"No fertile soil for pathogens": rayon, advertising, and biopolitics in late Weimar Germany

Recent research on twentieth-century German history has begun to re-examine the centrality of race as a category of analysis. While not discounting its importance in the shaping and enacting of Nazi policies and practices, race is seen instead as one among many factors leading to the crimes of the Nazi regime. In this paper, the author considers the role consumerist desires and fantasies played in the wider context of the inter-war European fascination with notions of technology, "hygiene," democracy, and modernity. Using advertisements that were created to promote manufactured-fiber (rayon) apparel, this article suggests that continuities across cultures and time periods necessitate a re-evaluation of race as the signal organizing principal. Instead, the author argues that by complicating the intersections between class, science and technology, and an emerging, but troubling, modernity, 1920s rayon advertising offers an especially rich site for analysis of the ways in which biopolitics and nascent consumerism both sold products and constructed ideologies before 1933, and influenced the post-war welfare state.     

An Ethical Analysis of the Second Amendment: The Right to Pack Heat at Work

We examine the issues concerning the legality and ethicality of the Second Amendment right to bear arms balanced by the employer's duty to provide a safe workplace for its employees. Two court rulings highlight this balancing act: McDonald et al. v. City of Chicago et al. and District of Columbia v. Heller. “Stand Your Ground” and “Castle Doctrine” laws in the recent Trayvon Martin shooting on February 26, 2012 are also applicable. Various ethical frameworks examine the firearms debate by viewing the Second Amendment from three perspectives. These include a pro‐gun perspective drawing upon libertarianism and fundamental rights; a moderate gun perspective drawing upon consequentialism and stakeholder theory; and finally, an anti‐gun perspective drawing upon a Public Health Ethics and peace ethics approach. We explore the issue of gun control from a business perspective as employers face ethical decisions in responding to legislation that allows guns in the workplace and/or in employer parking lots while still being responsible to provide a safe workplace for their employees. We make recommendations regarding how companies should manage by proactively avoiding legal challenges to employees' rights to own and carry guns into the workplace. This includes emphasis on enhanced security, Human Resource policies and monitoring rapidly changing laws.