Marko Pajević

Raili Marling

This volume sheds light on the social and cultural transformations that accompanied the Covid-19 crisis by looking at health and biopolitics from a philosophical and literary perspective. The biopolitical measures taken globally in response to the crisis have led to previously unheard-of restrictions in liberal societies, resulting in deep and potentially lasting transformations both in social structures and interpersonal relationships. Many researchers have addressed the Covid-19 crisis as a political or epidemiological challenge, but few have paid sufficient attention to the culturally specific reactions and cultural representations of the human beings at the centre of events. Literary analyses capture this human component and give insights into different reactions to, and protests against, the health-political measures addressing the crisis. This book puts the notion of biopolitics, first extensively theorised in the 1970s, to work in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, and uses literary case studies as starting points for discussions of contemporary politics, media, and legal and surveillance regimes. It brings together eleven scholars from six countries with the shared aim of combining literary and philosophical expertise to create a better understanding of the changes in society and political attitudes induced by the ongoing pandemic.

Health and Biopolitics in Philosophy and Literature

Care, Control and COVID-19

Anders Ortenblad

Snjezana Vasiljevic

Gender Equality in a Global Perspective looks to discuss whether Gender Equality can be adopted as it has been defined in international documents anywhere, or whether it needs to be adapted in a more local context; discuss which factors and perspectives need to be taken into account when adapting Gender Equality to specific contexts; suggest research approaches for studies on whether a universal (Western) concept of Gender Equality fits in certain specific contexts; and finally suggests challenges to the existing interpretation of Gender Equality (e.g., theory of intersectionality); and the development of legal and policy framework. This book is situated within the tradition of comparative gender studies. While most other such books take up and compare various ways of implementing (or not implementing) gender equality, this book studies and compares whether or not (and to what extent) a specific definition of Gender Equality (GE) could be adopted by various nations. Thus, all chapter contributors will engage with the same definition of GE, which will be presented within the book, and discuss the possibilities and constrains related to applying such a definition in their particular national context. The readers will learn about the problems of applying a universal concept of Gender Equality and the possible reasons for and modes of adapting Gender Equality to different contexts. Gender Equality in a Global Perspective looks to maintain a critical and reflexive stance towards the issues raised and will seek to present multiple perspectives and open-ended answers. As such it hopes to contribute to the international discussion of human rights more broadly and Gender Equality specifically. The intended audience is not limited only to but will include policy makers, scholars and students with an interest in Gender issues, Organizational Theory, Political Science, Human Development, Policy Analysis, Globalization and other management sub-disciplines.

Gender Equality in a Global Perspective

Tanel Lepsoo

Sara Bédard-Goulet

Today’s world is characterized by a pervasive sense of crisis and uncertainty. This has created an increasingly urgent set of questions about who counts as human today and the nature of meaningful human life. Although the human impact on earth is as visible as ever, we can no longer take the centrality of the human for granted. This tension is at the center of this volume, which engages with ontological theories of posthumanism and new materialism, combining them with poststructuralist theories of power and subjectivity to create a comprehensive matrix for diagnosing the present. Within this framework, the authors discuss American and French novels and French-language plays that offer an insight into today’s diverse challenges to being human. They consider the impact of neoliberalism on shaping human affects and intimacies, as well as literary responses to socio-economic precarity. The current environmental catastrophe is tackled through novels that question the human responsibility in bringing about, for example, the sixth mass extinction of species and the anthropocentricity of literature itself. The art and artificiality of theater are shown to be means that allow us to delve into the extremes of human experience, for example, by revisiting myths that re-interpret desire and question the possibility of a future for human beings.

Raili Marling

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