Life : a critical user's manual / Didier Fassin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Fassin, Didier, author.

Standardized Title:

Leben. English

Language:

English

German

Subjects (All):

Life.

Physical Description:

xiv, 159 pages ; 22 cm

Edition:

English edition.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA : Polity Press, 2018.

Summary:

"How can we think of life in its dual expression, matter and experience, the living and the lived? Philosophers and, more recently, social scientists have offered multiple answers to this question, often privileging one expression or the other; the biological or the biographical. But is it possible to conceive of them together and thus reconcile naturalist and humanist approaches? Using research conducted on three continents and drawing on the ideas of Wittgenstein, Benjamin and Foucault, Didier Fassin attempts to do so by developing three concepts: forms of life, ethics of life and politics of life. In the conditions of refugees and asylum-seekers, through humanitarian gestures and sacrifices for a cause, in light of mortality statistics and death benefits, and via a genealogical and ethnographical inquiry, the moral economy of life reveals troubling tensions in the way contemporary societies treat human beings. Once the pieces of this anthropological composition are assembled, like in Georges Perec's jigsaw puzzle, an image appears: that of unequal lives. Emerging from the prestigious Adorno Lectures delivered by Fassin in 2016, this profound investigation of life in contemporary societies, enriched by ethnographic fieldwork and written by one of the most distinguished anthropologists today, will be of great interest to readers across the humanities and social sciences"-- Provided by publisher.

"How can we think of life in its dual expression, matter and experience? In this book, distinguished anthropologist Didier Fassin draws on fieldwork from three continents and the ideas of Wittgenstein, Benjamin and Foucault to offer a distinctive view of the nature and meaning of human life today, one that emphasizes the idea of unequal lives"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Acknowledgements

Preamble: Minima Theoria

Chapter I. Forms of Life

Chapter II. Ethics of Life

Chapter III. Politics of Life

Conclusion: Unequal Lives

Notes

References.

Notes:

Translation of: Das Leben : eine kritische Gebrauchsanweisung. Berlin : Suhrkamp Verlag, 2017.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 140-153) and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Fassin, Didier. Life.

ISBN:

9781509526642

1509526641

9781509526659

150952665X

9781509526680

1509526684

OCLC:

1004255330