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Category Archives: State, Sovereignty & Violence

“We don’t live in Canada anymore”

Sunday, July 4, 2010

No doubt most readers are more or less aware of what transpired in Toronto last weekend surrounding the G8 and G20 meetings. I haven’t read any international reporting, but if it is anything like mainstream reporting in Canada then it tends to be excessively pro-police and pro-state (if not always pro-government: the media, being a [...]

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Global Public Health Vigilance: Creating a World on Alert

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Some may be interested in the following new book. Global Public Health Vigilance: Creating a World on Alert Lorna Weir & Eric Mykhalovskiy Rutledge, 2010 Global Public Health Vigilance is the first social science book to investigate recent changes in how global public health authorities perceive and respond to international threats to human health. Between [...]

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New Carl Schmitt

Saturday, November 1, 2008

The University of Chicago Press continues its great public service of re-printing difficult to find, out of print, or expensive editions of Carl Schmitt’s works in affordable paperbacks. In October they re-printed The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes: The Meaning and Failure of a Political Symbol, with a new preface from Tracy [...]

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Note on Schmitt’s “Constitutonal Theory”

Friday, August 1, 2008

In Part I, §3 “The Positive Concept of the Constitution,” discussing the principle that “the constitution in the positive sense originates from an act of the constitution-making power,” Schmitt notes, “Considered juristically, what exists as political power has value because it exists.” The general point Schmitt is making – and this general point concerns the [...]

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Worth Reading

Friday, July 25, 2008

I’d like to draw the readership’s attention to two recent and excellent articles (note: all three authors are on my supervisory committee): Brian Singer and Lorna Weir “Sovereignty, Governance and the Political: The Problematic of Foucault” Thesis Eleven 94: 49-71. This is a companion article to their “Politics and Sovereign Power: Considerations on Foucault” European [...]

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Agamben’s “Il Regno e la Gloria”

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Adam Kotsko is kindly posting his reading notes on the latest volume in Giorgio Agamben’s ‘Homo Sacer’ series to An und für sich. Il Regno e la Gloria is Volume 2, Part 2 of the saga – continuing where State of Exception (recall that State of Exception was originally billed as Volume 2) left off [...]

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Randall Collins – Violence: A Micro-Sociological Theory

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Because it came up in a previous discussion this week and because the work looks genuinely interesting, the Chronicle of Higher Education has an interview with Randall Collins on his recent book Violence: A Micro-Sociological Theory (Princeton UP, 2008). The first chapter to the book is available from Princeton UP. (If anyone from Princeton UP [...]

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Apropos

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Apropos: I believe that in Furet’s argument [the book in question is, in essence, an engagement with Furet's book on communism] I recognize the trace of a current of thought for which Leo Strauss’s work has been a source (or at least Strauss belongs to the current). This philosopher, who contributed so much to the [...]

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Cylon Sociology

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Daniel Solove, Devan Desai and David Hoffman have begun posting what looks to be quite an interesting hour-long interview with David Eick and Ronald Moore, the creators of the “re-imagined” Battlestar Galactica, on legal systems, torture, politics and economy, and – for lack of a better term – Cylon sociology at Concurring Opinions. Our interview [...]

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Women as Weapons of War

Monday, December 10, 2007

“Exclusive” to Theoria (and Long Sunday) – an excerpt (courtesy of the publishers) from Kelly Oliver‘s recent book, Women as Weapons of War: Iraq, Sex and the Media (Columbia UP, 2007). Ever since Eve tempted Adam with her apple, women have been regarded as a corrupting and destructive force. The very idea that women can [...]

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