From biometrics to predictive policing, contemporary security relies on sophisticated scientific evidence-gathering and knowledge-making focused on the human body. Bringing together new anthropological perspectives on the complexities of security in the present moment, the contributors to Bodies as Evidence reveal how bodies have become critical sources of evidence that is organized and deployed to classify, recognize, and manage human life. Through global case studies that explore biometric identification, border control, forensics, predictive policing, and counterterrorism, the contributors show how security discourses and practices that target the body contribute to new configurations of knowledge and power. At the same time, margins of error, unreliable technologies, and a growing suspicion of scientific evidence in a “post-truth” era contribute to growing insecurity, especially among marginalized populations.
This book is made open access as part of the Knowledge Unlatched KU Select 2018: HSS Frontlist Books

Listed by Unglue.it.

to be completed

Die vorliegende Arbeit widmet sich der Frage nach den sozialen Praxen und gesellschaftlichen Bedeutungen von Schönheit bei den Karo Batak in Sumatra, Indonesien. In Tanah Karo, einer agrarisch geprägten Hochebene, säumen Aerobic- Studios und Schönheitssalon die Straßen der zwei Kleinstädte Berastagi und Kabanjahe. Weibliche Schönheit in Form von Femininität gilt als modern. Moderne Weiblichkeit, die ihren Ausdruck in einem schönen Körper findet, wird durch ein komplexes Bündel von Diskursen und Praxen lokaler, nationaler und globaler Provenienz konstituiert. Ausgehend vom Körper, der als die vermittelnde Instanz zwischen Diskursen und Praxen verstanden wird, analysiert die Verfasserin die Komplexität des Themas Schönheit und Modernität aus Perspektive der Akteurinnen. Welche Ziele verfolgen sie mit der strategischen Aneignung des Ideals der modernen Weiblichkeit? Wie strukturieren soziale Positionen die jeweiligen Aneignungsprozesse? Die Verfasserin zeigt, wie die zunehmende Bedeutung von Schönheit mit Transformationen im Bereich der Geschlechterverhältnisse, des Konsums und der sozialen Differenzierung verknüpft ist. Moderne Weiblichkeit konstituiert sich an der Schnittstelle ästhetischer, aber vor allem auch sozialer, ökonomischer, kultureller, religiöser und moralischer Diskurse. Das zentrale Motiv der Akteurinnen für die Aneignung von als modern erachteten Schönheitsidealen stellt die Erweiterung der eigenen Handlungsfähigkeit in der patrilinearen Gesellschaft der Karo Batak dar. Die jeweiligen sozialen Positionen führen zu unterschiedlichen Formen der Aneignung, die in verschiedenen Formen moderner Weiblichkeit resultieren. Am Beispiel von Frauen der städtischen Mittelschicht, jungen Frauen vom Land und waria, Menschen mit weiblicher transgender-Identität, werden diese Aneignungsprozesse und ihre gesellschaftlichen Bedeutungen vergleichend diskutiert. Die Globalisierung von Schönheit, so lässt sich resümieren, bringt – selbst auf begrenzter lokaler Ebene – verschiedene moderne Weiblichkeiten hervor.

Listed by Unglue.it.

Listed by Unglue.it.

In 1591, Giovanni Paolo Gallucci published his Della simmetria dei corpi humani, an Italian translation of Albrecht Dürer’s Four Books on Human Proportion. While Dürer’s treatise had been translated earlier in the sixteenth-century into French and Latin, it was Gallucci’s Italian translation that endured in popularity as the most cited version of the text in later Baroque treatises, covering topics that were seen as central to arts education, connoisseurship, patronage, and the wider appreciation of the studia humanitatis in general.The text centres on the relationships between beauty and proportion, macrocosm and microcosm: relationships that were not only essential to the visual arts in the early modern era, but that cut across a range of disciplines – music, physiognomics and humoral readings, astronomy, astrology and cosmology, theology and philosophy, even mnemonics and poetry. In his version of the text, Gallucci expanded the educational potential of the treatise by adding a Preface, a Life of Dürer, and a Fifth Book providing a philosophical framework within which to interpret Dürer’s previous sections.This translation is the first to make these original contributions by Gallucci accessible to an English-speaking audience. Gallucci’s contributions illuminate the significance of symmetry and proportion in the contemporary education of the early modern era, informing our understanding of the intellectual history of this period, and the development of art theory and criticism. This is a valuable resource to early modern scholars and students alike, especially those specialising in history of art, philosophy, history of science, and poetry.

