Descriere: English summary: Young and in good health-at 100, 150, and even 200 years of age-as the pace of history keeps accelerating, what we envision of our future promises both the best and the worst. The Earth may soon be uninhabitable, or Man may be destined to become "almost" immortal, as our life expectancy has increased tremendously over the last century. Could this progress be heralding a biological revolution ?Historian of the imaginary Lucian Boia has penned numerous works (published in English by Reaktion Books) exploring the ideas and mythologies that have marked humanity's development. French description: Jeunes et en bonne sante: a cent ans, a cent cinquante, a deux cents ans... L'histoire s'accelere et l'imaginaire de l'avenir promet a la fois le meilleur et le pire. Demain la Terre sera invivable (le rechauffement global) ou verra par contre l'epanouissement biologique de l'homme, destine a devenir presque immortel. Un arsenal scientifique et technologique impressionnant est mis au service d'un projet qui hante l'humanite depuis l'Antiquite et qui s'est deja exprime par un riche eventail de solutions. En Chine, les taoistes misaient sur les vertus d'une bonne respiration et d'une forte concentration mentale. Les Irlandais pariaient plutot sur les iles lointaines ou la mort et la vieillesse etaient inconnues. La fontaine de jouvence a ete intensement recherchee pendant des siecles. A la Renaissance, l'Italien Cornaro recommandait un regime alimentaire proche de la famine, tandis que pour les contemporains de Louis XIV rien ne valait mieux qu'une bonne purgation de temps en temps. Pour Metchnikoff, vers 1900, le remede universel etait le yaourt bulgare le docteur Voronoff, en revanche, valorisait les testicules de chimpanze. De nos jours, les remedes et les strategies se sont multiplies: salade cretoise ou DHEA, clonage ou congelation... Reste le fait que l'esperance de vie et la longevite se sont accrues spectaculairement durant le siecle dernier. Une revolution biologique en perspective?On doit deja a Lucian Boia, historien de l'imaginaire, une serie d'investigations sur les idees et les mythologies qui ont marque l'evolution de l'humanite (aux Belles Lettres, Pour une histoire de l'imaginaire, Mythologie scientifique du communisme, Le Mythe de la democratie, La Roumanie un pays aux frontieres de l'Europe et L'Homme face au climat).
Autori: Lucian Boia (Author) | Editura: ARIZONA CTR FOR MEDIEVAL & REN | Anul aparitiei: 2006 | ISBN: 9782251442945 | Categorie: Sociology
Mariana Chilton (Author)
7,A radical and urgent new approach to how we can solve the problems of hunger and poverty in the US. Most people think hunger has to do with food: researchers, policymakers, and advocates focus on promoting government-funded nutrition assistance; well-meaning organizations try to get expired or wasted food to marginalized communities; and philanthropists donate their money to the cause and congratulate themselves for doing so. But few people ask about the structural issues undergirding hunger, such as, Who benefits from keeping people in such a state of precarity? In The Painful Truth about Hunger in America, Mariana Chilton shows that the solution to food insecurity lies far beyond food and must incorporate personal, political, and spiritual approaches if we are serious about fixing the crisis. Drawing on 25 years of research, programming, and advocacy efforts, Chilton compellingly demonstrates that food insecurity is created and maintained by people in power. Taking the reader back to the original wounds in the United States caused by its history of colonization, genocide, and enslavement, she forces us to reckon with hard questions about why people in the US allow hunger to ...
Karen Weingarten (Editor)
Abortion Stories: American Literature Before Roe V. Wade
6,A one-of-a-kind, intersectional volume of abortion representation in American literature before Roe v. Wade that compellingly proclaims: when abortion is illegal, women's lives are always more precarious and limited A Penguin Classic One of Ms. Magazine's Most Anticipated Feminist Books of 2025 Abortion Stories is the first volume of its kind to bring together a diverse collection of writings on abortion published before 1973, when Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in every American state. These stories, poems, essays, and memoirs reflect a range of representations and responses to abortion during this era, but when read together, they demonstrate how when abortion is illegal, women's lives are always more precarious and limited. In this volume, you will read stories that will elucidate and enrich a view of abortion as one element of human experience--woven into stories of love and death and medicine and motherhood and enslavement and emancipation. Featuring luminaries like Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Edgar Allan Poe, Lucile Clifton, Eugene O' Neill, and Shirley Chisholm, as well as rare firsthand accounts of abortion providers and seekers, this reproductive justice-minded ...
Jesse A. Fivecoate (Editor)
Whispers in the Echo Chamber: Folklore and the Role of Conspiracy Theory in Contemporary Society
2,Whispers in the Echo Chamber: Folklore and the Role of Conspiracy Theory in Contemporary Society makes the case that conspiracy theories are fundamentally a folklore genre, akin to and often involving other belief narratives like rumor and legend. The editors and contributors show that studying conspiracy theories using the tools of folkloristics is a fruitful and necessary analytical exercise. The volume's three parts lay out folkloristic approaches to conspiracy theories; ways folkloristics can help us understand how conspiracy theories are constructed; and how the genre of conspiracy theories interacts with particular, contemporary political contexts. This timely volume complements studies from political science, sociology, psychology, history, and more, while also crucially calling for the field of folklore studies to engage more assertively with conspiracy theories as a genre. Focusing on modern iterations of sometimes quite ancient conspiracy motifs and themes, the editors and contributors forcibly illustrate the crucial relevance of this prevalent and influential form of folklore in today's interconnected world. Contributors: Matthew D. Atkinson, John Bodner, Ian Brodie, ...