Download or read book Unnatural States written by Peter Ian Lomas and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-08 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unnatural States is a radical critique of international theory, in particular, of the assumption of state agency—that states act in the world in their own right. Peter Lomas argues that since the universal states system is inequitable and rigid, and not all states are democracies anyway, this assumption is unreal, and to adopt it means reinforcing an unjust status quo. Looking at the concepts of state, nation, and agency, Lomas sees populations struggling to find an agreed model of the state, owing to inherited material differences; and unsurprisingly, among theorists of the nation, only controversy and a great confusion of terms. Meanwhile, the functional incarnations of the state agent are caricatures: the mandarin state, the lawyer state, the landlord state, the heir-to-history state, and the patriot state. Yet recent developments in international theory (constructivism, scientific realism, postmodernism) sacrifice state agency only at the price of an unhelpful abstraction. The states system is dysfunctional and obsolete, Lomas contends, and international theory must be recast, with morality as central, to inspire and to guide historic change. He focuses in his conclusion on prescriptions for change, led by four moral concerns: human rights, weapons of mass destruction, relations between rich and poor societies, and the environment. "I begin this book," writes Lomas, "with the commonest commonplace of international theory, to expose it as a meaningless cliche. In the masterly hands of Hobbes, it was elaborated into a shock formula for organized society, a reading of history as civilization's failure. Kant sought to rescue morality from Hobbes and create the structures of modernity, but Kant's influence is coming to an end. In the Cold War, politicians disagreeing over another philosopher almost brought the world to an end. Hence the challenges of our time. These are primary and profound. Philosophers have done much to define the modern world. The point of international theory is to change it."
Download or read book The Un Natural State written by Brock Thompson and published by University of Arkansas Press. This book was released on 2010-10-01 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a study of gay and lesbian life in Arkansas in the twentieth century, a deft weaving together of Arkansas history, dozens of oral histories, and Brock Thompson's own story.
Download or read book Unnatural Resources written by Michael Camp and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2019-09-26 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unnatural Resources explores the intersection of energy production and environmental regulation in Appalachia after the oil embargo of 1973. The years from 1969 to 1973 saw the passage of a number of laws meant to protect the environment from human destruction, and they initially enjoyed broad public popularity. However, the oil embargo, which caused lines and fistfights at gasoline stations, refocused Americans’ attention on economic issues and alerted Americans to the dangers of relying on imported oil. As a drive to increase domestic production of energy gained momentum, it soon appeared that new environmental regulations were inhibiting this initiative. A backlash against environmental regulations helped inaugurate a bipartisan era of market-based thinking in American politics and discredited the idea that the federal government had a constructive role to play in addressing energy issues. This study connects political, labor, and environmental history to contribute to a growing body of literature on the decline of the New Deal and the rise of pro-market thinking in American politics.
Download or read book Unnatural Texas written by Robin W. Doughty and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-14 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of introduced species in Texas is long (hogs were introduced by European settlers in the 1500s) and fraught with controversy. In Unnatural Texas? The Invasive Species Dilemma, Robin W. Doughty and Matt Warnock Turner introduce the “big hitters” of invasive species in the state. They profile the usual suspects—feral hogs, salt cedar, and fire ants—and also lesser known invasives, such as cats and sparrows. Blending natural and environmental history with geography, this book is a much-needed, balanced exploration of invasive species in Texas. The distinctions between native and invasive are not hard and fast, and perceptions of what is invasive have changed over the centuries. A striking example, free-ranging cats—domestic, stray, and feral—can wreak havoc on small mammal and bird populations. There is not a one-size-fits-all solution for invasives, and removal or complete eradication may not be possible or even desirable. The dilemma of what to do about invasive species also raises moral, social, economic, and cultural questions. This engaging introduction to the concept of invasive species in Texas will provide context for readers and will educate people on this important issue facing the state.
Download or read book Unnatural Selection written by Katrina van Grouw and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-31 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lavishly illustrated look at how evolution plays out in selective breeding Unnatural Selection is a stunningly illustrated book about selective breeding--the ongoing transformation of animals at the hand of man. More important, it's a book about selective breeding on a far, far grander scale—a scale that encompasses all life on Earth. We'd call it evolution. A unique fusion of art, science, and history, this book celebrates the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's monumental work The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, and is intended as a tribute to what Darwin might have achieved had he possessed that elusive missing piece to the evolutionary puzzle—the knowledge of how individual traits are passed from one generation to the next. With the benefit of a century and a half of hindsight, Katrina van Grouw explains evolution by building on the analogy that Darwin himself used—comparing the selective breeding process with natural selection in the wild, and, like Darwin, featuring a multitude of fascinating examples. This is more than just a book about pets and livestock, however. The revelation of Unnatural Selection is that identical traits can occur in all animals, wild and domesticated, and both are governed by the same evolutionary principles. As van Grouw shows, animals are plastic things, constantly changing. In wild animals the changes are usually too slow to see—species appear to stay the same. When it comes to domesticated animals, however, change happens fast, making them the perfect model of evolution in action. Suitable for the lay reader and student, as well as the more seasoned biologist, and featuring more than four hundred breathtaking illustrations of living animals, skeletons, and historical specimens, Unnatural Selection will be enjoyed by anyone with an interest in natural history and the history of evolutionary thinking.
