Visibility and politics: an Arendtian reading of the US drone policy

This article analyses the critical connections between drones as lethal technological devices, visibility, and the very possibility of politics. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s core postulates on politics, modern security and society, it problematises the political implications of using drones as a prominent security instrument in contemporary life. This reading is unpacked through the concept of visibility as a critical reference to analyse how security policies are dealt with politically. It suggests that drones have operated as an instrument of double invisibility, both to those living in the contexts where they are employed, and to those under whose name they are being used. The consequences of this invisibility for political life and the practice of security are also discussed in the light of the policy under the Obama administration

Drones and the uninsurable security subjects

This paper engages with the security dynamics underlying the use of drones and their impact on security subjects – individuals and groups that are the ultimate recipients of specific security policies, regardless of whether these have beneficial effects on them. Using Mark Duffield’s distinction between the insured Global North and the non-insured Global South, this paper discusses how drones generate a radical dissociation between the intervener and the intervened that ultimately produces new security environments at the margins of the international system. These new security environments are defined by the articulation between space, technologies and bodies: bodies of invisible subjects; bodies that are uninsurable

A generalization of the S-function method applied to a Duffing-Van der Pol forced oscillator

In [1,2] we have developed a method (we call it the S-function method) that is successful in treating certain classes of rational second order ordinary differential equations (rational 2ODEs) that are particularly `resistant' to canonical Lie methods and to Darbouxian approaches. In this present paper, we generalize the S-function method making it capable of dealing with a class of elementary 2ODEs presenting elementary functions. Then, we apply this method to a Duffing-Van der Pol forced oscillator, obtaining an entire class of first integrals

Solving 1ODEs with functions

Here we present a new approach to deal with first order ordinary differential equations (1ODEs), presenting functions. This method is an alternative to the one we have presented in [1]. In [2], we have establish the theoretical background to deal, in the extended Prelle-Singer approach context, with systems of 1ODEs. In this present paper, we will apply these results in order to produce a method that is more efficient in a great number of cases. Directly, the solving of 1ODEs is applicable to any problem presenting parameters to which the rate of change is related to the parameter itself. Apart from that, the solving of 1ODEs can be a part of larger mathematical processes vital to dealing with many problems.Comment: 31 page

Organização do trabalho familiar do espaço rural paraense: novos arranjos na organização do trabalho e na gestão das unidades de produção.

O objetivo do artigo é apresentar uma interpretação acerca da organização do trabalho dos membros das famílias em unidades de produção na comunidade Nossa Senhora de Lourdes identificando novas estratégias de produção e reprodução familiar frente ao contexto de limitações de recursos naturais. As reflexões aqui apresentadas são resultantes de uma pesquisa realizada com famílias agricultoras da comunidade Nossa Senhora de Lourdes localizada no Assentamento Itabocal, município de Mãe do Rio, nordeste paraense. Trata-se de um estudo de caso, realizado a partir de abordagens quantitativas e qualitativas cujas principais categorias de análises são a família, trabalho e seus meios de produção. Os principais resultados mostram que o padrão de exploração do meio natural estabelecido através da agricultura de corte e queima ao longo dos anos nas áreas que compõem a comunidade têm ocasionado problemas associados ao esgotamento de recursos naturais nas unidades de produção familiares e com isso influenciado nos arranjos que se instituem no âmbito do trabalho