Listed by Unglue.it.

This open access book is the first comprehensive guide to a new soft computing technique which is used in complex forensic cases. The chapters include detailed technical and practical overviews, and discussions about the latest tools, open problems and ethical and legal issues involved. The book will be of interest to researchers and practitioners in forensic medicine and computational intelligence.

The book is closely associated with a successful research initiative, MEPROCS (New Methodologies and Protocols of Forensic Identification by Craniofacial Superimposition). The project collaborators were: S. Damas, O. Ibáñez, M.I. Huete, T. Kahana, C. Wilkinson, E. Ferguson, C. Erolin, P.T. Jayaprakash, R. Jankauskas, F. Cavalli, K. Imaizumi, R. Vicente, D. Navega, E. Cunha, A.H. Ross, E. Veselovskaya, A. Abramov, P. Lestón, F. Molinero, E. Ruiz, F. Navarro, J. Cardoso, F. Viegas, D. Humpire, R. Hardiman, J. Clement, A. Valsecchi, B.R. Campomanes-Alvarez, C. Campomanes-Alvarez, A.S. Çağdır, T. Briers, M. Steyn, M. Viniero, D.N. Vieira, and O. Cordón.

Listed by Unglue.it.

Island Encounters is a narrative of Timor shaped by a journey from the outside in. Incorporating the author's experiences from more than two decades of involvement with Timor-Leste and, more particularly, the months she spent travelling with her family from west to east in 2018, Palmer traces paths redolent in longing and learning, belonging and bewilderment, courage and conviction to tell of an island divided by colonialism and conflict. The book’s themes shuttle back and forth across the island, weaving together the past, present and future in deeply felt histories and personal stories that create the shared fabric of Timorese people’s lives. Offering a counterpoint to modernising development narratives, Island Encounters tells of people’s quiet determination to maintain their relationships between their lands, waters, traditions and each other. By foregrounding the ways in which ancestral pathways and cultural politics inform and course through everyday life on island Timor, Palmer reveals the richness of the rituals and customary practices that underpin Timorese lives and the lives of those entwined with them. And, all along the way, Island Encounters shows how Timor and its diverse peoples are working with, and re-working, confounding and being confounded by, the ever-desirous heart of development.

Listed by Unglue.it.

"The notion of a superior ?Germanic? or ?Nordic? race was a central theme in the ideology of the Nazis. But it was also a commonly accepted idea in the early twentieth century, and an actual scientific concept originating from anthropological research on the physical characteristics of Europeans. The Scandinavian Peninsula was considered to be the historical cradle and the core area of this ?master race?. This book investigates the role played by Scandinavian scholars in inventing this so-called superior race, and discusses how this concept put its stamp on Norwegian physical anthropology, prehistory, national identity, and on the Norwegian eugenics movement. It also explores the decline and scientific disputation of these ideas in the 1930s as they came to be associated with the ?genetic cleansing? of Nazi Germany. This is the first comprehensive study on Norwegian physical anthropology, and its findings shed new light on current political and scientific debates about race across the globe."

Listed by Unglue.it.

Ever since Adam Smith’s musings on ‘the invisible hand’ became more famous than his work on moral sentiments, social theorists have paid less attention to everyday ethics and aesthetics. Smith’s metaphor of the invisible hand posits that social outcomes emerge by dint of the behaviours of individuals rather than their intentions or virtues. Modernist and scientific approaches to determining the common good or good forms of governance have increasingly relied on techniques of generalisation and rationalisation. This shift has meant that we no longer comprehend why and how people display a deep concern for everyday life values in their social practices. People continue to enact these values and live by them while academics lack the vocabulary and methods to grasp them. By reconstructing the history of ideas about everyday-life values, and by analysing the role of such values in contemporary care practices for patients with chronic disease in the Netherlands, Reinventing the Good Life explores new ways to study the values of everyday life, particularly in situations where the achievement of a clear cut or uniform good is unlikely. The book presents a practice-based epistemology and methodology for studying everyday care practices and supporting their goodness. This analytical approach ultimately aims to generate ideas that will allow us to relate in more imaginative ways to the many pressing concerns that we are forced to live with today.

Listed by Unglue.it.

