Showing results for "The Body Social" in Politics & Government

The kidney is an extraordinary organ—in many ways the regulator, the metronome, the keeper of the human body’s delicate equilibrium. On a given day, minute by minute, it purifies the body of toxins it encounters from diet, climate, activity, and injury. It allows us to be and to move in the world. And yet most of us know so very little about these extraordinary vessels nestled in our bodies—and indeed millions of us only really learn about them when they stop working. Nearly a million Americans every year have end stage kidney disease, about 37 million have some form of chronic kidney disease.

Elaine Scarry bases her study on a wide range of sources: literature and art, medical case histories, documents on torture compiled by Amnesty International, legal transcripts of personal injury trials, and military and strategic writings by such figures as Clausewitz, Churchill, Liddell Hart, and Kissinger. She weaves these into her discussion with an eloquence, humanity, and insight that recall the writings of Hannah Arendt and Jean-Paul Sartre.

The National Security Agency is the world's most powerful, most far-reaching espionage organization. Now with a new afterword describing the security lapses that preceded the attacks of September 11, 2001, Body of Secrets takes us to the inner sanctum of America's spy world. In the follow-up to his best-selling Puzzle Palace, James Bamford reveals the NSA's hidden role in the most volatile world events of the past, and its desperate scramble to meet the frightening challenges of today and tomorrow.

Between its founding in 1966 and its formal end in 1980, the Black Panther Party blazed a distinctive trail in American political culture. Here Alondra Nelson deftly recovers an indispensable but lesser-known aspect of the organization's broader struggle for social justice: health care. The Black Panther Party's health activism was an expression of its founding political philosophy and also a recognition that poor Blacks were both underserved by mainstream medicine and overexposed to its harms.

When the AIDS epidemic hit in the early 1980s, Strub was living in New York and soon found himself attending "more funerals than birthday parties". Scared and angry, he turned to radical activism to combat discrimination and demand research. Strub takes you through his own diagnosis and inside ACT UP, the organization that transformed a stigmatized cause into one of the defining political movements of our time.

We have entered what is called the "biological century" and a new biopolitics has emerged to address the implications for America's collective value system, our well-being, and ultimately, our future. The Body Politic is the first book to recognize and assess this new force in our political landscape - one that fuels today's culture wars and has motivated politicians of all stripes to reexamine their platforms.

There is no political representation without performance. When politicians, protesters, and even celebrities appear in public, they make or constitute political representation by performing it, shaping how we view roles and institutions and imagine society.

In The Body Economic, Stuckler and Basu mine data from around the globe and throughout history to show how government policy becomes a matter of life and death during financial crises. In a series of historical case studies stretching from 1930s America, to Russia and Indonesia in the 1990s, to present-day Greece, Britain, Spain, and the U.S., Stuckler and Basu reveal that governmental mismanagement of financial strife has resulted in a grim array of human tragedies.

Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies provides an intimate examination of the everyday lives and suffering of Mexican migrants in our contemporary food system. An anthropologist and MD in the mold of Paul Farmer and Didier Fassin, Seth M. Holmes shows how market forces, anti-immigrant sentiment, and racism undermine health and health care. Holmes' material is visceral and powerful. He trekked with his companions illegally through the desert into Arizona and was jailed with them.

No one wants to be treated like an object, regarded as an item of property, or put up for sale. Yet many people frame personal autonomy in terms of self-ownership, representing themselves as property owners with the right to do as they wish with their bodies. Others do not use the language of property, but are similarly insistent on the rights of free individuals to decide for themselves whether to engage in commercial transactions for sex, reproduction, or organ sales. Drawing on analyses of rape, surrogacy, and markets in human organs, Our Bodies, Whose Property? challenges notions of freedom based on ownership of our bodies.

Katherine 'Kitty' Marshall was destined to break with convention. Brought up in a socially active family, her inherent rebellious streak came into play in 1901, when she daringly divorced her husband and joined the newly founded Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), campaigning for women's suffrage. In 1904, she married solicitor Arthur Willoughby Marshall and the couple soon became a powerhouse team in the movement: Arthur defending the suffragettes in court while Kitty, trained in jujitsu and a member of the WSPU's elite team 'the Bodyguard'.

"Body Cameras for Police Selected, Finally; Now Questions Over Their Quality" is from the October 12, 2016 United States section of The New York Times. It was written by Ashley Southall and narrated by Caroline Miller.

"Body Count Points to a Mexican Military out of Control" is from the May 26, 2016 World section of The New York Times. It was written by Azam Ahmed and Eric Schmitt and narrated by Fleet Cooper.

"Mind Over Body: Playing in the NFL at 38" is from the November 30, 2016 Sports section of The New York Times. It was written by Ben Shpigel and narrated by Keith Sellon-Wright.

"Boko Haram Video Appears to Show Bodies of Kidnapped Girls" is from the August 14, 2016 World section of The New York Times. It was written by Dionne Searcey and narrated by Fleet Cooper.

"Mexican Military Runs up Body Count in Drug War" is from the May 27, 2016 World section of The New York Times. It was written by Azam Ahmed and Eric Schmitt and narrated by Caroline Miller.

"Irish Fighter Accuses Amateur Boxing Body of Being Corrupt" is from the August 16, 2016 Sports section of The New York Times. It was written by Ken Belson and Scott Blumenthal and narrated by Kristi Burns.

"As Boys Get Fatter, Parents Worry One Body Part Is Too Small" is from the September 5, 2016 Science section of The New York Times. It was written by Perri Klass, M.D. and narrated by Caroline Miller.

"Company Known for Stun Guns Corners Market for Body Cameras" is from the July 13, 2016 Business section of The New York Times. It was written by David Gelles and narrated by Caroline Miller.