The Fragility of Bodies

The Fragility of Bodies
Author: Sergio Olguin
Publisher: Bitter Lemon Press
Total Pages:
Release: 2019-06-30
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1912242206

When she hears about the suicide of a Buenos Aires train driver who has left a note confessing to four mortal ‘accidents’ on the train tracks, journalist Veronica Rosenthal decides to investigate. For the police the case is closed (suicide is suicide), for Veronica it is the beginning of a journey that takes her into an unfamiliar world of grinding poverty, crime-infested neighborhoods, and train drivers on commuter lines haunted by the memory of bodies hit at speed by their locomotives in the middle of the night. Aided by a train driver with whom she has a tumultuous and reckless affair, a junkie in rehab and two street kids willing to risk everything for a can of Coke, she uncovers a group of men involved in betting on working-class youngsters convinced to play Russian roulette by standing in front of fast-coming trains to see who endures the longest.

White Fragility

White Fragility
Author: Dr. Robin DiAngelo
Publisher: Beacon Press
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2018-06-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0807047422

The New York Times best-selling book exploring the counterproductive reactions white people have when their assumptions about race are challenged, and how these reactions maintain racial inequality. In this “vital, necessary, and beautiful book” (Michael Eric Dyson), antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo deftly illuminates the phenomenon of white fragility and “allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted to ‘bad people’ (Claudia Rankine). Referring to the defensive moves that white people make when challenged racially, white fragility is characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and by behaviors including argumentation and silence. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and prevent any meaningful cross-racial dialogue. In this in-depth exploration, DiAngelo examines how white fragility develops, how it protects racial inequality, and what we can do to engage more constructively.

Nice Racism

Nice Racism
Author: Dr. Robin DiAngelo
Publisher: Beacon Press
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2021-06-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0807074136

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Building on the groundwork laid in the New York Times bestseller White Fragility, Robin DiAngelo explores how a culture of niceness inadvertently promotes racism. In White Fragility, Robin DiAngelo explained how racism is a system into which all white people are socialized and challenged the belief that racism is a simple matter of good people versus bad. DiAngelo also made a provocative claim: white progressives cause the most daily harm to people of color. In Nice Racism, her follow-up work, she explains how they do so. Drawing on her background as a sociologist and over 25 years working as an anti-racist educator, she picks up where White Fragility left off and moves the conversation forward. Writing directly to white people as a white person, DiAngelo identifies many common white racial patterns and breaks down how well-intentioned white people unknowingly perpetuate racial harm. These patterns include: • rushing to prove that we are “not racist” • downplaying white advantage • romanticizing Black, Indigenous and other peoples of color (BIPOC) • pretending white segregation “just happens” • expecting BIPOC people to teach us about racism • carefulness • and feeling immobilized by shame. DiAngelo explains how spiritual white progressives seeking community by co-opting Indigenous and other groups’ rituals create separation, not connection. She challenges the ideology of individualism and explains why it is OK to generalize about white people, and she demonstrates how white people who experience other oppressions still benefit from systemic racism. Writing candidly about her own missteps and struggles, she models a path forward, encouraging white readers to continually face their complicity and embrace courage, lifelong commitment, and accountability. Nice Racism is an essential work for any white person who recognizes the existence of systemic racism and white supremacy and wants to take steps to align their values with their actual practice. BIPOC readers may also find the “insiders” perspective useful for navigating whiteness. Includes a study guide.

My Grandmother's Hands

My Grandmother's Hands
Author: Resmaa Menakem
Publisher: Central Recovery Press
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2017-08-21
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1942094485

A NATIONAL BESTSELLER "My Grandmother's Hands will change the direction of the movement for racial justice."— Robin DiAngelo, New York Times bestselling author of White Fragility In this groundbreaking book, therapist Resmaa Menakem examines the damage caused by racism in America from the perspective of trauma and body-centered psychology. The body is where our instincts reside and where we fight, flee, or freeze, and it endures the trauma inflicted by the ills that plague society. Menakem argues this destruction will continue until Americans learn to heal the generational anguish of white supremacy, which is deeply embedded in all our bodies. Our collective agony doesn't just affect African Americans. White Americans suffer their own secondary trauma as well. So do blue Americans—our police. My Grandmother's Hands is a call to action for all of us to recognize that racism is not only about the head, but about the body, and introduces an alternative view of what we can do to grow beyond our entrenched racialized divide. Paves the way for a new, body-centered understanding of white supremacy—how it is literally in our blood and our nervous system. Offers a step-by-step healing process based on the latest neuroscience and somatic healing methods, in addition to incisive social commentary. Resmaa Menakem, MSW, LICSW, is a therapist with decades of experience currently in private practice in Minneapolis, MN, specializing in trauma, body-centered psychotherapy, and violence prevention. He has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show and Dr. Phil as an expert on conflict and violence. Menakem has studied with bestselling authors Dr. David Schnarch (Passionate Marriage) and Dr. Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score). He also trained at Peter Levine's Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute.

