate Boards": can soft law help to face climate change around the world?

2020 ◽  
pp. 37-55
Author(s):  
Sabrina Bruno
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Boards Of Directors ◽  
Soft Law ◽  
Corporate Boards ◽  
World Economic Forum ◽  
Financial Factor ◽  
The World ◽  
World Economic

Climate change is a financial factor that carries with it risks and opportunities for companies. To support boards of directors of companies belonging to all jurisdictions, the World Economic Forum issued in January 2019 eight Principlescontaining both theoretical and practical provisions on: climate accountability, competence, governance, management, disclosure and dialogue. The paper analyses each Principle to understand scope and managerial consequences for boards and to evaluate whether the legal distinctions, among the various jurisdictions, may undermine the application of the Principles or, by contrast, despite the differences the Principles may be a useful and effective guidance to drive boards' of directors' conduct around the world in handling climate change challenges. Five jurisdictions are taken into consideration for this comparative analysis: Europe (and UK), US, Australia, South Africa and Canada. The conclusion is that the WEF Principles, as soft law, is the best possible instrument to address boards of directors of worldwide companies, harmonise their conduct and effectively help facing such global emergency.

How Can Latin America Help the World to Cope with Climate Change?

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Galiani ◽  
Manuel Puente ◽  
Federico Weinschelbaum
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Latin America ◽  
The World

North Atlantic Oscillation; a Climatic Indicator to Predict Hydropower Availability in Scandinavia

2002 ◽  
Vol 33 (5) ◽  
pp. 415-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cintia B. Uvo ◽  
Ronny Berndtsson
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Spatial Distribution ◽  
Climate Variability ◽  
North Atlantic Oscillation ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Winter Precipitation ◽  
Model Driven ◽  
The World ◽  
Hydropower Production ◽  
Precipitation And Temperature

Climate variability and climate change are of great concern to economists and energy producers as well as environmentalists as both affect the precipitation and temperature in many regions of the world. Among those affected by climate variability is the Scandinavian Peninsula. Particularly, its winter precipitation and temperature are affected by the variations of the so-called North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). The objective of this paper is to analyze the spatial distribution of the influence of NAO over Scandinavia. This analysis is a first step to establishing a predictive model, driven by a climatic indicator such as NAO, for the available water resources of different regions in Scandinavia. Such a tool would be valuable for predicting potential of hydropower production one or more seasons in advance.

Global Governance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Caney
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
World Bank ◽  
Security Council ◽  
Fair Trade ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
World Trade ◽  
International Institutions ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
The World ◽  
Dangerous Climate Change

In recent years, a number of powerful arguments have been given for thinking that there should be suprastate institutions, and that the current ones, such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and United Nations Security Council, need to be radically reformed and new ones created. Two distinct kinds of argument have been advanced. One is instrumental and emphasizes the need for effective suprastate political institutions to realize some important substantive ideals (such as preventing dangerous climate change, eradicating poverty, promoting fair trade, and securing peace). The second is procedural and emphasizes the importance of political institutions that include all those subject to their power in as democratic a process as possible, and builds on this to call for democratically accountable international institutions. In this chapter, the author argues that the two approaches need not conflict, and that they can in fact lend support to each other.

A Passage Theory of Time

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin A. Lipman
Keyword(s):  
Necessary Conditions ◽  
Fragmented Structure ◽  
The World ◽  
Real Change ◽  
Primitive Notion

This paper proposes a theory of time that takes the notion of passage as its basic primitive. Any notion of passage that is worthy of that name should make for real change across time. It is argued that real change across time in turn requires the obtaining of incompatible facts. The proposed theory will therefore be a form of fragmentalism, which makes room for the obtaining of incompatible facts by taking the world to exhibit a type of fragmented structure. The preferred form of fragmentalism and the primitive notion of passage are elucidated in some detail. It is argued that the resulting picture resolves the problem of change and meets the puzzling yet necessary conditions for the reality of passage

The Historiography of Environmental History

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. R. McNeill
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
Industrial Pollution ◽  
Full Scale ◽  
Environmental Concerns ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter discusses the emergence of environmental history, which developed in the context of the environmental concerns that began in the 1960s with worries about local industrial pollution, but which has since evolved into a full-scale global crisis of climate change. Environmental history is ‘the history of the relationship between human societies and the rest of nature’. It includes three chief areas of inquiry: the study of material environmental history, political and policy-related environmental history, and a form of environmental history which concerns what humans have thought, believed, written, and more rarely, painted, sculpted, sung, or danced that deals with the relationship between society and nature. Since 1980, environmental history has come to flourish in many corners of the world, and scholars everywhere have found models, approaches, and perspectives rather different from those developed for the US context.

Evolutionary Writings

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Darwin
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Intelligent Design ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Global Impact ◽  
The World ◽  
Correspondence Project ◽  
Darwin Correspondence Project ◽  
Descent Of Man ◽  
Controversial Nature ◽  
Beagle Voyage

‘Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.’ On topics ranging from intelligent design and climate change to the politics of gender and race, the evolutionary writings of Charles Darwin occupy a pivotal position in contemporary public debate. This volume brings together the key chapters of his most important and accessible books, including the Journal of Researches on the Beagle voyage (1845), the Origin of Species (1871), and the Descent of Man, along with the full text of his delightful autobiography. They are accompanied by generous selections of responses from Darwin’s nineteenth-century readers from across the world. More than anything, they give a keen sense of the controversial nature of Darwin’s ideas, and his position within Victorian debates about man’s place in nature. The wide-ranging introduction by James A. Secord, Director of the Darwin Correspondence Project, explores the global impact and origins of Darwin’s work and the reasons for its unparalleled significance today.

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