This open access book summarizes the multi-disciplinary results of one of China’s main primatological research projects on the endemic Tibetan macaque (Macaca thibetana), which had continued for over 30 years, but which had never been reported on systematically. Dedicated to this exceptional Old World monkey, this book makes the work of Chinese primatologists on the social behavior, cooperation, culture, cognition, group dynamics, and emerging technologies in primate research accessible to the international scientific community. One of the most impressive Asian monkeys, and the largest member of its genus, the Tibetan macaque deserves to be better known. This volume goes a long way towards bringing this species into the spotlight with many excellent behavioral analyses from the field. - Frans de Waal, Professor of Psychology, Emory University, USA. Macaques matter. To understand primate patterns and trends, and to gain important insight into humanity, we need to augment and expand our engagement with the most successful and widespread primate genus aside from Homo. This volume focuses on the Tibetan macaque, a fascinating species with much to tell us about social behavior, physiology, complexity and the macaque knack for interfacing with humans. This book is doubly important for primatology in that beyond containing core information on this macaque species, it also reflects an effective integrated collaboration between Chinese scholars and a range of international colleagues—exactly the type of collaborative engagement primatology needs. This volume is a critical contribution to a global primatology. - Agustín Fuentes, Professor of Anthropology, University of Notre Dame, USA. I have many fond memories of my association with Mt. Huangshan research beginning in 1983, when together with Professor Qishan Wang we established this site. It is such a beautiful place and I miss it. It is gratifying to see how far research has progressed since we began work there, becoming more internationalized and very much a collaborative endeavor under the long-term direction of Professor Jin-Hua Li and colleagues. This book highlights the increased interest in this species, representing a variety of disciplines ranging from macro aspects of behavior, cognition and sociality, to micro aspects of microbes, parasites and disease, authored by a group of renowned Chinese and international primatologists. I applaud their efforts and expect more interesting work to come from this site in the years ahead. - Kazuo Wada, Professor Emeritus, Kyoto University, Japan.

Listed by Unglue.it.

Recent research has demonstrated that, in the Roman, Late Antique, Early Islamic and Medieval worlds, glass was traded over long distances, from the Eastern Mediterranean, mainly Egypt and Israel, to Northern Africa, the Western Mediterranean and Northern Europe. Things that Travelled, a collaboration between the UCL Early Glass Technology Research Network, the Association for the History of Glass and the British Museum, aims to build on this knowledge.Covering all aspects of glass production, technology, distribution and trade in Roman, Byzantine and Early Medieval/Early Islamic times, including studies from Britain, Egypt, Cyprus, Italy and many others, the volume combines the strengths of the sciences and cultural studies to offer a new approach to research on ancient glass. By bringing together such a varied mix of contributors, specialising in a range of geographical areas and chronological time frames, this volume also offers a valuable contribution to broader discussions on glass within political, economic, cultural and historical arenas.

Listed by Unglue.it.

ISSN: 2002-2131 Kriterium (Online)

Att Sverige en gång i tiden hade ett statligt institut för rasbiologi är väl känt, liksom att det bedrevs omfattande rasforskning i Sverige under 1900-talets första decennier. Men vad hände egentligen med den svenska rasforskningen efter 1930-talet – försvann den bara?

I Vetenskapen som försvann? genomför historikern Martin Ericsson den första systematiska undersökningen av svensk rasforskning från 1930-talets mitt och fram till början av 1970-talet. Det är en historia om en rasvetenskap som överlevde andra världskrigets fasor och längre än vi kanske vill tro höll emot när kritiken växte under efterkrigstiden. Och om Statens institut för rasbiologi som aldrig lades ner, utan levde vidare i annan form och under annat namn.

Ericsson visar att det inte fanns en enda svensk rasforskningstradition utan två. Den ena utgick från Rasbiologiska institutets första chef Herman Lundborg och hade tydliga kopplingar till nazismen och andra högerextrema rörelser. Den andra kan sägas utgå från Lundborgs efterträdare Gunnar Dahlberg och var i stället antinazistisk och i vissa fall till och med antirasistisk. Men de båda traditionerna var överens om att det fanns olika människoraser och att det var meningsfullt att försöka mäta skillnader mellan dem.

Genom att följa den svenska rasforskningen fram mot 1900-talets slut väcker boken också viktiga frågor om vår egen tid och dess intresse för ”ursprung” och ”härkomst”. Hur väsensskilda är egentligen våra dagars dna-analyser från de gamla rasforskningstraditionerna? Tänk om vi riskerar att ställa samma frågor som 1930-talets rasbiologi fast med nya tekniker?