Download or read book Unnatural Selection written by Mara Hvistendahl and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2011 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Lianyungang, a booming port city, has China's most extreme gender ratio for children under four: 163 boys for every 100 girls. These numbers don't seem terribly grim, but in ten years, the skewed sex ratio will pose a colossal challenge. By the time those children reach adulthood, their generation will have twenty-four million more men than women. The prognosis for China's neighbors is no less bleak: Asia now has 163 million females "missing" from its population. Gender imbalance reaches far beyond Asia, affecting Georgia, Eastern Europe, and cities in the U.S. where there are significant immigrant populations. The world, therefore, is becoming increasingly male, and this mismatch is likely to create profound social upheaval. Historically, eras in which there have been an excess of men have produced periods of violent conflict and instability. Mara Hvistendahl has written a stunning, impeccably-researched book that does not flinch from examining not only the consequences of the misbegotten policies of sex selection but Western complicity with them"--
Download or read book An Unnatural Metropolis written by Craig E. Colten and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2006-09 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Strategically situated at the gateway to the Mississippi River yet standing atop a former swamp, New Orleans was from the first what geographer Peirce Lewis called an "impossible but inevitable city." How New Orleans came to be, taking shape between the mutual and often contradictory forces of nature and urban development, is the subject of An Unnatural Metropolis. Craig E. Colten traces engineered modifications to New Orleans's natural environment from 1800 to 2000 and demonstrates that, though all cities must contend with their physical settings, New Orleans may be the city most dependent on human-induced transformations of its precarious site. In a new preface, Colten shows how Hurricane Katrina exemplifies the inability of human artifice to exclude nature from cities and he urges city planners to keep the environment in mind as they contemplate New Orleans's future. Urban geographers frequently have portrayed cities as the antithesis of nature, but in An Unnatural Metropolis, Colten introduces a critical environmental perspective to the history of urban areas. His amply illustrated work offers an in-depth look at a city and society uniquely shaped by the natural forces it has sought to harness.
Download or read book Unnatural Rebellion written by Ruma Chopra and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2011-05-29 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thousands of British American mainland colonists rejected the War for American Independence. Shunning rebel violence as unnecessary, unlawful, and unnatural, they emphasized the natural ties of blood, kinship, language, and religion that united the colonies to Britain. They hoped that British military strength would crush the minority rebellion and free the colonies to renegotiate their return to the empire. Of course the loyalists were too American to be of one mind. This is a story of how a cross-section of colonists flocked to the British headquarters of New York City to support their ideal of reunion. Despised by the rebels as enemies or as British appendages, New York’s refugees hoped to partner with the British to restore peaceful government in the colonies. The British confounded their expectations by instituting martial law in the city and marginalizing loyalist leaders. Still, the loyal Americans did not surrender their vision but creatively adapted their rhetoric and accommodated military governance to protect their long-standing bond with the mother country. They never imagined that allegiance to Britain would mean a permanent exile from their homes.
Download or read book A Florida State of Mind written by James D. Wright and published by Thomas Dunne Books. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A witty history of the state that's always in the news, for everything from alligator attacks to zany crimes. There's an old clip of Bugs Bunny sawing the entire state of Florida off the continent—and every single time a news story springs up about some shenanigans in Florida, someone on the internet posts it in response. Why are we so ready to wave goodbye to the Sunshine State? In A Florida State of Mind: An Unnatural History of Our Weirdest State, James D. Wright makes the case that there are plenty of reasons to be scandalized by the land and its sometimes-kooky, sometimes-terrifying denizens, but there's also plenty of room for hilarity. Florida didn't just become weird; it's built that way. Uncharted swampland doesn't easily give way to sprawling suburbia. It took violent colonization, land scams to trick non-Floridians into buying undeveloped property, and the development of railroads to benefit one man's hotel empire. Even the most natural parts of Florida are unnatural. Florida citrus? Not from here, but from China. Gators? Oh, they're from Florida all right, but that doesn't make having 1 per every 20 humans normal. Animals...in the form of roadkill? Only Florida allows you to keep anything you kill on the road (and anything you find). Yet everyone loves Florida: tourists come in droves, and people relocate to Florida constantly (only 36% of residents were born there). Crammed with unforgettable stories and facts, Florida will show readers exactly why.
Download or read book Natural Hazards UnNatural Disasters written by World Bank and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2010-11-10 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines how to ensure that the preventive measures are worthwhile and effective, and how people can make decisions individually and collectively at different levels of government.
