Security in the Anthropocene : environment, ecology, escape

The anthropocene poses a set of conceptual challenges for the study of security in the discipline of International Relations. By complicating the distinction between human and nature, the concept of the anthropocene puts into question one of the key organizing logics of upon which much security discourse is built; what would a security look like whose subject was not modern man? This paper offers a reading of environmental and ecological approaches to security as two potential avenues for rethinking security in the context of the anthropocene. This is done in order to demonstrate the dominance and centrality of the nature/culture binary for conceptualizing the environment, ecology and security. Such a common philosophical horizon problematizes and undermines the scope for a critical reorientation of security thinking from either perspective. Drawing on R.B.J Walker’s concept of the politics of escape, the paper suggests that in attempting to escape the nature/culture binary the move to ecology in fact simultaneously reinscribes and obscures this distinction, thereby limiting the potential of the concept of the anthropocene to offer a critical framework with which to analyze the interplay of nature and culture in contemporary security politics

Who's afraid of the ecological apocalypse? Climate change and the production of the ethical subject

Contemporary representations of environmental futures often feature disastrous, apocalyptic and catastrophic scenarios, particularly in film and popular culture. One site in which this representation is prominent is in the climate change debate, where such narratives in relation to the environment can be found not only in popular culture, but also governmental statements (Brown, 2009; Huhne, 2011; King, 2004; Obama, 2010; Stern, 2006) and academic literature produced by Politics and International Relations (Caney, 2010; Dobson, 1999; Gardiner, 2009; Garvey, 2008; Hiskes, 2005; Page, 2007). Whilst disastrous scenarios are of course not new in the construction of political and ethical possibilities, the climate change debate has arguably occasioned an intensification of such scenarios and an increased interlacing of them into political and ethical narratives - to the extent that Mike Hulme (2006) argues that recent years have seen the birth of a 'new environmental phenomenon' of 'catastrophic climate change'. However, despite the ubiquity of such dire warnings, they seem to have motivated relatively little action by citizens on climate matters (Hulme, 2009)

On the dangers of an Anthropocene epoch : geological time, political time and post-human politics

‘When’ is the Anthropocene and who are its subjects? This article seeks to demonstrate the ways in which engaging with the question of the ‘who’ of the Anthropocene also entails assumptions about the ‘when’ which rely on a transposition of geological onto historical and political periodization. The idea of the Anthropocene as a new epoch, with the associated focus on appropriate starting dates, novelty, and periodization, raises difficulties for attempts to construct alternatives to the ecologically problematic temporal discourse of modernity, the subjects thereby produced, and the critical resources with which to engage these. The inscription of these temporal boundaries in the anthropocene debate provides a framework which limits attempts to engage with the mobility of the human/nature border and associated arguments for an expanded (in both spatial and species terms) political constituency through which to engage the ecological challenges of the anthropocene. Such a framework obscures the ways in which the non-human is already integral to dominant political conceptual structures and the article proposes that instead of a focus on whether the non-human can/should be brought into an Anthropocene politics, we need first to re-examine how it already is

Effect of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor and angiotensin receptor blocker initiation on organ support-free days in patients hospitalized with COVID-19

IMPORTANCE Overactivation of the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) may contribute to poor clinical outcomes in patients with COVID-19. Objective To determine whether angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor or angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB) initiation improves outcomes in patients hospitalized for COVID-19. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS In an ongoing, adaptive platform randomized clinical trial, 721 critically ill and 58 non–critically ill hospitalized adults were randomized to receive an RAS inhibitor or control between March 16, 2021, and February 25, 2022, at 69 sites in 7 countries (final follow-up on June 1, 2022). INTERVENTIONS Patients were randomized to receive open-label initiation of an ACE inhibitor (n = 257), ARB (n = 248), ARB in combination with DMX-200 (a chemokine receptor-2 inhibitor; n = 10), or no RAS inhibitor (control; n = 264) for up to 10 days. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES The primary outcome was organ support–free days, a composite of hospital survival and days alive without cardiovascular or respiratory organ support through 21 days. The primary analysis was a bayesian cumulative logistic model. Odds ratios (ORs) greater than 1 represent improved outcomes. RESULTS On February 25, 2022, enrollment was discontinued due to safety concerns. Among 679 critically ill patients with available primary outcome data, the median age was 56 years and 239 participants (35.2%) were women. Median (IQR) organ support–free days among critically ill patients was 10 (–1 to 16) in the ACE inhibitor group (n = 231), 8 (–1 to 17) in the ARB group (n = 217), and 12 (0 to 17) in the control group (n = 231) (median adjusted odds ratios of 0.77 [95% bayesian credible interval, 0.58-1.06] for improvement for ACE inhibitor and 0.76 [95% credible interval, 0.56-1.05] for ARB compared with control). The posterior probabilities that ACE inhibitors and ARBs worsened organ support–free days compared with control were 94.9% and 95.4%, respectively. Hospital survival occurred in 166 of 231 critically ill participants (71.9%) in the ACE inhibitor group, 152 of 217 (70.0%) in the ARB group, and 182 of 231 (78.8%) in the control group (posterior probabilities that ACE inhibitor and ARB worsened hospital survival compared with control were 95.3% and 98.1%, respectively). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE In this trial, among critically ill adults with COVID-19, initiation of an ACE inhibitor or ARB did not improve, and likely worsened, clinical outcomes. TRIAL REGISTRATION ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT0273570

Ethics and politics after poststructuralism : Levinas, Derrida and Nancy

What would political thought look like without the foundation of ethics? This groundbreaking book offers a fresh and innovative perspective on ethics and politics after poststructuralism. Madeleine Fagan argues that the ‘ethical’ should not be understood as a label; it does not mean ‘good’ or ‘right’, and is not an evaluation or guide. Rather, both the ethical and the political are descriptions of the context in which we find ourselves. Fagan offers an account of the inseparability of ethics and politics that challenges existing accounts of poststructuralist ethics and shows the need for a practice-based rethinking of the ethico-political. Drawing on the work of Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy, Ethics and Politics after Poststructuralism puts forward a radical and far-reaching critique of both foundational and non-foundational ethical theory