A Plague of Paradoxes

A Plague of Paradoxes
Author: Philip Setel
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 322
Release: 1999
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 9780226748863

Presents an extended case study of the 20th-century AIDS epidemic and the cultural circumstances from which it emerged. The book brings together anthropology, demography and epidemiology to explain how the Chagga people of Tanzania in Africa experience AIDS.

A Plague of Paradoxes

A Plague of Paradoxes
Author: Philip Setel
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 328
Release: 1999
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 9780226748856

Presents an extended case study of the 20th-century AIDS epidemic and the cultural circumstances from which it emerged. The book brings together anthropology, demography and epidemiology to explain how the Chagga people of Tanzania in Africa experience AIDS.

Plagues and the Paradox of Progress

Plagues and the Paradox of Progress
Author: Thomas J. Bollyky
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2018-10-09
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0262038455

Why the news about the global decline of infectious diseases is not all good. Plagues and parasites have played a central role in world affairs, shaping the evolution of the modern state, the growth of cities, and the disparate fortunes of national economies. This book tells that story, but it is not about the resurgence of pestilence. It is the story of its decline. For the first time in recorded history, virus, bacteria, and other infectious diseases are not the leading cause of death or disability in any region of the world. People are living longer, and fewer mothers are giving birth to many children in the hopes that some might survive. And yet, the news is not all good. Recent reductions in infectious disease have not been accompanied by the same improvements in income, job opportunities, and governance that occurred with these changes in wealthier countries decades ago. There have also been unintended consequences. In this book, Thomas Bollyky explores the paradox in our fight against infectious disease: the world is getting healthier in ways that should make us worry. Bollyky interweaves a grand historical narrative about the rise and fall of plagues in human societies with contemporary case studies of the consequences. Bollyky visits Dhaka—one of the most densely populated places on the planet—to show how low-cost health tools helped enable the phenomenon of poor world megacities. He visits China and Kenya to illustrate how dramatic declines in plagues have affected national economies. Bollyky traces the role of infectious disease in the migrations from Ireland before the potato famine and to Europe from Africa and elsewhere today. Historic health achievements are remaking a world that is both worrisome and full of opportunities. Whether the peril or promise of that progress prevails, Bollyky explains, depends on what we do next. A Council on Foreign Relations Book

The Consciousness Paradox

The Consciousness Paradox
Author: Rocco J. Gennaro
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 389
Release: 2012
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0262016605

A defense of a version of the higher-order thought (HOT) theory of consciousness with special attention to such topics as concepts and animal consciousness. Consciousness is arguably the most important area within contemporary philosophy of mind and perhaps the most puzzling aspect of the world. Despite an explosion of research from philosophers, psychologists, and scientists, attempts to explain consciousness in neurophysiological, or even cognitive, terms are often met with great resistance. In The Consciousness Paradox, Rocco Gennaro aims to solve an underlying paradox, namely, how it is possible to hold a number of seemingly inconsistent views, including higher-order thought (HOT) theory, conceptualism, infant and animal consciousness, concept acquisition, and what he calls the HOT-brain thesis. He defends and further develops a metapsychological reductive representational theory of consciousness and applies it to several importantly related problems. Gennaro proposes a version of the HOT theory of consciousness that he calls the "wide intrinsicality view" and shows why it is superior to various alternatives, such as self-representationalism and first-order representationalism. HOT theory says that what makes a mental state conscious is that a suitable higher-order thought is directed at that mental state. Thus Gennaro argues for an overall philosophical theory of consciousness while applying it to other significant issues not usually addressed in the philosophical literature on consciousness. Most cognitive science and empirical works on such topics as concepts and animal consciousness do not address central philosophical theories of consciousness. Gennaro's integration of empirical and philosophical concerns will make his argument of interest to both philosophers and nonphilosophers.

Paradoxes and Problems

Paradoxes and Problems
Author: John Donne
Publisher: Oxford : Clarendon Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 1980
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN:

A scholarly edition of works by John Donne. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

Sovereignty Suspended

Sovereignty Suspended
Author: Rebecca Bryant
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2020-07-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0812252217

What is de facto about the de facto state? In Sovereignty Suspended, this question guides Rebecca Bryant and Mete Hatay through a journey into de facto state-building, or the process of constructing an entity that looks like a state and acts like a state but that much of the world says does not or should not exist. In international law, the de facto state is one that exists in reality but remains unrecognized by other states. Nevertheless, such entities provide health care and social security, issue identity cards and passports, and interact with international aid donors. De facto states hold elections, conduct censuses, control borders, and enact fiscal policies. Indeed, most maintain representative offices in sovereign states and are able to unofficially communicate with officials. Bryant and Hatay develop the concept of the "aporetic state" to describe such entities, which project stateness and so seem real, even as nonrecognition renders them unrealizable. Sovereignty Suspended is based on more than two decades of ethnographic and archival research in one so-called aporetic state, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC). It traces the process by which the island's "north" began to emerge as a tangible, separate, if unrecognized space following violent partition in 1974. Like other de facto states, the TRNC looks and acts like a state, appearing real to observers despite international condemnations, denials of its existence, and the belief of large numbers of its citizens that it will never be a "real" state. Bryant and Hatay excavate the contradictions and paradoxes of life in an aporetic state, arguing that it is only by rethinking the concept of the de facto state as a realm of practice that we will be able to understand the longevity of such states and what it means to live in them.

Framing and Imagining Disease in Cultural History

Framing and Imagining Disease in Cultural History
Author: G. Rousseau
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2003-07-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 023052432X

Throughout human history illness has been socially interpreted before its range of meanings could be understood and disseminated. Writers of diverse types have been as active in constructing these meanings as doctors, yet it is only recently that literary traditions have been recognized as a rich archive for these interpretations. These essays focus on the methodological hurdles encountered in retrieving these interpretations, called 'framing' by the authors. Framing and Imagining Disease in Cultural History aims to explain what has been said about these interpretations and to compare their value.

Incompleteness

Incompleteness
Author: Rebecca Goldstein
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2006-01-31
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0393327604

"An introduction to the life and thought of Kurt Gödel, who transformed our conception of math forever"--Provided by publisher.

Shakespeare and the Culture of Paradox

Shakespeare and the Culture of Paradox
Author: Peter G. Platt
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2016-04-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1317056523

Exploring Shakespeare's intellectual interest in placing both characters and audiences in a state of uncertainty, mystery, and doubt, this book interrogates the use of paradox in Shakespeare's plays and in performance. By adopting this discourse-one in which opposites can co-exist and perspectives can be altered, and one that asks accepted opinions, beliefs, and truths to be reconsidered-Shakespeare used paradox to question love, gender, knowledge, and truth from multiple perspectives. Committed to situating literature within the larger culture, Peter Platt begins by examining the Renaissance culture of paradox in both the classical and Christian traditions. He then looks at selected plays in terms of paradox, including the geographical site of Venice in Othello and The Merchant of Venice, and equity law in The Comedy of Errors, Merchant, and Measure for Measure. Platt also considers the paradoxes of theater and live performance that were central to Shakespearean drama, such as the duality of the player, the boy-actor and gender, and the play/audience relationship in the Henriad, Hamlet, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Antony and Cleopatra, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest. In showing that Shakespeare's plays create and are created by a culture of paradox, Platt offers an exciting and innovative investigation of Shakespeare's cognitive and affective power over his audience.