Note from the Editors

The article offers information on the journal Societies Without Borders: Human Rights and the Social Sciences and the categories that editors will consider in accepting manuscripts for the journal

Ameliorative action of farnesol on cyclophosphamide induced toxicity in mice

Introduction: Cyclophosphamide is an alkylating agent with antineoplastic and immunosuppressive effects. Acrolein, one of its metabolites, is responsible for different toxic side effects such as oxidative stress, and cell death. The present study aimed to evaluate protective effects of farnesol, a natural terpenoid with antioxidant effects, on cyclophosphamide induced side effects. Methods: For this purpose, mice received 200 mg/kg of cyclophosphamide plus 5 or 10 mg/kg of farnesol as pretreatment for 7 days. At the end of the study, samples from blood and different organs were collected. Histopathological and biochemical analyses including malondialdehyde (MDA), catalase (CAT) and glutathione (GSH) content as well as alanine transaminase (ALT) and aspartate aminotransferase (AST) were done to determine the toxic effects of cyclophosphamide and probable protective effect of farnesol. Results: Application of farnesol as a pretreatment could reduce tissue damages induced by cyclophosphamide particularly in testis, liver and spleen. The kidney did not show any relapse in tissue damages induced by cyclophosphamide. The testis demonstrated the most improvement by administration of farnesol, and the anti-oxidant enzymes increased in testicular tissues. Conclusion: This study indicated the protective effect of farnesol against oxidative stress induced by cyclophosphamide in the tissues, especially at the dose of 10 mg/kg on the testicular tissue. Hence, it might be beneficial in patients who are using cyclophosphamide

Exorcising the Specter of Development: Human Rights in the 21st Century

With the commodification of rights as private privileges under neoliberal capitalism, movements in the Global South have begun to reinterpret the human rights canon. Cosmopolitan notions of human rights have spread from the Global South only to face parochial resistance from postmodern intellectuals and neoliberal power structures in the Global North. In advancing a vision of “cosmopolitanism from below” as an antidote to neoliberalism, these alliances have articulated their demands in terms of economic and social rights. In the process, they have ruptured the connection - crucial to US hegemony from the late 1940s through the early 1970s - between human rights and development. Supporting these new interpretations of human rights discourse, we argue for an explicit decoupling of human rights from previously existing development projects predicated on “catching up” through programmed industrialization. We contend that proposals for a new global system in the 21st century could be centered not on micronationalist localisms, but rather on a genuinely inclusive universalism. The concept of human rights in our times is rooted in world-historical struggles that must include the universal right to food, health, and prosperity, and social ownership of resources on the one hand and freedom from exploitation, inequality, geographical location, gender and sexual domination, racial control, structural violence, and environmental degradation on the other hand. In this sense, the concept of societies without borders is inextricably linked with a notion of human rights that in its breadth, depth, inclusivity, and universality goes far beyond the limited class-based notion of rights rooted in the advent of bourgeois civil society and inherited by the development project

Peasant Poverty and Persistence in the 21st Century: Theories, Debates, Realities and Policies

Peasants are a majority of the world’s poor. Despite this, there has been little effort to bridge the fields of peasant and poverty studies. Peasant Poverty and Persistence in the 21st Century provides a much-needed critical perspective linking three central questions: Why has peasantry, unlike other areas of non-capitalist production, persisted? Why are the vast majority of peasants poor? And how are these two questions related? Interweaving contributions from various disciplines, the book provides a range of responses, offering new theoretical, historical and policy perspectives on this peasant ‘world drama’. Scholars from both South and North argue that we must build upon the peasant economy’s advantages over agricultural capitalism in meeting the challenges of feeding the growing world population while sustaining the environment