Author: Manuel Delanda File Type: pdf Examines the concept of an assemblage of heterogeneous components.Gilles Deleuze considered his concept of assemblage to be one of his most important contributions to philosophy. Yet he never developed it consistently and systematically, whether in his own books or those co-authored with Felix Guattari.In this book Manuel DeLanda provides the first detailed overview of the assemblage theory found in germ in Deleuze and Guattaris writings. Through a series of case studies, DeLanda shows how the concept can be applied to economic, linguistic, and military history as well as to metaphysics, science,and mathematics.DeLanda then presents the real power of assemblage theory by advancing it beyond its original formulation. This allows for the integration of communities, institutional organizations, cities, and urban regions, while challenging Marxist orthodoxy with a Leftist politics of assemblages.

Author: Nathaniel Coleman File Type: pdf Although the association between architecture and utopia (the relationship between imagining a new world and exploring how its new conditions can best be organized) might appear obvious from within the domain of utopian studies, architects have long attempted to dissociate themselves from utopia. Concentrating on the difficulties writers from both perspectives experience with the topic, this collection interrogates the meta-theoretical problematic for ongoing intellectual work on architecture and utopia. The essays explore divergent manifestations of the play of utopia on architectural imagination, situated within specific historical moments, from the early Renaissance to the present day. The volume closes with an exchange between Nathaniel Coleman, Ruth Levitas, and Lyman Tower Sargent, reflecting on the contributions the essays make to situating architecture and utopia historically and theoretically within utopian studies, and to articulating utopia as a method for inventing and producing better places. Intriguing to architects, planners, urban designers, and others who study and make the built environment, this collection will also be of interest to utopian studies scholars, students, and general readers with a concern for the interrelationships between the built environment and social dreaming.**

Author: John Philipp Baesler File Type: pdf A person strapped to a polygraph machine. Nervous eyes, sweaty brow, the needle trembling up and down. Few images are more evocative of Cold War paranoia. In this first comprehensive history of the polygraph as a tool and symbol of American Cold War policies, John Philipp Baesler tells the story of a technology with weak scientific credentials that was nevertheless celebrated as a device that could expose both internal and external enemies. Considered the go-to technology to test agents and employees loyalty, the polygraphs true power was to expose deep ideological and political fault lines. While advocates praised it as Americas hard-nosed yet fair answer to communist brainwashing, critics claimed that its use undermined the very values of justice, equality, and the presumption of innocence for which the nation stood. Clearer Than Truth demonstrates that what began as quick-fix technology promising a precise test of honesty and allegiance eventually came to embody tensions in American Cold War culture between security and freedom, concerns that reach deep into the present day. **

Author: Jessie Hohmann File Type: pdf A human right to housing represents the laws most direct and overt protection of housing and home. Unlike other human rights, through which the home incidentally receives protection and attention, the right to housing raises housing itself to the position of primary importance. However, the meaning, content, scope, and even existence of a right to housing raise vexing questions. Drawing on insights from disciplines including law, anthropology, political theory, philosophy, and geography, this book is both a contribution to the state of knowledge on the right to housing and an entry into the broader human rights debate. It addresses profound questions on the role of human rights in belonging and citizenship, the formation of identity, the perpetuation of forms of social organization, and, ultimately, of the relationship between the individual and the State. The book addresses the legal, theoretical, and conceptual issues, providing a deep analysis of the right to housing within and beyond human rights law. Structured in three parts, it outlines the right to housing in international law and in key national legal systems it examines the key concepts of housing space, privacy, and identity and, finally, it looks at the potential of the right to alleviate human misery, marginalization, and deprivation. The book represents a major contribution to the scholarship on an under-studied and ill-defined right. In approach, it offers a new framework for argument within which the right to housing - as well as other under-theorized and contested rights - can be reconsidered, reconnecting human rights with the social conditions of their violation, and, hence, with the reasons for their existence.Review...Hohmanns work is a fitting introduction to the convoluted topic of housing as a human right. She adds insightful commentary to the concepts of housing and home... Matt Hartman LSE Review of Books September 2013 ...I think this is an absolute bargain and would urge anyone who really wants to think about housing law (in the widest possible sense) to buy this book. Nearly Legal Blog Housing Law News and Comments August 2013 About the AuthorJessie Hohmann is a lecturer in law at Queen Mary, University of London.