Corporealities of violence in Southern and Eastern Africa

no abstract availabl

Technoscientia est Potentia?: Contemplative, interventionist, constructionist and creationist idea(l)s in (techno)science

Within the realm of nano-, bio-, info- and cogno- (or NBIC) technosciences, the ‘power to change the world’ is often invoked. One could dismiss such formulations as ‘purely rhetorical’, interpret them as rhetorical and self-fulfilling or view them as an adequate depiction of one of the fundamental characteristics of technoscience. In the latter case, a very specific nexus between science and technology, or, the epistemic and the constructionist realm is envisioned. The following paper focuses on this nexus drawing on theoretical conceptions as well as empirical material. It presents an overview of different technoscientific ways to ‘change the world’—via contemplation and representation, intervention and control, engineering, construction and creation. It further argues that the hybrid character of technoscience makes it difficult (if not impossible) to separate knowledge production from real world interventions and challenges current science and technology policy approaches in fundamental ways

Composing with the Chthulucene: Desiring a minor literature

Deleuze and Guattari define a minor literature as “the literature of a minority makes in a major language” (p. 16). This chapter performs the re-territorialisation of that feminine texts within academic writing by relegating the masculine explanations for it to the cliff/footnotes, so there are also multiple ways into this text. It embraces blogging as a form of mass [academic] culture that breaks down the walls of high [academic] culture by asking the audience to become an active, rather than passive, consumer of academic texts (Steinberg, 2006). This chapter writes in a way which provokes emotions (I know, I’ve tested it) as active engagement with text, but also continues Cixous’s (1976) agenda of advocating for a place for feminine literature within cultural studies

Postmenopausal hormone therapy and risk of cardiovascular disease by age and years since menopause.

The timing of initiation of hormone therapy may influence its effect on cardiovascular disease.To explore whether the effects of hormone therapy on risk of cardiovascular disease vary by age or years since menopause began.Secondary analysis of the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) randomized controlled trials of hormone therapy in which 10,739 postmenopausal women who had undergone a hysterectomy were randomized to conjugated equine estrogens (CEE) or placebo and 16,608 postmenopausal women who had not had a hysterectomy were randomized to CEE plus medroxyprogesterone acetate (CEE + MPA) or placebo. Women aged 50 to 79 years were recruited to the study from 40 US clinical centers between September 1993 and October 1998.Statistical test for trend of the effect of hormone therapy on coronary heart disease (CHD) and stroke across categories of age and years since menopause in the combined trials.In the combined trials, there were 396 cases of CHD and 327 cases of stroke in the hormone therapy group vs 370 [corrected] cases of CHD and 239 cases of stroke in the placebo group. For women with less than 10 years since menopause began, the hazard ratio (HR) for CHD was 0.76 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.50-1.16); 10 to 19 years, 1.10 (95% CI, 0.84-1.45); and 20 or more years, 1.28 (95% CI, 1.03-1.58) (P for trend = .02). The estimated absolute excess risk for CHD for women within 10 years of menopause was -6 per 10,000 person-years; for women 10 to 19 years since menopause began, 4 per 10,000 person-years; and for women 20 or more years from menopause onset, 17 per 10,000 person-years. For the age group of 50 to 59 years, the HR for CHD was 0.93 (95% CI, 0.65-1.33) and the absolute excess risk was -2 per 10,000 person-years; 60 to 69 years, 0.98 (95% CI, 0.79-1.21) and -1 per 10,000 person-years; and 70 to 79 years, 1.26 (95% CI, 1.00-1.59) and 19 per 10,000 person-years (P for trend = .16). Hormone therapy increased the risk of stroke (HR, 1.32; 95% CI, 1.12-1.56). Risk did not vary significantly by age or time since menopause. There was a nonsignificant tendency for the effects of hormone therapy on total mortality to be more favorable in younger than older women (HR of 0.70 for 50-59 years; 1.05 for 60-69 years, and 1.14 for 70-79 years; P for trend = .06).Women who initiated hormone therapy closer to menopause tended to have reduced CHD risk compared with the increase in CHD risk among women more distant from menopause, but this trend test did not meet our criterion for statistical significance. A similar nonsignificant trend was observed for total mortality but the risk of stroke was elevated regardless of years since menopause. These data should be considered in regard to the short-term treatment of menopausal symptoms.clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT00000611

Making a Difference in ICT Research: Feminist Theorization of Sociomateriality and the Diffraction Methodology

Part 3: Hybrid Agency and the Performativity of TechnologyInternational audienceOver the last decade, sociomateriality appeared as a theme in IS research that has been interrogated with a variety of theoretical lenses. However, researchers have since raised methodological concerns regarding its application. This paper argues that a research methodology cannot be separated from either the theoretical lens that the research adopts or from its overarching purpose. Considering the broad range of theoretical lenses through which sociomateriality could be examined, this paper focuses on Barad’s theory of agential realism [25]. The paper provides a brief history of agential realism to shed light on the reasons behind IS researchers methodological difficulty and offers a diffraction methodology as a possible methodological guide to IS research adopting this lens. Implication for research is discussed