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PARA Docs

PARA explains its political thesis through democratic friction, policy flairs, RAQ, voting, agents, anonymity, and the technical layer beneath the product.

Morality vs. Politics as a Framing Problem: How (Not) to Misunderstand the Fight Against Climate Change

Topoi - This paper is guided by two research hypotheses: (1) In contemporary public discourse, many of the most urgent political problems are predominantly framed and understood in moral terms; (2)...

Reflexive discourse analysis: A methodology for the practice of reflexivity

How to implement reflexivity in practice? Can the knowledge we produce be emancipatory when our discourses recursively originate in the world we aim to challenge? Critical International Relations (IR) scholars have successfully put reflexivity on the agenda based on the theoretical premise that discourse and knowledge play a socio-political role. However, academics often find themselves at a loss when it comes to implementing reflexivity due to the lack of adapted methodological and pedagogical material. This article shifts reflexivity from meta-reflections on the situatedness of research into a distinctive practice of research and writing that can be learned and taught alongside other research practices. To do so, I develop a methodology based on discourse: reflexive discourse analysis (RDA). Based on the discourse analysis of our own discourse and self-resocialisation, RDA aims to reflexively assess and transform our socio-discursive engagement with the world, so as to render it consistent with our intentional socio-political objectives. RDA builds upon a theoretical framework integrating discourse theory to Bourdieu’s conceptual apparatus for reflexivity and practices illustrated in the works of Comte and La Boétie. To illustrate this methodology, I used this very article as a recursive performance. I show how RDA enabled me to identify implicit discriminative mechanisms within my discourse and transform them into an alternative based on love, to produce an article more in line with my socio-political objectives. Overall, this article turns reflexivity into a critical methodology for social change and demonstrates how to integrate criticality methodologically into research and writing.

Reading Wars

Read online or download for free Reading Wars explores heated, even murderous, political struggles over who gets to read and what they get to read. Those conflicts, once again in the news, stretch back centuries. In this book, Don Herzog examines the history and politics of anxieties about readers and reading, spanning both the United States and Britain, from the 1500s right up to contemporary battles over banning library books and freedom of speech. In these pages, Herzog deftly interweaves episodes from Reformation England, when first Catholics and then Protestants cracked down on unsupervised Bible-reading, with the deadly campaigns in pre-Civil War America to keep black people – both free and enslaved – illiterate. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources, he reconstructs arguments insisting that ordinary men and women could not be trusted to read what they liked – indeed, that some of them ought not read at all. And he charts struggles to promote literacy. Herzog argues that at stake in these battles is whether some people – those banned from reading – are perceived as not fully human, or lesser persons than others. The radical campaign to let more or less everyone read more or less everything is ultimately, therefore, a campaign for equality. Click here to read praise for Reading Wars "In characteristically engaging and straight-forward language Don Herzog explores the debates past and present, largely in Britain and America, about whether or not to suppress reading. By taking seriously the arguments for suppressing or restricting books and their readers, Herzog suggests that those arguments turn on the claim that for some people reading is dangerous. This assumption, Herzog compellingly argues, ignores the fact that literacy is largely a social activity. In Reading Wars, Herzog develops a powerful liberal argument for literacy and reading. An argument, Herzog shows, that has incompletely triumphed." — Steve Pincus, Thomas Donnelly Professor of History, University of Chicago "Knowledge is power - which is why efforts to acquire knowledge through reading have been outlawed, suppressed through violence, and remain targets today. Don Herzog's Reading Wars tells the astonishing history behind the wars on reading in a readable, clever style, underscoring the stakes of many of the current fights over censorship and book bans." — Leah Litman, cohost of the podcast Strict Scrutiny and New York Times bestselling author of Lawless "A rich yet accessible introduction to the many ways in which society has attempted to restrict reading materials throughout British and United States history. Equal parts illuminating and horrifying, it lays the groundwork for the 21st century’s own shameful dabbles with censorship through its careful consideration of the key concerns and prejudices that structure each generation’s literacy battles." — Alison Hicks, Associate Professor in Library and Information Studies, UCL "Political theory, historical sense, worrisome texts, unheralded documents, and great storytelling join forces in Herzog’s virtuoso investigation of the brutal fighting over who gets to learn to read (and what) in early and late modern America and Britain. The bloodshed may have lessened, but we are still fighting, and Herzog shows the deeper stakes involved in reading’s relation to equality and personhood." — Mary G Dietz, John Evans Professor Emerita of Political Theory, Northwestern University , Reading Wars explores heated, even murderous, political struggles over who gets to read and what they get to read. Don Herzog examines the history and politics of anxieties about readers and reading, spanning the United States and Britain, from the 1500s right up to contemporary battles over banning library books and freedom of speech.

