Towards a Life Sciences Code: Countering the Threats from Biological Weapons

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A convention beyond the Convention: stigma, humanitarian standards and the Oslo Process

© Landmine Action 2008. Published version reproduced with the permission of the publisher.The history of attempts to limit the methods and means of warfare illustrates that agreed conventions can have a wide-ranging standard setting function that goes far beyond their terms and signatories. The stigmatization of certain categories of weapons has been a very important outcome of past deliberations and international treaties. States participating in the Oslo Process to prohibit cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians have an historic opportunity to develop the legal protection afforded from the effects of certain weapons both during and after conflict. This report examines the past role of international debate about the means and methods of warfare in order to underscore this opportunity. It is argued that a strong and comprehensive treaty, that will provide a clear basis for monitoring of practice by States Parties and states not party alike, will provide the best basis for the protection of civilians and for furthering humanitarian conventions for the protection of civilians in the future.Landmine Actio

In-Depth Implementation of the BTWC: Education and Outreach

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The benefits, risks, and threats of biotechnology

Published version reproduced with the permission of the publisher.This article considers how threats, risks, and benefits associated with research are defined in contemporary policy debates. Specifically, it examines what has become known as the ‘dual-use potential’ of life science research findings and techniques. Focus is given to the emerging dominant policy response of enacting oversight processes to weigh the risks and benefits of individual instances of research. The curiosity at the center of this article is how it is often said that any knowledge might be used for destructive ends but, in practice, it has been extremely rare that anything has even been identified as ‘of concern’. This situation raises basic questions about the purposes and prospects of oversight procedures. Various proposals are advanced in reply. These include better understanding how notions of the utility of research are constructed, searching for improved methods for assessing risks and benefits, attending to factors that might affect risk–benefit calculations, pursuing alternative questions and challenging fundamental tenants in policy discussions

Education and Ethics in the Life Sciences: Strengthening the Prohibition of Biological Weapons

At the start of the twenty-first century, warnings have been raised in some quarters about how – by intent or by mishap – advances in biotechnology and related fields could aid the spread of disease. Science academics, medical organisations, governments, security analysts, and others are among those that have sought to raise concern. Education and Ethics in the Life Sciences examines a variety of attempts to bring greater awareness to security concerns associated with the life sciences. It identifies lessons from practical initiatives across a wide range of national contexts as well as more general reflections about education and ethics. The eighteen contributors bring together perspectives from a diverse range of fields – including politics, virology, sociology, ethics, security studies, microbiology, and medicine – as well as their experiences in universities, think tanks and government. In offering their assessment about what must be done and by whom, each chapter addresses a host of challenging practical and conceptual questions. Education and Ethics in the Life Sciences will be of interest to those planning and undertaking training activities in other areas. In asking how education and ethics are being made to matter in an emerging area of social unease, it will also be of interest to those with more general concerns about professional conduct

“Pick a Card, Any Card”: Learning to Deceive and Conceal – with Care

Because of the asymmetries in knowledge regarding the underlying hidden mechanisms as well as because of the importance of intentional deception, entertainment magic is often presented as an exercise in power, manipulation, and control. This article challenges such portrayals and through doing so common presumptions about how secrets are kept. It does so through recounting the experiences of the author as a beginner learning a craft. Regard for the choices and tensions associated with the accomplishment of mutually recognized deception in entertainment magic are marshalled to consider how it involves ‘reciprocal action’ between the audience and the performer. Attending to forms of inter-relation and coordination been all those present will be used to appreciate how intentional concealment and deception can be situationally and jointly accomplished. The stakes and possibilities of that accomplishment will be explored by re-imagining magic as a practice of care

Codes of conduct and biological weapons: an in-process assessment

Published version reproduced by permission of the publisher.Codes of conduct have received a significant amount of attention in recent years as a policy option to address concerns about the relation between life science research and the deliberate spread of disease through biological weapons. While the term code of conduct has functioned as a generic umbrella phrase for an array of different types of codes, in general, such codes seek to set expectations regarding thinking and behavior for those associated with the life sciences. The purpose of this article is fourfold: (1) to survey recent developments, specifically with respect to “universal” and “scientific society” types of codes; (2) to propose criteria for assessing these initiatives; (3) to evaluate activities undertaken to date on the basis of these criteria; and (4) to propose key questions for the future. Overall, a mixed assessment is offered of the achievements of code-related activities to date. As argued, because of this overall situation, in the future careful attention should be given to what is sought out of this option and how it can be realized in practice.Alfred P. Sloan Foundatio

Performing Deception

In Performing Deception, Brian Rappert reconstructs the practice of entertainment magic by analysing it through the lens of perception, deception and learning, as he goes about studying conjuring himself. Through this novel meditation on reasoning and skill, Rappert elevates magic from the undertaking of mere trickery to an art that offers the basis for rethinking our possibilities for acting in the modern world. Performing Deception covers a wide range of theories in sociology, philosophy, psychology and elsewhere in order to offer a striking assessment of the way secrecy and deception are woven into social interactions, as well as the illusionary and paradoxical status of expertise

Leaky revelations: Commitments in exposing militarism

This is the final version. Available from University of Chicago Press via the DOI in this recordContests over the control of information are central to the perpetuation and critique of militarism. This article examines one of the most prominent sets of state document leaks in recent political history: the online posting of hundreds of thousands of US war logs and diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks. Bold statements were advanced in 2010 and afterward regarding what these releases made visible. In contrast, this article considers how disclosure and nondisclosure came bundled together. With reference to the tensions of keeping secrets and producing transparency, I suggest that the promise attached to the released documents did not just derive from the argument that they revealed modern statecraft, nor that such knowledge was tantalizingly out of reach, but from the manner in which what had been rendered knowable could be revisited over time. Through this argument I want to explore the affective knots, conceptual tangles, and problematic story lines associated with exposing militarism

Policing & the use of force: less lethal weapons

Post-print version. 24 month embargo by the publisher. Article will be released December 2009. This is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in Policing: a Journal of Policy and Practice following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version vol.1, issue 4, pp.472-484, 2007, is available online at: http://policing.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/1/4/472In recent years, considerable attention has been given to the role of ‘less lethal’ options in alleviating the varied problems associated with the police use of force. Highly supportive claims have been made by manufacturers, police agencies, and others relating to the ability of such devices to result in reduced injuries to both officers and members of the public. Special Issue 3 of Policing regarding the ‘Use of Force’, for instance, included various positive statements about the place and purpose of less lethal weapons. While not wishing to completely dismiss such claims, this article seeks to bring scrutiny to bear on them. The basis for this skepticism derives from recasting common depictions of these weapons within the spectrum of force options, considering the past history of their deployment, and moving beyond treating them in a narrow, technical manner