Download or read book The Unnatural Nature of Science written by Lewis Wolpert and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wolpert draws on the entire history of science, from Thales of Miletus to Watson and Crick, from the study of eugenics to the discovery of the double helix. The result is a scientist's view of the culture of science, authoritative, informed, and mercifully accessible to those who find cohabiting with this culture a puzzling experience.
Download or read book Unnatural Frenchmen written by E. Claire Cage and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2015-07-01 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Enlightenment and revolutionary France, new and pressing arguments emerged in the long debate over clerical celibacy. Appeals for the abolition of celibacy were couched primarily in the language of nature, social utility, and the patrie. The attack only intensified after the legalization of priestly marriage during the Revolution, as marriage and procreation were considered patriotic duties. Some radical revolutionaries who saw celibacy as a crime against nature and the nation aggressively promoted clerical marriage by threatening unmarried priests with deportation, imprisonment, and even death. After the Revolution, political and religious authorities responded to the vexing problem of reconciling the existence of several thousand married French priests with the formal reestablishment of Roman Catholicism and clerical celibacy. Unnatural Frenchmen examines how this extremely divisive issue shaped religious politics, the lived experience of French clerics, and gendered citizenship. Drawing on a wide base of printed and archival material, including thousands of letters that married priests wrote to the pope, historian Claire Cage highlights individual as well as ideological struggles. Unnatural Frenchmen provides important insights into how conflicts over priestly celibacy and marriage have shaped the relationship between sexuality, religion, and politics from the age of Enlightenment to today, while simultaneously revealing the story of priestly marriage to be an inherently personal and deeply human one.
Download or read book Unnatural Deeds written by Cyn Balog and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2016-11-01 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Called "a PG-13 version of Gone Girl" by Kirkus, Unnatural Deeds is a novel of infatuation and obsession with an electrifying ending that readers won't see coming." Victoria Zell doesn't fit in, not that she cares what anyone thinks. She and her homeschooled boyfriend, Andrew, are inseparable. All they need is each other. That is, until Zachary Zimmerman joins her homeroom. Within an hour of meeting, he convinces good-girl Vic to cut class. And she can't get enough of that rush. Despite Vic's loyalty to Andrew, she finds her life slowly entwining with Z's. Soon she's lying to everyone she knows and breaking all the rules to be with Z. She can't get enough of him—or unraveling the stories of the family he's determined to keep hidden. Except Z's not the only one with a past. Straight-laced Vic is hiding her own secrets... secrets that are about to destroy everything in her path.
Download or read book Unnatural Magic written by C. M. Waggoner and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “brilliant and terrifically fun”* debut novel brings an enchanting new voice to fantasy. Onna can write the parameters of a spell faster than any of the young men in her village school. But despite her incredible abilities, she’s denied a place at the nation’s premier arcane academy. Undaunted, she sails to the bustling city-state of Hexos, hoping to find a place at a university where they don’t think there’s anything untoward about providing a woman with a magical education. But as soon as Onna arrives, she’s drawn into the mysterious murder of four trolls. Tsira is a troll who never quite fit into her clan, despite being the leader’s daughter. She decides to strike out on her own and look for work in a human city, but on her way she stumbles upon the body of a half-dead human soldier in the snow. As she slowly nurses him back to health, an unlikely bond forms between them, one that is tested when an unknown mage makes an attempt on Tsira’s life. Soon, unbeknownst to each other, Onna and Tsira both begin devoting their considerable talents to finding out who is targeting trolls, before their homeland is torn apart… *Kat Howard, Alex Award-winning author of An Unkindness of Magicians
Download or read book Hiding in Unnatural Happiness written by Devamrita Swami and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hiding in Unnatural Happiness, is about our search to attain happiness and how it's such an elusive subjective state. It explores whether genetics, circumstances and willpower (or lack of it) limit our attempts at happiness. Drawing upon the ancient yoga science of the self, Hiding in nnnatural happiness probes our contemporary approach to fulfillment and progress, and recommends another road, less traveled but timeless.
Download or read book Unnatural 1 written by Mirka Andolfo and published by Image Comics. This book was released on 2018-07-04 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leslie is a simple pig girl. She loves sushi, she's stuck with a job she hates, and she lives under a brutal totalitarian government one that punishes transgressors for anything deemed "unnatural". Leslie dreams of something different for herself. But those dreams are becoming dangerous... This Italian hit series by MIRKA ANDOLFO (Wonder Woman, Harley Quinn, DC Comics Bombshells) will transport you into a colorful but terrible world full of anthropomorphic creatures, but light on personal freedoms by way of a breathtaking plot that travels between thriller and fantasy, with a hint of sensuality.
Download or read book Acts of God written by Theodore Steinberg and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2006-07-20 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This revised edition features a new chapter analyzing the failed response to Hurricane Katrina. Steinberg argues that it is wrong to see natural disasters as random outbursts of nature or expressions of divine judgment. He reveals how business and government decisions have paved the way for the greater losses of life and property.