The 1918 Influenza Pandemic and the Rise of Italian Fascism: A Cross-City Quantitative and Historical Text Qualitative Analysis

Evidence linking past experiences of worsening health with support for radical political views has generated concerns about the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. The influenza pandemic that began in 1918 had a devastating health impact: 4.1 million Italians contracted influenza and about 500 000 died. We tested the hypothesis that deaths from the 1918 influenza pandemic contributed to the rise of Fascism in Italy. To provide a “thicker” interpretation of these patterns, we applied historical text mining to the newspaper Il Popolo d’Italia (Mussolini’s newspaper). Our observations were consistent with evidence from other contexts that worsening mortality rates can fuel radical politics. Unequal impacts of pandemics may contribute to political polarization. (Am J Public Health. 2022;112(2):242–247. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306574)

The 1918 Influenza Pandemic and the Rise of Italian Fascism: A Cross-City Quantitative and Historical Text Qualitative Analysis

Evidence linking past experiences of worsening health with support for radical political views has generated concerns about the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. The influenza pandemic that began in 1918 had a devastating health impact: 4.1 million Italians contracted influenza and about 500 000 died. We tested the hypothesis that deaths from the 1918 influenza pandemic contributed to the rise of Fascism in Italy. To provide a “thicker” interpretation of these patterns, we applied historical text mining to the newspaper Il Popolo d’Italia (Mussolini’s newspaper). Our observations were consistent with evidence from other contexts that worsening mortality rates can fuel radical politics. Unequal impacts of pandemics may contribute to political polarization. (Am J Public Health. 2022;112(2):242–247. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306574 )

The words we choose matter: recognising the importance of language in decolonising global health

Recognition of the relevance of colonial history to the contemporary practice of global health is not new, but the recent increase in visibility and prominence given to it by global health institutions and flagship journals is welcome when accompanied by meaningful reflection and action.1

Climatisation : un faux débat ?

En pleine canicule, le débat politique se focalise sur la climatisation. Une diversion, et une illusion.

Review of <i>The Ethics of Public Health Paternalism</i>

Martin Wilkinson’s book The Ethics of Public Health Paternalism is a normative analysis of paternalistic governmental policies within liberal democracies that …

POLYBIUS ACI

Authoritarian Consolidation Index - Real-time democratic health monitoring powered by political science research and AI

Generative AI for Pro-Democracy Platforms · From Novel Chemicals to Opera

Online discourse faces challenges in facilitating substantive and productive political conversations. Recent technologies have explored the potential of generative AI to promote civil discourse, encourage the development of mutual understanding in a discussion, produce . . .

The liberal virus: permanent war and the Americanization of the world

The social media discourse of engaged partisans is toxic even when politics are irrelevant

Abstract. Prevailing theories of partisan incivility on social media suggest that it derives from disagreement about political issues or from status compet

The social media discourse of engaged partisans is toxic even when politics are irrelevant

Abstract. Prevailing theories of partisan incivility on social media suggest that it derives from disagreement about political issues or from status compet

How to understand cells, tissues and organisms as agents with agendas | Aeon Essays

Biology’s next great horizon is to understand cells, tissues and organisms as agents with agendas (even if unthinking ones)