Of all the scientific works that have influenced the social sciences and humanities, none has matched the profound effect of the work of Isaac Newton. In his 1687 masterpiece Principia Mathematica he laid the foundation of classical mechanics in his discoveries of the laws of motion and the law of universal gravitation. He reoriented human understanding of the cosmos, thus boosting the confidence of human beings to access elements of what they saw as the divine logic behind the order of things and to have a sense of control over it. From the nineteenth century to the present day,...

The concept of responsibility permeates social life. While it has many meanings, they often centre around questions of practical and moral accountability, culpability and liability. One can learn a great deal about a social formation by looking at the way the meanings of responsibility are deployed within it, the way they vary from one social space to another, and the way they are often at the centre of a political struggle over how we define and apportion blame. The essays in this book do more than examine such processes. Each in its own way also invites the readerto push existing...

"Alter-Politics" is concerned with the way anthropological critical writing in particular aims to weave oppositional concerns (anti-politics) with a search for alternatives (alter-politics): alternative economies, alternative modes of inhabiting and relating to the earth, alternative modes of thinking and experiencing otherness. The book argues that it is because radical political passion has been mostly directed towards anti-politics that it has come to dominate over alter-politics. This does not simply mean that political passion needs to be equally directed towards alter-politics. It also...