John Protevi's Blog

OnTheCommons.org

Just ran across this website and thought I'd link to it.

Hilary Wainwright: "The institutions that are supposed to reproduce daily life are incapable of acting on behalf of the people any more -- so we need to produce our own institutional alternatives."

via www.onthecommons.org

University Life

Have created a "University Life" page on my website.

Uploaded two Power Points on current issues:

1. The Turning Point: The Crisis in Public Higher Education in Historical Perspective

2. Intellectual Property, Open Access, and the Commons.

Plus some much older pedagogy and student life things.

BBC News - Belgian coma 'writer' Rom Houben can't communicate

In re Schiavo and other cases. Technically speaking, this is a separate case, as the patient here had a catastrophic brain injury, whereas Terri Schiavo had destruction of brain tissue from oxygen deprivation. But you can be sure that this detail and this retraction won't be mentioned the next time the forces that aligned behind the Schindlers come up with another case with which to capture media attention.

via news.bbc.co.uk

ROROTOKO :: John Protevi on his book Political Affect: Connecting the Social and the Somatic :: Cutting-edge Intellectual Nonfiction through In-depth Author Interviews

An interview with me on the website Rorotoko, about Political Affect.

In Political Affect I address human nature as bio-cultural. Each one of us is a “body politic” that connects the social and the somatic. I avoid the extremes of social constructivism and genetic determinism by claiming we inherit a minimal human nature that gets fine-tuned by culture. In a formula, our human nature has evolved to be so open to our nurture that it becomes second nature.

via www.rorotoko.com

Draft of "Deleuze and Wexler" essay uploaded

Just uploaded a draft essay to the research page of my website.

BBC News - G7 nations pledge debt relief for quake-hit Haiti

"We are committed in the G7 to the forgiveness of debt, in fact all bilateral debt has been forgiven by G7 countries vis-a-vis Haiti," Mr Flaherty said at the end of the two day gathering of finance ministers.

via news.bbc.co.uk

Tricia Wachtendorf on Haiti

Absolutely essential listening here, the last third of the clip. Tricia Wachtendorf is a disaster expert the U Delaware Disaster Research Center and highlights the key points: the people of Haiti, like all people in disasters, are their own first responders; that securitization is a self-fulfilling prophecy; and that top-down central command structures are ineffective compared to emergent decentralized / spontaneous self-organization. Click here to find the clip. The Wachtendorf interview is in the last third

Researchers Await Their Turn In Haiti : NPR

Very good point in here by an excellent disaster researcher, Kathleen Tierney, about high-profile / high-tech / high-media external rescues versus the massive prosocial response of the Haitians (and everyone in every disaster ever studied) Click here for the NPR article

Revised PowerPoint on "Haiti and Human Nature"

Uploaded revised version of PowerPoint on "Haiti and Human Nature" at my research page on www.protevi.com.