Mimesis International

“Seeds of Equanimity deftly provides the reader with a praxis for negotiating the human journey from a disequanimous to an equanimous mind. Uebel makes it possible to traverse these way stations with a quintessentially rich menu of scholarship from Western and Eastern philosophies, an interdisciplinary mix of philosophy, literary history, and folk tales, inter alia. This book is an invitation to consider abandoning binaries of thought that disturb an equanimous mind in favour of more fluid and fertile integrations that inform equanimity. I warmly recommend this book to clinicians and interdisciplinary scholars in the human sciences.” Maurice Apprey, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, University of Virginia School of Medicine This work is an innovative, daring introduction to the philosophy and psychology of equanimity. Michael Uebel challenges the view that equanimity is the effect of a method aiming at states of impartial quiescence and solidity. Reanimating equanimity, Seeds allows new understandings of the concept to emerge through creative and rigorous attention to its genealogy as an idea centrally defined by flexibility, multiperspectivism, and non-teleological attitudes. Responding to the vertiginous increase in writings on mindful living, Uebel productively blends both Eastern and Western philosophies, generating a rich constellation of ideas framing equanimity as an epistemological mode and existential condition.

The experience of democratic self-government of migration practiced in the village of Riace, Calabria, is an important case study for the potential development of migration in relation to three aspects of last Italian government’s policies, all of which have both European and international relevance: the failure to sign the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration; the securitarian management of the migration crisis; and distorted media narratives around migration. This book derives from the collective efforts of a group of young social scientists in the fields of politics, law, economic geography, and media analysis, all of whom have past and present practical experience in the field. The book focuses on the high-impact local policies implemented in the small Calabrian village which turned out to possess one of the best vantage points for examining human migration on a global level. The volume represents an attempt to speak to a broad public in order to challenge ‘common sense’ and easy narratives on the complex issue of migration.