The Fragility of Evolution

The Fragility of Evolution
Author: Michael A. Susko
Publisher: AllrOneofUs Publishing
Total Pages: 57
Release: 2024-03-04
Genre: Science
ISBN:

his work offers an alternative paradigm for viewing life and its dynamic capacity for change. Rather than focusing on the end result of evolution with concepts such as resilience and fitness, it focuses on the actual process of change, in which life goes through a fragile period. Using plain-spoken language and based on an earlier scholarly work, it examines six biological domains which exhibit fragility and make for evolutionary novelty. They are: 1) the organism's dynamic genome, which exhibits a remarkable fluidity; 2) Symbiosis, involving the creative merger of two types of organisms; 3) Sexuality, in which the merger of sexes produces unique offspring; 4) Multicellularity, which makes for most of earth's macroscopic life; 5) Development, change resulting from the fragile period of immaturity of organisms; 6) The principle of the "head", a holistic/controlling dimension of the organism which is inherently fragile and dynamic; 7) The social dimension with the fragility of cooperative and competitive interactions, and; 8) ecological dimension with its interwoven, delicate web of connections. To this we add a "cumulative dimension" which embraces a spirituality of biology. Teaching our youth and having the public become aware of such a model which focuses on the fragility and sacrificial dimension of dynamic change, would serve to enhance our personal lives and work to increase the chances for the earth and humanity's survival.

A Body, Undone

A Body, Undone
Author: Christina Crosby
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2017-10-03
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 147985316X

Shortly after her 50th birthday in 2003, Crosby was in a bicycle accident that paralyzed her, and here shares her experience of living her new life.

Injecting Bodies in More-than-Human Worlds

Injecting Bodies in More-than-Human Worlds
Author: Fay Dennis
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2019-03-08
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0429880715

Drug use is widely understood in terms of its subjects, substances and settings. But what happens when these distinctions start to blur? Injecting Bodies in More-than-Human Worlds moves away from a hierarchical conceptualisation of drug use based on its subjects and their objects, offering unique and fresh insights into the complex world of injecting drugs. Focussing on the Deleuzian notion of bodies-in-process, Dennis proposes a new and timely approach to drugs where agency materialises in relation to others – human and not. Using rich, ethnographic data to demonstrate bodies’ in/capacities to act through their relationality, Dennis carefully maps out where bodies are thought, practised, lived and intervened-with: caught in tension between pleasure and addiction, activity and passivity, ‘becoming-other’ and ‘becoming-blocked’, and making and breaking habits. Arguing for a deeper engagement both with how bodies are enacted and with our collective responsibility to bring them together in healthier ways, this volume offers a unique intervention into the sociology of drugs and, more widely, health and illness. It will appeal to students and researchers interested in fields such as Science and Technology Studies, Sociology and Social Policy, Drugs and Addiction, and Health and Medical Anthropology.

If Our Bodies Could Talk

If Our Bodies Could Talk
Author: James Hamblin
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2016-12-27
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 0385540981

"If you want to understand the strange workings of the human body, and the future of medicine, you must read this illuminating, engaging book." —Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Gene In 2014, James Hamblin launched a series of videos for The Atlantic called "If Our Bodies Could Talk." With it, the doctor-turned-journalist established himself as a seriously entertaining authority in the field of health. Now, in illuminating and genuinely funny prose, Hamblin explores the human stories behind health questions that never seem to go away—and which tend to be mischaracterized and oversimplified by marketing and news media. He covers topics such as sleep, aging, diet, and much more: • Can I “boost” my immune system? • Does caffeine make me live longer? • Do we still not know if cell phones cause cancer? • How much sleep do I actually need? • Is there any harm in taking a multivitamin? • Is life long enough? In considering these questions, Hamblin draws from his own medical training as well from hundreds of interviews with distinguished scientists and medical practitioners. He translates the (traditionally boring) textbook of human anatomy and physiology into accessible, engaging, socially contextualized, up-to-the-moment answers. They offer clarity, examine the limits of our certainty, and ultimately help readers worry less about things that don’t really matter. If Our Bodies Could Talk is a comprehensive, illustrated guide that entertains and educates in equal doses.

Resilient Cyborgs

Resilient Cyborgs
Author: Nelly Oudshoorn
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 359
Release: 2020-04-02
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9811525293

This book examines how pacemakers and defibrillators participate in transforming life and death in high-tech societies. In both popular and medical accounts, these internal devices are often portrayed as almost magical technologies. Once implanted in bodies, they do not require any ‘user’ agency. In this unique and timely book, Nelly Oudshoorn argues that any discourse or policy assuming a passive role for people living with these implants silences the fact that keeping cyborg bodies alive involves their active engagement. Pacemakers and defibrillators not only act as potentially life-saving technologies, but simultaneously transform the fragility of bodies by introducing new vulnerabilities. Oudshoorn offers a fascinating examination of what it takes to become a resilient cyborg, and in the process develops a valuable new sociology of creating ‘resilient’ cyborgs.

Bodies in Flux

Bodies in Flux
Author: Christa Teston
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2017-05-05
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 022645083X

Doctors, scientists, and patients have long grappled with the dubious nature of “certainty” in medical practice. To help navigate the chaos caused by ongoing bodily change we rely on scientific reductions and deductions. We take what we know now and make best guesses about what will be. But bodies in flux always outpace the human gaze. Particularly in cancer care, processes deep within our bodies are at work long before we even know where to look. In the face of constant biological and technological change, how do medical professionals ultimately make decisions about care? Bodies in Flux explores the inventive ways humans and nonhumans work together to manufacture medical evidence. Each chapter draws on rhetorical theory to investigate a specific scientific method for negotiating medical uncertainty in cancer care, including evidential visualization, assessment, synthesis, and computation. Case studies unveil how doctors rely on visuals when deliberating about a patient’s treatment options, how members of the FDA use inferential statistics to predict a drug’s effectiveness, how researchers synthesize hundreds of clinical trials into a single evidence-based recommendation, and how genetic testing companies compute and commoditize human health. Teston concludes by advocating for an ethic of care that pushes back against the fetishization of certainty—an ethic of care that honors human fragility and bodily flux.