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Cultural and Biological Approaches to Uncover African Diversity
This book explores important chapters of past and recent African history from a multidisciplinary perspective. It covers an extensive time range from the evolution of early humans to the complex cultural and genetic diversity of modern-day populations in Africa. Through a comprehensive list of chapters, the book focuses on different time-periods, geographic regions and cultural and biological aspects of human diversity across the continent. Each chapter summarises current knowledge with perspectives from a varied set of international researchers from diverse areas of expertise. The book provides a valuable resource for scholars interested in evolutionary history and human diversity in Africa.

Contributors are Shaun Aron, Ananyo Choudhury, Bernard Clist, Cesar Fortes-Lima, Rosa Fregel, Jackson S. Kimambo, Faye Lander , Marlize Lombard, Fidelis T. Masao, Ezekia Mtetwa, Gilbert Pwiti, Michèle Ramsay, Thembi Russell, Carina Schlebusch, Dhriti Sengupta, Plan Shenjere-Nyabezi, Mário Vicente.
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Darwin’s idea has been called the best idea anyone ever had. In Interrogations of Evolutionism in German Literature 1859-2011 Nicholas Saul offers the first representative account of German literary responses to Darwinian evolutionism from Raabe and Jensen via Ernst Jünger and Botho Strauß to Dietmar Dath.
Often identified with National Socialist ideology and hence notably absent from the public sphere after 1945, Darwinian thought is in fact shown to be distorted though the lens of Social Darwinism and bionationalist organicism. As Nicholas Saul shows, literature has been the main agent in public discourse for challenging such illiberal presentations, and there is a common thread of salvific individualism which leads to the new legitimacy of Darwinian discourse today.
Controversy, Media and Politics in Human Origins Research
In The Orce Man: Controversy, Media and Politics in Human Origins Research, Miquel Carandell presents a thrilling story of a controversy on an Spanish “First European” that involved scientists, politicians and newspapers. In the early 1980s, with Spanish democracy in its beginnings, the Orce bone was transformed from a famous human ancestor to an apparently ridiculous donkey remain. With a chronological narrative, this book is not centered on whether the bone was human or not, but on the circumstances that made a certain claim credible or not, from both the scientific community and the general public. Carandell’s analysis draws on the thin line that separates success from failure and the role of media and politics in the controversy.
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After their restoration of 1814, the Jesuits made significant contributions to the natural sciences, especially in the fields of astronomy, meteorology, seismology, terrestrial magnetism, mathematics, and biology. This narrative provides a history of the Jesuit institutions in which these discoveries were made, many of which were established in countries that previously had no scientific institutions whatsoever, thus generating a scientific and educational legacy that endures to this day. The article also focuses on the teaching and research that took place at Jesuit universities and secondary schools, as well as the order’s creation of a worldwide network of seventy-four astronomical and geophysical observatories where particularly important contributions were made to the fields of terrestrial magnetism, microseisms, tropical hurricanes, and botany.
Animal experimentation has been one of the most controversial areas of animal use, mainly due to the intentional harms inflicted upon animals for the sake of hoped-for benefits in humans. Despite this rationale for continued animal experimentation, shortcomings of this practice have become increasingly more apparent and well-documented. However, these limitations are not yet widely known or appreciated, and there is a danger that they may simply be ignored. The 51 experts who have contributed to Animal Experimentation: Working Towards a Paradigm Change critically review current animal use in science, present new and innovative non-animal approaches to address urgent scientific questions, and offer a roadmap towards an animal-free world of science.
The Exploitation of Marine Genetic Resources in Areas beyond National Jurisdiction by Valérie Wyssbrod begins by identifying the legal regime applicable to these underexploited resources which offer vast potential for the development of new drugs, bioplastics, depolluting products and other innovations. The author then outlines provisions for a new treaty, currently under discussion at the UN and presents alternatives to a new regime including revised legal instruments, the development of soft law and the creation of an applicable ecolabel.

Dans L’exploitation des ressources génétiques marine hors juridiction nationale, Valérie Wyssbrod détermine en premier lieu le régime juridique actuellement applicable à ces ressources. Ces dernières représentent à l’heure actuelle un potentiel énorme pour le développement de nouveaux médicaments, bioplastiques, dépolluants, etc. Encore peu exploitées, elles seront sans aucun doute au coeur d’un futur processus d’innovation et de nouveaux brevets. Dans un second temps, l’auteur dessine les contours et les principaux axes d’un nouveau traité spécifique, projet actuellement discuté à l’ONU. Valérie Wyssbrod explore finalement trois alternatives au nouveau traité : le remplacement du régime actuel par un autre régime existant, le développement d’un instrument de soft law et la création d’un écolabel.

Foucault and Animals is the first collection of its kind to explore the relevance of Michel Foucault’s thought for the question of the animal. Chrulew and Wadiwel bring together essays from emerging and established scholars that illuminate the place of animals and animality within Foucault’s texts, and open up his highly influential range of concepts and methods to different domains of human-animal relations including experimentation, training, zoological gardens, pet-keeping, agriculture, and consumption. Touching on themes such as madness and discourse, power and biopolitics, government and ethics, and sexuality and friendship, the volume takes the fields of Foucault studies and human-animal studies into promising new directions.
Genetic Transparency? tackles the question of who has, or should have access to personal genomic information. Genomic science is revolutionary in how it changes the way we live, individually and together, and how it changes the shape of society. If this is so, then – the authors of this volume claim – the rules that regulate genetic transparency should be debated carefully, openly and critically.

It is important to see that the social and cultural meanings of DNA and genetic sequences are much richer than can be accounted for by purely biomedical knowledge. In this book, an international group of leading genomics experts and scholars from the humanities and social sciences discuss how the new accessibility of genomic information affects interpersonal relationships, our self-understandings, ethics, law, and healthcare systems.

Contributors are: Kirsten Brukamp, Gabrielle Christenhusz, Lorraine Cowley, Malte Dreyer, Jeanette Erdmann, Andrei Famenka, Teresa Finlay, Caroline Fündling, Shannon Gibson, Cathy Herbrand, Angeliki Kerasidou, Lene Koch, Fruzsina Molnár-Gábor, Tim Ohnhäuser, Christoph Rehmann-Sutter, Benedikt Reiz, Vasilja Rolfes, Sara Tocchetti
The spectacular progress of the life sciences during the last decades poses new ethical, social and political challenges. In our days, questions of scientific truth and scientific progress are inextricably intertwined with questions concerning ethics, social justice and democratic participation. This series focuses on newly emerging conceptual and practical interfaces between the life sciences, the social sciences and the humanities, in order to address this new complexity in scientifically and socially responsible ways.

The series has published an average of 0,5 volumes per year since 2013.