Top News, Articles, and Interviews in Philosophy

Folk Religion and the Medical Engineering of Rural Black Laborers

23. May 2020 Philosophy News News
AbstractIn the study of American religion, scholars use the category folk to illuminate the religious worlds of populations on the margins of society. The category has been deployed to valorize the unique cultures of populations while extending the meaning and function of religion beyond conventional markers. Judith Weisenfeld’s religio-racial concept underscores how different state bureaucracies played an important role in the daily religious worlds of Black laypeople. This article applies Weisenfeld’s contribution to American religion by demonstrating that the folk category also sheds light on the agency of state actors and networks. Using the 1931 Macon County, Alabama, venereal disease program, I will argue that the folk category was part of the state’s biomedical campaign to regulate the daily religious cultures of the Black [More]
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Questions about the coronavirus: the epidemic seen in a historical perspective

22. May 2020 Philosophy News News
The figure above shows the effect of the two major outbursts of plague in Europe (you can find a detailed discussion of this subject in my book "Before the Collapse"). Here, Rorberto Mussi developes a historical perspective of past epidemics and of how that can help us understand the current one. (image from Langer et al., 1964)   Guest Post by Roberto Mussi The COVID-19 epidemic is generating a lot of questions from scientific, medical, political, and societal points of view. It not yet the time for complete answers, they will come slowly in the future together, hopefully, with antiviral treatments. But we can at least ask correct questions: this article tries to do that by looking at past history.The first question that comes to my mind is about the conditions that generate a pandemic outbreak. Are pandemics completely random events or do they spread only when some specific conditions occur in society? Historians can provide information about similar events of the past. They tell us that the "Black Death" arrived in Europe after the economic downturn of the late 13th century (some talk about a true economic revolution occurring between the 11th and 13th centuries [1]). It’s also a pretty intuitive statement: a virus can attack more easily an undernourished population [2]. In modern terms, the reproduction number (R0) depends on the context. In a historical dimension, pandemics are a consequence of a crisis, not a cause. So, the consequent question is: why now? [More]
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