***

In his book Vetenskapen som försvann? (“The science that disappeared?”), Swedish historian Martin Ericsson conducts the first systematic survey of research on race in Sweden from the mid-1930s to the early 1970s. It is a story of a scientific racism that survived the horrors of World War II and endured longer than we might like to believe as criticism grew in the post-war period.

Academic co-ordinator is Professor Sven Widmalm, Department of History of Science and Ideas, Uppsala University, ORCID: 0000-0002-6793-3011

Listed by Unglue.it.

ISSN: 2002-2131 Kriterium (Online)

Att Sverige en gång i tiden hade ett statligt institut för rasbiologi är väl känt, liksom att det bedrevs omfattande rasforskning i Sverige under 1900-talets första decennier. Men vad hände egentligen med den svenska rasforskningen efter 1930-talet – försvann den bara?

I Vetenskapen som försvann? genomför historikern Martin Ericsson den första systematiska undersökningen av svensk rasforskning från 1930-talets mitt och fram till början av 1970-talet. Det är en historia om en rasvetenskap som överlevde andra världskrigets fasor och längre än vi kanske vill tro höll emot när kritiken växte under efterkrigstiden. Och om Statens institut för rasbiologi som aldrig lades ner, utan levde vidare i annan form och under annat namn.

Ericsson visar att det inte fanns en enda svensk rasforskningstradition utan två. Den ena utgick från Rasbiologiska institutets första chef Herman Lundborg och hade tydliga kopplingar till nazismen och andra högerextrema rörelser. Den andra kan sägas utgå från Lundborgs efterträdare Gunnar Dahlberg och var i stället antinazistisk och i vissa fall till och med antirasistisk. Men de båda traditionerna var överens om att det fanns olika människoraser och att det var meningsfullt att försöka mäta skillnader mellan dem.

Genom att följa den svenska rasforskningen fram mot 1900-talets slut väcker boken också viktiga frågor om vår egen tid och dess intresse för ”ursprung” och ”härkomst”. Hur väsensskilda är egentligen våra dagars dna-analyser från de gamla rasforskningstraditionerna? Tänk om vi riskerar att ställa samma frågor som 1930-talets rasbiologi fast med nya tekniker?

***

In his book Vetenskapen som försvann? (“The science that disappeared?”), Swedish historian Martin Ericsson conducts the first systematic survey of research on race in Sweden from the mid-1930s to the early 1970s. It is a story of a scientific racism that survived the horrors of World War II and endured longer than we might like to believe as criticism grew in the post-war period.

Academic co-ordinator is Professor Sven Widmalm, Department of History of Science and Ideas, Uppsala University, ORCID: 0000-0002-6793-3011

Listed by Unglue.it.

If man is descended from the ape, what will become of man? No news could have hit the bourgeois of the 19th century worse than the news that they descended from the ape. Of all things from the ape! - this grotesque distorted image of the cultivated man, of whom in the colloquial language of that time was spoken merely in a derogatory, discriminating sense. Even the guardians of the world order, first and foremost the theologians, were shocked. Now what was the matter with the well-established ladder that reached from heaven to the underworld and assigned man a place next to God, far above the animals? Has the image of God become the image of the ape? The shock waves of the cultural commotion The theory of evolution hit the intellectual world like a meteorite. The concept of human being was deeply hit and wounded. How sapiens relate to the animal world and whether there is any difference at all had to be determined anew. Nietzsche resolutely drew the line beyond man and proclaimed the superior human. Kafka, Benn and Canetti went other, incomparable ways. The newfound photography, in that a mirror of its time, got the animals as objects in front of the lens and shot pictures like hunting shots. Creative theologians reassembled their doctrinal buildings. Anthroposophy swung to fantastic cosmologies. Meanwhile, the industrialization of animal exploitation progressed. The question of how humans relate to their animal relatives remains viral to this day. - Reactions to Darwin's theory of descent from a multidisciplinary perspective - A treasure trove for the human-animal debate - Future scenarios of the human-animal relationship - Cooperation of an Italian-German research group Between "Décréation" and Transhumanism The twelve contributions in this volume, which emerged from a conference in Rome, go beyond the historical search for traces to discuss the question of the future of the human-animal relationship. Would it be good if humanity abolished itself? Or can technical optimization help to get out of the "affinity" with animals? With that, the volume reaches the core question of contemporary political ecology.

Listed by Unglue.it.