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DNA testing and banking has become institutionalized in the Canadian criminal justice system. As accepted and widespread though the practice is, there has been little critique or debate of this practice in a broad public forum on the potential infringement of individual rights or civil liberties. Neil Gerlach's The Genetic Imaginary takes up this challenge, critically examining the social, legal, and criminal justice origins and effects of DNA testing and banking. Drawing on risk analysis, Gerlach explains why Canadians have accepted DNA technology with barely a ripple of public outcry. Despite promises of better crime control and protections for existing privacy rights, Gerlach's examinatio...
Becoming Biosubjects examines the ways in which the Canadian government, media, courts, and everyday Canadians are making sense of the challenges being posed by biotechnologies. The authors argue that the human body is now being understood as something that is fluid and without fixed meaning. This has significant implications both for how we understand ourselves and how we see our relationships with other forms of life. Focusing on four major issues, the authors examine the ways in which genetic technologies are shaping criminal justice practices, how policies on reproductive technologies have shifted in response to biotechnologies, the debates surrounding the patenting of higher life forms, and the Canadian (and global) response to bioterrorism. Regulatory strategies in government and the courts are continually evolving and are affected by changing public perceptions of scientific knowledge. The legal and cultural shifts outlined in Becoming Biosubjects call into question what it means to be a Canadian, a citizen, and a human being.
Planet Auschwitz explores the diverse ways in which the Holocaust influences and shapes science fiction and horror film and television by focusing on notable contributions from the last fifty years. The supernatural and extraterrestrial are rich and complex spaces with which to examine important Holocaust themes - trauma, guilt, grief, ideological fervor and perversion, industrialized killing, and the dangerous afterlife of Nazism after World War II. Planet Auschwitz explores why the Holocaust continues to set the standard for horror in the modern era and asks if the Holocaust is imaginable here on Earth, at least by those who perpetrated it, why not in a galaxy far, far away? The pervasive use of Holocaust imagery and plotlines in horror and science fiction reflects both our preoccupation with its enduring trauma and our persistent need to “work through” its many legacies. Planet Auschwitz website (https://planetauschwitz.com)
Surveillance is commonly rationalized as a solution for existing problems such as crime and terrorism. This book explores how surveillance, often disguised as risk management or harm reduction, is also at the root of a range of social and political problems. Canadian scholars from diverse disciplines interrogate the moral and ideological bases as well as the material effects of surveillance in policing, consumerism, welfare administration, disaster management, popular culture, moral regulation, news media, social movements, and anti-terrorism campaigns.
Discusses how the depiction of diseases in movies has changed over the last century and what these changes reveal about American culture Examines disease movies as a genre that has emerged over the last century and includes pandemic and zombie films Reveals the changes to the genre’s narratives over three broad time periods: the beginning of film through the 1980s, the 1990s through the mid-2000s, and the late 2000s and afterward Investigates the evolution of disease movies through three perspectives: historically notable films, remakes, and franchises Analyses disease movies in the context of the development of American, global capitalism and the fragmentation of the social contract Expla...
Ever since Norman Lear remade the BBC series Till Death Us Do Part into All in the Family, American remakes of British television shows have become part of the American cultural fabric. Indeed, some of the programs currently said to exemplify American tastes and attitudes, from reality programs like American Idol and What Not to Wear to the mock-documentary approach of The Office, are adaptations of successful British shows. Carlen Lavigne and Heather Marcovitch's American Remakes of British Television: Transformations and Mistranslations is a multidisciplinary collection of essays that focuses on questions raised when a foreign show is adapted for the American market. What does it mean to r...
The story of Eastern Germany--and a people lost between two cultures.
This book reflects each contributor's vision of the future, visions that range from the enthusiastic and hopeful to the pessimistic and fearful.
In Insurgency Online, Michael Dartnell focuses on a new form of conflict made possible by global communications. The Internet, Dartnell argues, is affecting extensive changes to the way politics are carried out, by inserting a range of non-state actors onto the global political stage. He demonstrates that Web activism raises issues about the organization of societies and the distribution of power and contends that the development of online activism has far-reaching social and political implications, with parallels to the influence of the invention of the printing press, the telegraph, and the radio. Dartnell concentrates on Web activists who use the Net as a media tool, distinguishing this u...
This title traces how the act of representing and watching is central to modern law enforcement. Finn analyzes the development of police photography in the 19th century to foreground a critique of three identification practices that are fundamental to current police work.