Very interdisciplinary, with authors from a wide range of academic backgrounds in the humanities and social sciences (e.g. philosophy, sociology, anthropology, law, political science, history). Offers five perspectives from the global South and is very global. Book publication will coincide with the public inquiry into the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK, which is bound to receive significant media attention both domestically and internationally. One of the first volumes to tackle the cost of lockdowns head-on. First systemic approach to the perspectives which non-STEM subjects bring to pandemic response and lockdowns.

Very interdisciplinary, with authors from a wide range of academic backgrounds in the humanities and social sciences (e.g. philosophy, sociology, anthropology, law, political science, history). Offers five perspectives from the global South and is very global. Book publication will coincide with the public inquiry into the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK, which is bound to receive significant media attention both domestically and internationally. One of the first volumes to tackle the cost of lockdowns head-on. First systemic approach to the perspectives which non-STEM subjects bring to pandemic response and lockdowns.

"Critical Communities and Aesthetic Practices" brings together eminent international philosophers to discuss the inter-dependence of critical communities and aesthetic practices. Their contributions share a hermeneutical commitment to dialogue, both as a model for critique and as a generator of community.

Two conclusions emerge: The first is that one's relationships with others will always be central in determining the social, political, and artistic forms that philosophical self-reflection will take. The second is that our practices of aesthetic judgment are bound up with our efforts as philosophers to adapt ourselves and our objects of interest to the inescapably historical and indeterminate conditions of experience.

The papers collected here address the issue that critical communities and aesthetic practices are never politically neutral and can never be abstracted from their particular contexts. It is for this reason that the contributors investigate the politics, not of laws, parties or state constitutions, but of open, indefinably critical communities such as audiences, peers and friends.

"Critical Communities and Aesthetic Practices" is distinctive in providing a current selection of prominent positions, written for this volume. Together, these comprise a pluralist, un-homogenized collection that brings into focus contemporary debates on critical and aesthetic practices.

Critical Communities and Aesthetic Practices brings together eminent international philosophers to discuss the inter-dependence of critical communities and aesthetic practices. Their contributions share a hermeneutical commitment to dialogue, both as a model for critique and as a generator of community. Two conclusions emerge: The first is that one's relationships with others will always be central in determining the social, political, and artistic forms that philosophical self-reflection will take. The second is that our practices of aesthetic judgment are bound up with our efforts as philosophers to adapt ourselves and our objects of interest to the inescapably historical and indeterminate conditions of experience. The papers collected here address the issue that critical communities and aesthetic practices are never politically neutral and can never be abstracted from their particular contexts. It is for this reason that the contributors investigate the politics, not of laws, parties or state constitutions, but of open, indefinably critical communities such as audiences, peers and friends. Critical Communities and Aesthetic Practices is distinctive in providing a current selection of prominent positions, written for this volume. Together, these comprise a pluralist, un-homogenized collection that brings into focus contemporary debates on critical and aesthetic practices.

The theme of 'disinterest' is a dominant one in philosophical accounts of aesthetic experience, and, unlike many philosophical themes, it has had and continues to have a huge effect, on presuppositions about the nature of judgment, of feeling, of art, of resistance, of all of those experiences and activities that appear to operate at least partly outside of the given regulations of human existence. The Art Kettle has two aims: first, to show that 'modern' art - that is, art during and since the Enlightenment - is not only itself defined by 'disinterest,' by dearth of purpose, but functions as a standard for creativity, for free thinking, for choice, for indulgence, for questioning, and for protest, that suits very well the requirement, in our capitalist democracies, that differences and resistances expend themselves without effect on the combination of conservatism and consumption that supports these democracies; second, to show that the historical conflation of aesthetic experience and 'disinterest' is subject to resistance from another historical conflation: of aesthetic experience and use or purpose.

Lee is a tiny tiger who lives with his Mum in the safety of his tree top house. There he feels safe from the dangers of the dark jungle below. But one wild stormy night, Lee and his Mum are thrown to the ground and Lee is forced to face his fears in order to help her. A Tiger named Lee tells the story of a timid little tiger who refuses to leave his tree-top perch and go down to the jungle floor for fear of what may lie there. However, he and his Mum are thrown from the tree on a stormy night and the little tiger has to overcome his fears.

What if we have lost the ability to think straight? And what if this is why the shocking injustices of contemporary life go unchallenged in spite of being widely acknowledged? And what if the university, the institution that is supposed to help us to think, is in on the act? In this polemical account of how universities are failing both their students and society, Sinead Murphy shows how the Zombie University of the twenty-first century is keeping us down rather than raising us up, and asks whether, in spite of everything, it could be brought back to life, and whether we could dare to think again.