Alison Bashford – författare

»Ett biografiskt mästerverk.«– New Statesman

»Hela det brittiska kulturlivet blir synligt genom ett spretigt släktträds förgreningar.«– The Guardian

Under 1800- och 1900-talet förnyade tre färgstarka män vid namn Huxley det brittiska vetenskaps- och kulturlivet: Thomas Henry Huxley, Julian Huxley och Aldous Huxley. Thomas Henry Huxley, »Darwins bulldogg«, var en av evolutionsteorins tidigaste ambassadörer och förespråkade en värld styrd av förnuft och rationalitet. Hur kom det sig att hans söner sökte något helt annat? Tillsammans med sin bror Aldous var Julian Huxley en fixperson i det brittiska kulturlivet, där hans originella tankar om natur och kultur ställde honom i kontrast till sin rationelle morfar: men var inte hans idéer i själva verket bara en utveckling av Darwins läror?

I Evolutionens förvaltare tecknar Alison Bashford ett levande porträtt över en familj djupt präglad av Darwins evolutionsteori, både som en motorrelse till 1800-talets vidskeplighet och som en katalysator för att återför trolla världen under 1900-talet.

Vetenskapliga klassiker ges ut i samarbete med Kungl. Vetenskapsakademien.

This book examines the coercive and legally sanctioned strategies of exclusion and segregation undertaken over the last two centuries in a wide range of contexts. The political and cultural history of this period raises a number of questions about coercive exclusion. The essays in this collection examine why isolation has been such a persistent strategy in liberal and non-liberal nations, in colonial and post-colonial states and why practices of exclusion proliferated over the modern period, precisely when legal and political concepts of ''freedom'' were invented. In addition to offering new perspectives on the continuum of medico-penal sites of isolation from the asylum to the penitentiary, Isolation looks at less well-known sites, from leper villages to refugee camps to Native reserves.

This book examines the coercive and legally sanctioned strategies of exclusion and segregation undertaken over the last two centuries in a wide range of contexts. The political and cultural history of this period raises a number of questions about coercive exclusion. The essays in this collection examine why isolation has been such a persistent strategy in liberal and non-liberal nations, in colonial and post-colonial states and why practices of exclusion proliferated over the modern period, precisely when legal and political concepts of ''freedom'' were invented. In addition to offering new perspectives on the continuum of medico-penal sites of isolation from the asylum to the penitentiary, Isolation looks at less well-known sites, from leper villages to refugee camps to Native reserves.

In the age of HIV, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, the Ebola Virus and BSE, metaphors and experience of contagion are a central concern of government, biomedicine and popular culture.Contagion explores cultural responses of infectious diseases and their biomedical management over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It also investigates the use of ''contagion'' as a concept in postmodern reconceptualisations of embodied subjectivity.The essays are written from within the fields of cultural studies, biomedical history and critical sociology. The contributors examine the geographies, policies and identities which have been produced in the massive social effort to contain diseases. They explore both social responses to infectious diseases in the past, and contemporary theoretical and biomedical sites for the study of contagion.