Suchergebnisse

"This book reviews the political significance of COVID-19 in the context of earlier pandemic encounters and scares in order to understand the ways in which it challenges the existing individual health, domestic order, international health governance actors and, more fundamentally, the circulation-based modus operandi of the present world order. It argues that contagious diseases should be regarded as complex open-ended phenomena with various features and are not reducible merely to biology and epidemiology. They are, as such, fundamentally politosomatic; namely that they disrupt, agitate, and trigger large scale processes because individual somatic-level anxieties stem from individuals' sensing immediate danger, through the networks of their local and global connectedness. The author further argues that pandemics have somatic effects in political expressions that transform the epidemic into national security dramas which should not, for the sake of efficient health governance, be treated as aspects extraneous to the disease itself. The book highlights that when a serious infectious disease spreads, a "threat" is very often externalized into a culturally meaningful "foreign" entity. Pandemics tend to be territorialized, nationalized, ethnicized, and racialized. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of global health and governance, pandemic security, epidemics, history of medicine, geopolitics, international relations and general readers interested in the COVID-19 pandemic"--

"This book reviews the political significance of COVID-19 in the context of earlier pandemic encounters and scares in order to understand the ways in which it challenges the existing individual health, domestic order, international health governance actors and, more fundamentally, the circulation-based modus operandi of the present world order. It argues that contagious diseases should be regarded as complex open-ended phenomena with various features and are not reducible merely to biology and epidemiology. They are, as such, fundamentally politosomatic; namely that they disrupt, agitate, and trigger large scale processes because individual somatic-level anxieties stem from individuals' sensing immediate danger, through the networks of their local and global connectedness. The author further argues that pandemics have somatic effects in political expressions that transform the epidemic into national security dramas which should not, for the sake of efficient health governance, be treated as aspects extraneous to the disease itself. The book highlights that when a serious infectious disease spreads, a "threat" is very often externalized into a culturally meaningful "foreign" entity. Pandemics tend to be territorialized, nationalized, ethnicized, and racialized. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of global health and governance, pandemic security, epidemics, history of medicine, geopolitics, international relations and general readers interested in the COVID-19 pandemic"--

1. Introduction -- 2. The Thucydidean Brink -- 3. Grim Pull of American Democratic Vulnerability -- 4. Russian Cyber-enabled Diversions in the West -- 5. Pattern of Meddling in 2016 US Elections -- 6. Stages of Digitalized regressive Meddling -- 7. Crowdsourced Meddling and Flow-State -- 8. Contrast Point: The Chinese Recruitment Web -- 9. Covid-19 Pandemic Deepening Regressive Trajectories. .

"Reactions to pandemics are unlike any other global emergency; with an emphasis on withdrawal and containment of the sight of the infected. Dealing with the historical and conceptual background of diseases in politics and international relations, this volume investigates the global political reaction to pandemic scares. By evaluating anxiety and the political response to pandemics as a legitimisation of the modern state and its ability to protect its citizens from infectious disease, Understanding the Politics of Pandemic Scares examines the connection between international health governance and the emerging Western liberal world order. The case studies, including SARS, Bird Flu and Swine Flu, provide an understanding of how the world order, global health governance and people's bodies interact to produce scares and panics. Aaltola introduces an innovative new concept of 'politosomatics' based on the relationship that links individual stress, strain, and fear with global circulations of power to evaluate increasingly global bio-political environments in which pandemics exist. This book will be of interest to students and researchers of International Relations, Global Health, International Public Health and Global Health governance"--Provided by publisher.

Studies of small state foreign policy tend to draw relatively bleak conclusions when it comes to small state agency. However, I will examine alternative and more positive modalities of small state agency. One such modality is agility, the strategic maneuverability to take advantage of a chancy environment. Besides leading to dangerous rigidities and biases, particular types of foreign policy imageries and heuristics may also facilitate experimental and agile agency. In studying this possibility, Finland is chosen as an illustrative case because historically Finland has faced a particularly constraining geopolitical context and because it has managed to adapt to multiple upheavals and to different geopolitical contexts. The emphasis is on the heuristic dynamics inherent in Finnish foreign policy culture that have allowed it to actively meet the emerging challenges. Instead of taking a detailed historical approach, I seek to understand the role of the relatively flexible and combinable embodied cultural models, i.e. thick images. They allow for agency-related experimentation that may bring added value that allows Finland to exceed the constraints of the brute geopolitical position. After reviewing multiple embodied foreign policy images, I will use them to analyse New Year's speeches by the Finnish Presidents Ahtisaari and Halonen in order to see how the fickle present is made to resonate innovatively with the known, commonplace, and mythical.

The factors that accentuated international relations in the Korean Peninsula included such exceptional and divers conditions as droughts, floods, famine, communism and humanitarian aid. In understanding international politics under such heterogenous conditions, the institution of gift-giving offers illustrative analogies. Private property in the form of sovereignty and gift-giving in the shape of humanitarian aid provide the templates which render the argumentation and action by both sides - the USA, together with its regional allies, and North Korea - expressive and meaningful. It is further argued that both sides used these institutions in an attempt to orchestrate events according to their own political logic. (DSE/DÜI)