Coronavirus and the End of Resilience

Resilience appears to be the key policy buzzword of our times. International organizations, as diverse as the United Nations and the European Union, have now adopted resilience strategies across various policy areas – highlighted by the UN’s risk and resilience framework for its 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (UN, 2017), the EU Action Plan for Resilience (European Commission, 2013), the European Union Global Strategy (EU, 2016) and other policy documents. This short piece argues that global responses to the Coronavirus appear to demonstrate that policy discourses of resilience may be one (so far, unremarked) casualty of the Coronavirus outbreak. ‘Keeping Calm and Carrying On’ is not an option. Acting normally, not panicking, not overreacting, is seen as dangerous and hubristic (Taleb et al, 2020). Being resilient will make the problems worse. Being resilient will make the virus spread. Better to close, to cancel, to restrict now, rather than to regret later

The Coronavirus: Biopolitics and the Rise of ‘Anthropocene Authoritarianism’

If the lesson of the global response to the Coronavirus is that humanity itself is the problem, then Anthropocene Authoritarianism looks set to pose a larger long-term challenge to our ways of life than the virus itself. With politics suspended, societies under lockdown, parliaments closed and States of Emergency in force globally (Runciman, 2020), many commentators have turned to Foucauldian-inspired understandings of biopolitics and population control to analyze contemporary events (Horvat, 2020; Agamben, 2020a; Demetri, 2020; Singh, 2020; Sotiris, 2020). Biopolitics has become a key concept in critical discourses of security governance in the last two decades (Rose, 2007; Esposito, 2008; Dillon, 2015). Deriving from the work of Foucault, at the heart of biopolitical thought is the relationship of politics to life as both the basis of governance and as an object to be secured (Foucault, 2007; 2008). For Foucault, ‘life’ was a way of articulating an ‘outside’ to the human world of politics, an outside that appeared natural but was, in fact, a malleable construct (Lemke, 2011)

PHYSICIAN ASSISTED DYING: DEFINING THE ETHICALLY AMBIGUOUS

In states where Physician Assisted Dying (PAD) is legal, physicians occasionally receive requests for this form of end-of-life care. Here, I describe the ethically ambiguous sphere and why PAD falls into it. I argue that, given the ethical ambiguity of PAD, physicians should consider patient autonomy as the highest value in the four principles approach and act as informers and educators

Russia's 'Little Slav Brother'?

Dubois Patrick. CHÉRON (Adolphe). In: , . Le dictionnaire de pédagogie et d'instruction primaire de Ferdinand Buisson : répertoire biographique des auteurs. Paris : Institut national de recherche pédagogique, 2002. p. 54. (Bibliothèque de l'Histoire de l'Education, 17

Putting Fair Use on Display: Ending the Permissions Culture in the Museum Community

Digital technologies present museums with tremendous opportunities to increase public access to the arts. But the longstanding “permissions culture” entrenched in the museum community—in which licenses are obtained for the use of copyrighted materials regardless of whether such uses are “fair,” such that licenses are not legally required—likely will make the cost of many potential digital projects prohibitively expensive. Ending the permissions culture is therefore critically important to museums as they seek to connect with diverse audiences in the Digital Age. In this issue brief, I argue that such a development will require clear and context-specific information about fair use that enables museum professionals to better understand the appropriate boundaries of fair use, and that a community-based code of best practices—like the College Art Association’s recently released Code of Best Practices for Fair Use in the Visual Arts—is likely the best means to achieve this

Click Here for Change: Your Guide to the E-Advocacy Revolution

Describes how organizations are using state-of-the-art technology to engage supporters and improve their advocacy efforts. Includes case studies and lessons on how to incorporate electronic approaches in campaign strategies