Brave new world: Eugenics, discipline formation, and the biosocial

Essay review of: Political Biology: Science and Social Values in Human Heredity from Eugenics to Epigenetics, Maurizio Meloni, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp.28

Estranged companions : bed bugs, biologies, and affective histories

In recent decades, bed bugs have swept across wealthy industrialized nations. After near extirpation in North America and Northern Europe, the return of these insects has led to a significant level of public anxiety and cultural notoriety. Here, we undertake an analysis of human-bed bug relations in order to both better understand this contemporary resurgence and critically examine the concept of “companion species.” We argue for conceiving of bed bugs as “estranged companions,” and foreground the need to understand contemporary encounters between humans and the insects through distinct histories that have been shaped by the opening and closing of spaces between classed and racialized bodies and that have been dependent upon the development and deployment of particular technologies such as Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT). Further, we argue that “estrangement” has wider conceptual purchase and contributes to a body of research that has countered a strain of scientism in theory that decenters “the human” by interrogating the relations between companion species, (bio)political interventions, and colonial histories. Estrangement contributes to this task by, first, foregrounding that relationships with all companion species are imbricated in situated histories and biopolitical regimes and, second, drawing attention to the differential ethico-political implications of these regimes

Laboratory Beagles and Affective Co-Productions of Knowledge

The vast scale of these changes, affecting land, sea and air have prompted calls for the ‘ecologicalisation’ of knowledge. This book adopts a much needed ‘more-than-human’ framework to grasp these complexities and challenges

A feminist menagerie

This paper appraises the role of critical-feminist figurations within the environmental humanities, focusing on the capacity of figures to produce situated environmental knowledges and pose site-specific ethical obligations. We turn to four environments—the home, the skies, the seas and the microscopic—to examine the work that various figures do in these contexts. We elucidate how diverse figures—ranging from companion animals to birds, undersea creatures and bugs—reflect productive traffic between longstanding concerns in feminist theory and the environmental humanities, and generate new insights related to situated knowledges, feminist care-ethics and the politics of everyday sensory encounters. We also argue, however, that certain figures have tested the limits of theoretical approaches which have emerged as the product of dialogue between feminist theory and environmental studies. In particular, we explore how particular figures have complicated ethical questions of how to intervene in broad environmental threats borne of anthropogenic activities, and of who or what to include in relational ethical frameworks

Abundance in the Anthropocene

Numerous attempts have been made to understand the Anthropocene in relation to overwhelming species and habitat loss. However, amidst these losses ecological niches have emerged and been taken as signs of resilience and hope: from mushrooms that flourish in damaged forests to urban wildlife in brownfield sites. This article offers an alternative conception of abundance, which addresses the sociological and conceptual challenges posed when abundance is a characteristic of so-called pests, parasites and pathogens. The article draws together research from three case studies: bed bugs, hookworms and antibiotic resistant microbes, all of which have become intimately entangled with particular human communities as other lifeforms have declined. Through contrasting these cases we elucidate how the affordances of abundant lifeforms, including the dangers they pose to other forms of life, are entwined with failed ‘technofixes’, colonial legacies and contemporary inequalities. In doing so we situate abundance as a constitutive element of the Anthropocene that requires as sustained an ethical engagement as questions of species loss. We conclude by arguing that further ethical attention needs to be paid to finding ways of ‘being alongside’ life that is difficult to live with, but is becoming intimately re-entangled with human worlds. In doing so, we complicate existing theoretical work that has drawn hope from multispecies abundance and entanglement

<i>Plasmodium </i>Condensin Core Subunits SMC2/SMC4 Mediate Atypical Mitosis and Are Essential for Parasite Proliferation and Transmission

Condensin is a multi-subunit protein complex regulating chromosome condensation and segregation during cell division. In Plasmodium spp., the causative agent of malaria, cell division is atypical and the role of condensin is unclear. Here we examine the role of SMC2 and SMC4, the core subunits of condensin, during endomitosis in schizogony and endoreduplication in male gametogenesis. During early schizogony, SMC2/SMC4 localize to a distinct focus, identified as the centromeres by NDC80 fluorescence and chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing (ChIP-seq) analyses, but do not form condensin I or II complexes. In mature schizonts and during male gametogenesis, there is a diffuse SMC2/SMC4 distribution on chromosomes and in the nucleus, and both condensin I and condensin II complexes form at these stages. Knockdown of smc2 and smc4 gene expression reveals essential roles in parasite proliferation and transmission. The condensin core subunits (SMC2/SMC4) form different complexes and may have distinct functions at various stages of the parasite life cycle

The role of emotional resilience, childhood parentification, and attachment style on antisocial behaviour in adulthood: a comparison of an offender and normative population

Purpose: Despite a robust link between poor caregiver attachment and antisociality, few studies have examined the influence of parentification and emotional resilience on delinquency in later life, in groups at differing risk for antisocial conduct. Methodology: This pilot study compared the influence of parentification, attachment style (avoidant or anxious) and emotional resilience on adulthood antisocial behaviour in an offender and normative sample. Of the 137 participants in this study, 66 were supervised by the National Probation Service (age M = 36.90, SD = 13.91), and 71 were recruited from community-dwelling and student populations (age M = 31.83, SD = 13.25). Findings: In partial support of the predictions, participants in the offender group reported significantly greater levels of attachment anxiety compared to the normative group. However, emotional resilience was positively associated with antisociality in the normative sample. Research implications: This small-scale investigation indicates value in exploring these specific variables in a larger, matched samples study, to enable clearer comparisons to be made between offender and normative groups. Practical implications: The preliminary findings suggest that attachment anxiety is associated with antisociality in offender populations, which indicate a therapeutic focus on attachment anxiety as part of correctional care and offender rehabilitation. Originality: This study is novel in its aim to examine the influence of childhood parentification, attachment deficits and emotional resilience on adulthood antisociality in participants from a high-risk offender sample and non-high-risk normative sample