EXPeditions - The living library of knowlegde

EXPeditions

The EXPeditions podcasts take you into the worlds of leading thinkers, scholars and scientists. Lively, accessible, reliable, these audio journeys guide you through key terrain in science and society, history, art and all the humanities.

  1. 3D AGO

    Aaron William Moore - Interwar science fiction and modern culture

    I started my research on science fiction in the early 20th century in China, Japan and the Soviet Union because I was interested in why their stories were so different. How do we explain this difference of attitude towards the future? About Aaron William Moore "I am the Handa Chair of Japanese-Chinese Relations at the University of Edinburgh and a modern historian of China and Japan. I also work in modern literature. I am a 2014 Philip Leverhulme Prize Winner. I am a comparative and transnational historian working with documents in Japanese, Chinese and Russian. I predominantly teach modern history of East Asia. My work includes studies of war diaries, the history of childhood and youth and speculative science writing and science fiction." Key Points • North Asian writers of the early 20th century often saw disruptive technology as a potential path to utopia rather than doom, contrasting with the predominantly dystopian Western outlook. • Their visions of future warfare centered on single, decisive technologies, like death rays, engineered plagues or mechanized armies, that would render conventional military strength irrelevant and directly threaten civilian populations. • Hirabayashi Katsunosuke argued that modern culture is shaped by engineers and technology, anticipating Walter Benjamin’s ideas and insisting that new media would expand rather than exhaust human imagination. • The pragmatic, largely non-theological response to radical technologies in the Soviet Union, China and Japan helps explain their quick adoption of innovations and willingness to reshape society around them.

    18 min
  2. DEC 8

    Ana Aliverti - State power and migration control

    A misconception in relation to citizenship, I think, is this idea of citizenship as a closed status that divides people, in terms of status in increasingly cosmopolitan societies. About Ana Aliverti I am a Professor of criminal law and criminal justice. My research work looks at the intersections between criminal law and criminal justice, on the one hand, and border regimes, on the other, and explores the impact of such intertwining on the national criminal justice institutions and on those subject to the resulting set of controls. I am a 2017 Philip Leverhulme Prize Winner. My research examines questions of citizenship and belonging in criminal justice, and law's instrumental and symbolic power for boundary drawing, as well as the place of morality and affects in state power. I concluded a project on the policing of migration which investigated the growing cooperation between immigration enforcement and the police, and explores the new contours of law enforcement in the context of globalization Key Points • State power isn't just punitive; it also involves humanitarian impulses that shape law and policy. • Migration controls today originate in colonial practices aimed at restricting black and brown populations, embedding race into modern migration policies. • Citizenship increasingly functions as a privilege rather than a right, marked by restrictive criteria that reinforce racial and social boundaries. • Communities globally, especially in the Global South, demonstrate ways of including migrants without relying on formal citizenship, emphasizing coexistence and local inclusion strategies.

    13 min
  3. DEC 6

    Ana Aliverti - Moral dilemmas at the borders

    Border workers face significant moral challenges in terms of the work that they do, particularly in terms of the exercise of violence. About Ana Aliverti I am a Professor of criminal law and criminal justice. My research work looks at the intersections between criminal law and criminal justice, on the one hand, and border regimes, on the other, and explores the impact of such intertwining on the national criminal justice institutions and on those subject to the resulting set of controls. I am a 2017 Philip Leverhulme Prize Winner. My research examines questions of citizenship and belonging in criminal justice, and law's instrumental and symbolic power for boundary drawing, as well as the place of morality and affects in state power. I concluded a project on the policing of migration which investigated the growing cooperation between immigration enforcement and the police, and explores the new contours of law enforcement in the context of globalization Key Points • Border workers face profound moral dilemmas due to conflicts between enforcing strict migration policies and providing humanitarian assistance to vulnerable individuals. • We need to remember that the central Mediterranean is the most lethal point in the world. • Immigration enforcement is seen by police as a "magic" or "dark art" due to its unpredictability, arbitrariness, and effectiveness in resolving recurrent criminal issues. • Humanitarianism from below emphasizes the ethical reflections and moral agency of individual border workers navigating contradictions in border policies.

    15 min

About

The EXPeditions podcasts take you into the worlds of leading thinkers, scholars and scientists. Lively, accessible, reliable, these audio journeys guide you through key terrain in science and society, history, art and all the humanities.

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