Brice Laurent's Books

European Objects

The Troubled Dreams of Harmonization

By: Brice Laurent

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European Objects

The Troubled Dreams of Harmonization

By: Brice Laurent

How interventions based on objects—including chemicals, financial products, and consumer goods—offer a path to rethink European integration. Interventions based on objects, Brice Laurent claims, have become a dominant path for European policy-making. In European Objects, Laurent analyzes the political consequences of these interventions and their democratization. He uses the term “European objects” to describe technical entities that are regulated—and thereby transformed—by European policies. To uncover the bureaucratic and regulatory intricacies of European governance, Laurent focuses on a series of these objects, including food products, chemicals, financial products, consumer goods, drinking water, and occupational environments. Laurent argues that taking European objects seriously offers a way to rephrase the dreams of harmonization and, eventually, rethink the constitutional strength of European integration. Laurent doesn’t just clarify how European regulation works, but also explores ways to realize long-term objectives for European integration, such as a harmonized market or an objective expertise. Regulation is best understood as “regulatory machinery” bringing together various types of legal constraints, material interventions on objects, and the imagining of desirable futures. Analyzing European objects enables Laurent to explore what regulation has become after years of evolution have made it a central component of the European policy world. He offers practical illustrations of how the regulatory machinery functions today. If Europe succeeds at reinventing the terms of its legitimacy with objects that matter for the European publics, it will provide a telling demonstration that the opposition of expertise and populism is not the unavoidable fate of liberal democracies.

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281

Publisher

MIT Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0262543338

ISBN 13

9780262543330

Democratic Experiments

Problematizing Nanotechnology and Democracy in Europe and the United States

By: Brice Laurent

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Democratic Experiments

Problematizing Nanotechnology and Democracy in Europe and the United States

By: Brice Laurent

An examination of nanotechnology as a lens through which to study contemporary democracy in both theory and practice. In Democratic Experiments, Brice Laurent discusses the challenges that emerging technologies create for democracy today. He focuses on nanotechnology and its attendant problems, proposing nanotechnology as a lens through which to understand contemporary democracy in both theory and practice. Arguing that democracy is at stake where nanotechnology is defined as a problem, Laurent examines the sites where nanotechnology is discussed and debated by scientists, policymakers, and citizens. It is at these sites where the joint production of nanotechnology and the democratic order can be observed. Focusing on the United States, France, and Europe, and various international organizations, Laurent analyzes representations of nanotechnology in science museums, collective discussions in participatory settings, the making of categories such as “nanomaterials” or responsible innovation” in standardization and regulatory arenas, and initiatives undertaken by social movements. He contrasts American debates, in which the concern for public objectivity is central, with the French “state experiment,” the European goal of harmonization, and the international concern with a global market. In France, public debate proceeded in response to public protest and encountered a radical critique of technological development; the United States experimented with an innovative approach to technology assessment. The European regulatory approach results in lengthy debates over political integration; the United States relies on the adversarial functioning of federal agencies. Because nanotechnology is a domain where concerns over anticipation and participation are pervasive, Laurent argues, nanotechnology—and science and technology studies more generally—provides a relevant focus for a renewed analysis of democracy.

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285

Publisher

MIT Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0262344491

ISBN 13

9780262344494

Man in the Ivory Tower

F. Cyril James of McGill

By: Stanley Brice Frost

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Man in the Ivory Tower

F. Cyril James of McGill

By: Stanley Brice Frost

Tracing the course of a serendipitous career -- from a working-class home in London, England, where he was born shortly after the turn of the century, to his death there in 1973 -- the James story sheds light on student and professional life at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1920s, on economic and political changes in the US during the turbulent thirties, and on the development of the US banking industry in one of its most critical periods. James was invited to McGill to direct the School of Commerce but was almost immediately appointed Principal. He guided the university through the constricting years of war and, as chairman of the Advisory Committee on Reconstruction, made a major contribution to the ground-plan of Canada's national welfare system. During the post-war years he inspired McGill's response to the knowledge explosion of the forties and fifties and to the huge growth in demand for higher education. He also masterminded the successful endeavour of the National Conference to secure federal funding for all Canadian universities. A great traveller, James played a major role in the Association of Universities of the British Commonwealth, as well as in the International Association of Universities, of which he was elected President in 1960. As James' literary executor, Stanley Frost had privileged access to his private papers and has made full use of the opportunity to reveal the complexity of James' personality: his brilliance of mind, high ideals, and acute self-knowledge, as well as his deep-rooted sense of insecurity and his strange inhibitions in personal relationships. The privileged person in the Ivory Tower emerges in these pages as a very human one.

