World In Fragments

This collection presents a broad and compelling overview of the most recent work in philosophy, politics, and psychoanalysis by a world-renowned figure in contemporary thought.

During the past decade a number of individual museums have found imaginative ways of using their collections and of making them accessible. However, museum collections as a whole are enormous in size and quantity and the question of how can they can be put to best use is ever present. When conventional exhibitions can only ever utilise a tiny proportion of them, what other uses of the collections are possible? Will their exploitation and use now destroy their value for future generations? Should they simply be kept safely and as economically as possible as a resource for the future? Fragments of the World examines these questions, first reviewing the history of collecting and of collections, then discussing the ways in which the collections themselves are being used today. Case studies of leading examples from around the world illustrate the discussion. Bringing together the thinking about museum collections with case studies of the ways in which different types of collection are used, the book provides a roadmap for museums to make better use of this wonderful resource.

The young girl from the Ottawa Valley who served as a nurse in North Africa with only a helmet of fresh water a day, the teenage soldier from Fredericton who stole pig swill to survive in a Hong Kong prisoner of war camp, the English woman who survived the sinking of the Athenia to become a war-bride, and an Alberta airman who crashed off the icy coast of Greenland, these are but only four of the thirty compelling personal accounts of war experiences. Many private photographs from their own albums illustrate these stories, which reflect the world wide aspect of the war from the Indian Ocean to the North Atlantic, from Poland to the Middle East, and the varied activities and duties of these young men and women. Their hardships, their adventures, frustrations, fears, joys and romances are chronicled in a poignant and often humorous manner.

When the United States led the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, it expected to be able to establish a prosperous liberal democracy with an open economy that would serve as a key ally in the region. It sought to engage Iraqi society in ways that would defeat any challenge to that state building project and U.S. guidance of it. Eric Herring and Glen Rangwala argue that state building in Iraq has been crippled less by preexisting weaknesses in the Iraqi state, Iraqi sectarian divisions or U.S. policy mistakes than by the fact that the US has attempted-with only limited success-to control the parameters and outcome of that process. They explain that the very nature of U.S. state-building in Iraq has created incentives for unregulated local power struggles and patron-client relations. Corruption, smuggling, and violence have resulted. The main legacy of the US-led occupation, the authors contend, is that Iraq has become a fragmented state-that is, one in which actors dispute where overall political authority lies and in which there are no agreed procedures for resolving such disputes. As long as this is the case, the authority of the state will remain limited. Technocratic mechanisms such as training schemes for officials, political fixes such as elections, and the coercive tools of repression will not be able to overcome this situation. Placing the occupation within the context of regional, global, and U.S. politics, Herring and Rangwala demonstrate how the politics of co-option, coercion, and economic change have transformed the lives and allegiances of the Iraqi population. As uncertainty about the future of Iraq persists, this volume provides a much-needed analysis of the deeper forces that give meaning to the daily events in Iraq.

Bringing together the insights of literary criticism, film theory, history, and anthropology, this book explores the tradition of ethnographic film on the Northwest Coast and its relationship to the ethnography of the area. Rosalind Morris takes account of these films, organizing her discussions around a series of detailed readings and viewings tha

Pursuing fragments -- Pulling together, falling apart -- Knowing fragments -- Writing in fragments -- Political framings -- Walking cities -- In completion.

Global Fragments offers an innovative analysis of globalization that aims to circumvent the sterile dichotomies that either praise or demonize globalization. Eduardo Mendieta applies an interdisciplinary approach to one of the most fundamental experiences of globalization: the mega-urbanization of humanity. The claim that globalization unsettles our epistemic maps of the world is tested against a study of Latin America. Mendieta also recontextualizes the work of three major theorists of globalization—Enrique Dussel, Cornel West, and Jürgen Habermas—to show how their thinking reflects engagement with central problems of globalization and, conversely, how globalization itself is exemplified through the reception of their work. Beyond the epistemic hubris of social theories that seek to accept or reject a globalized world, Mendieta calls for a dialogic cosmopolitanism that departs from the mutuality of teaching and learning in a world that is global but not totalized.

Explores the implications of treating literature as art by putting narrative and philosophical approaches in conversation with cognitive science.