The way of the flesh: life, geopolitics and the weight of the future

How can a feminist materialism problematise the knowledges and practices of geopolitics, and locate new objects for critical analysis? In the following, I acknowledge how geopolitics as a form of statecraft has been preoccupied with the unruly nature of flesh. I also note how an accounting for flesh as a socio-spatial material has helped to animate both a critical geopolitical inquiry concerned with the inscription of bodies alongside other texts and a feminist concern with embodiment. My response to these developments is twofold. First, I want to query the devolving of the flesh into an ideologically saturated matter that can be examined using corporeal bodies as entry points for analysis. Second, and via recourse to work founded on feminist material philosophies, I want to reclaim the excessive, lively character of flesh. To do so, I outline how the geo- in geopolitics can be understood as an ‘earthiness’ that is concerned, at the broadest level, with differential orderings of and access to life, and especially the matters of sex, sexuality and reproduction, and, more specifically, with a concern for differential renderings of a corporeal vulnerability and obduracy, and the articulation of these alongside the building of a practice-based ethics. Using the example of stem cells, I go on to demonstrate how an emphasis upon flesh as an object of analysis allows for a reworking of geopolitics' traditional foci – such as borders – away from questions of the ‘where’ of social relations and toward the inexhaustible becoming of materials and forces that makes and unmakes such <i>foci</i>

Coevolution, Symbiosis and Sociology

Most sociological analyses adhere to the Western bifurcation of nature and culture, hampering analyses of ecology. Pressing ecological crises invite sociologists to engage with ecology in new ways. This commentary explores how sociologists might utilize coevolutionary theory to explore the complex intra-actions of matter, culture and sociality. My research suggests that bacteria are a superb example of coevolutionary processes within the biosphere. Through symbiosis, bacteria effectively challenge the conception of autonomous individual organisms interacting with their environment, the salience of humans in biospheric regulation, and collapse the distinction between nature and culture.Coevolution Sociology Symbiosis Bacteria

Queering the non/human /

Includes bibliographical references and index

Risk for cardiovascular disease after pre-eclampsia: differences in Canadian women and healthcare provider perspectives on knowledge sharing

A research-to-practice gap was identified in a study on knowledge sharing regarding future cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk associated with a previous diagnosis of pre-eclampsia (PE) during pregnancy, where 41% of healthcare practitioners did not inform patients of increased risk more than 50% of the time. Employing an empirical, sociological lens, we conducted interviews with women and healthcare providers from the same sample as that study. In this article, we analyse participants’ perceptions of and attitudes towards the relationship between PE and CVD risk, assessing how relationships between research findings, risk, pregnancy, and women’s health are understood and acted upon in Canadian healthcare. Relating empirical observations to larger debates surrounding knowledge sharing practices, we argue that structural, practical, and ideological barriers impede knowledge sharing between healthcare practitioners and patients. Patient perceptions and experiences of the knowledge sharing gap must be addressed in practical and structural changes to healthcare