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347

Publisher

McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published Date

ISBN 10

0773562699

ISBN 13

9780773562691

McGill University

For the Advancement of Learning, Volume II, 1895-1971

By: Stanley Brice Frost

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McGill University

For the Advancement of Learning, Volume II, 1895-1971

By: Stanley Brice Frost

The appointment of John William Dawson as principal in 1855 brought modern ideas of education to Montreal, and he imparted to the emerging institution his own deeep commitment to science. The Molson Hall in 1862, the first Medical School on campus in 1872, the Redpath Museum in 1882, the Macdonald Physics Building, the Redpath Library, and the Macdonald-Workman Engineering Building, all in 1893 were the major external evidences of the great intellectual advances that had been made. Equally, the admission of women students in 1884 marked the immense social developments in Montreal society. An early contribution to elementary teaching through the work of the McGill Nornal School was followed by the institution of examinations for a far-flung network of affiliated secondary schools and by the encouragement and supervision of local colleges. By the time Dawson retired in 1893 McGill's influence was already reaching across the new Dominion of Canada, and the university was ready to make the transition into the twentieth century.

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518

Publisher

McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published Date

ISBN 10

0773560947

ISBN 13

9780773560949

Descartes 3.0

Metaphysical Meditations reviewed

By: Brice Dupuy

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Descartes 3.0

Metaphysical Meditations reviewed

By: Brice Dupuy

To reach the truth, you have to get rid of all the opinions you have received once in your life, and rebuild your whole system of knowledge again." This is what the narrator does here, rebuilding his knowledge basis in the light of the philosophical thoughts and the scientific theories that have emerged since 1650. What does René Descartes famous 'cogito' then become?

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254

Publisher

BoD - Books on Demand

Published Date

ISBN 10

2322180041

ISBN 13

9782322180042

Baudelaire's Bitter Metaphysics

Anti-Nihilist Readings by Fondane, Benjamin, and Sartre

By: Aaron Brice Cummings

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Baudelaire's Bitter Metaphysics

Anti-Nihilist Readings by Fondane, Benjamin, and Sartre

By: Aaron Brice Cummings

Baudelaire’s Bitter Metaphysics: Anti-Nihilist Readings by Fondane, Benjamin, and Sartre reconstructs a philosophical trialogue that might have been expected to take place between Benjamin Fondane, Walter Benjamin, and Jean-Paul Sartre over their philosophical readings of Charles Baudelaire, an exchange preempted by the untimely deaths of two of the interlocutors during the Nazi holocaust. Why did three of Europe’s sharpest minds respond to the terror of 1933-45 by writing about a long-dead poet? Aaron Brice Cummings argues that Fondane, Benjamin, and Sartre turned to the poet of nihilism’s abyss because they recognized a fact of cultural history that remains relevant today: until sometime in the 2080s, the literary world will have to confront (even if to deny) the two-century window forecast by Nietzsche as the age of cultural and existential nihilism. Accordingly, the author examines the bitter metaphysics latent in Baudelaire’s motifs of the abyss, clocks, brutes, streets, and bored dandies. In so doing, this book confronts the nothingness which modern life encounters in the heart of art, ethics, ideality, time, memory, history, urban life, and religion.

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343

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield

Published Date

ISBN 10

1666961760

ISBN 13

9781666961768

James McGill of Montreal

By: Stanley Brice Frost

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James McGill of Montreal

By: Stanley Brice Frost

James McGill is well known as the founder of McGill University but the rest of his accomplishments remain little known. This new biography reveals the fascinating life story of a man who, as fur trader, merchant, public servant, and colonel of the militia, played a significant role in Canada's development.

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202

Publisher

McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published Date

ISBN 10

0773512969

ISBN 13

9780773512962

Democratic Experiments

Problematizing Nanotechnology and Democracy in Europe and the United States

By: Brice Laurent

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Democratic Experiments

Problematizing Nanotechnology and Democracy in Europe and the United States

By: Brice Laurent

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Page Count

285

Publisher

MIT Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0262344491

ISBN 13

9780262344494

European Objects

The Troubled Dreams of Harmonization

By: Brice Laurent

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European Objects

The Troubled Dreams of Harmonization

By: Brice Laurent

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Solve jigsaw puzzle

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Page Count

281

Publisher

MIT Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0262368560

ISBN 13

9780262368568

Book's by Brice Laurent

European Objects

European Objects

Democratic Experiments

Democratic Experiments

Man in the Ivory Tower

Man in the Ivory Tower

McGill University

McGill University

Descartes 3.0

Descartes 3.0

Baudelaire's Bitter Metaphysics

Baudelaire's Bitter Metaphysics

James McGill of Montreal

James McGill of Montreal

Democratic Experiments

Democratic Experiments

European Objects

European Objects

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