One cannot deny the fact that we all have some understanding of moral issues. Each one of us can be said to have some sense of what is right, what is wrong, what is good, what is bad, what ought to be done, and what ought not to be done. This moral understanding can be in the form of some vague idea, notion, or simply a gut feeling. No matter who the person is, from which culture or community the person (...) belongs to, everybody faces a moral quandary sometime or other in one’s life. All of this presupposes that there is some fundamental sense or understanding of what is right and what is wrong. We all seem to have some understanding about actions that are right and those that are wrong. Some actions, for instance, torturing babies just for fun, killing an innocent person, raping, etc. are exemplars of morally wrong actions. Assisting a person in need, giving to famine relief, etc. on the other hand are examples of morally right actions. The present essay is an attempt to delve into the question of the source of moral knowledge. Three sources, experience, reason, and intuition have been identified. Views of philosophers like G.E Moore, WD Ross, Immanuel Kant, JS Mill, Plato, Samuel Clarke, Aristotle Hume, and Anthony Ashley Cooper have been discussed to gain clarity about the issue. (shrink)

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is a global social problem that includes using coercive control strategies, including financial abuse, to manage and entrap an intimate partner. Financial abuse restricts or removes another person’s access to financial resources and their participation in financial decisions, forcing their financial dependence, or alternatively exploits their money and economic resources for the abuser’s gain. Banks have some stake in the prevention of and response to IPV, given their unique role in household finances and growing recognition an (...) equitable society is one inclusive of consumers with vulnerabilities. Institutional practices may unwittingly enable abusive partners’ financial control as seemingly benign regulatory policy and tools of household money management exacerbate unequal power dynamics. To date, business ethicists have tended to take a broader view of banker professional responsibility, especially post-Global Financial Crisis. Little scholarship examines if, when and how a bank should respond to societal issues, such as IPV, traditionally outside their ‘remit’ of banking services. I extend existing understandings of ‘systemic harm’ to conceptualise the bank’s role in addressing economic harm in the context of IPV, viewing IPV and financial abuse through a consumer vulnerability lens to translate theory into practice. Two in-depth stories of financial abuse further illustrate the active role banks can and should take in combating financial abuse. (shrink)

This research aims to explore the influence of Islamic tourism destination attributes on support for heritage tourism, focusing on the mediating roles of Islamic heritage proximity and cultural identity, as well as the moderating role of cultural tendency within the context of heritage sites in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. A quantitative approach was employed, utilizing a structured questionnaire to gather data from 267 tourists visiting various heritage sites. Measurement scales were adapted from established literature to ensure validity and reliability. (...) Data analysis was conducted using ADANCO software for Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The findings indicate that Islamic tourism destination attributes significantly influence support for heritage tourism. Additionally, Islamic heritage proximity and cultural identity were found to mediate this relationship effectively, while cultural tendency served as a significant moderator, enhancing the connection between tourism attributes and support for heritage tourism. This study contributes to the understanding of how cultural and religious elements shape tourism dynamics in Islamic contexts. The implications for practitioners and policymakers highlight the importance of enhancing destination attributes to foster greater support for heritage tourism, ultimately promoting sustainable cultural preservation. (shrink)

Women’s education has been central to discourses that have sought to modernize developing and Muslim societies. Based on ethnographic data collected from women teachers from rural and low-income communities of Pakistan, the article shows how being a parhi likhi woman implies acquiring a privileged subject position making claims to middle-class and Islamic morality, and engaging in specific struggles within, rather than against, the institutions of family, community, and Islam. This focus on the lived experiences of educated Muslim women complicates the (...) prevalent narrative of modernity that presents women’s education and gender empowerment as an expression of individual women’s choice and free will against the oppressive frameworks of family, community, and Islam. (shrink)

In September 2013, images of bruised, bleeding and battered Hindu goddesses went viral on social media networks. Saraswati (the goddess of knowledge), Lakshmi (the goddess of wealth) and Durga (the goddess of strength and power) appear as victims of domestic abuse in the Abused Goddesses advertising campaign against domestic violence. In this article, I analyse the Abused Goddesses campaign and the conversations it generated. I argue that it reiterates both a form of Hindu nationalistic discourse as well as longstanding patriarchal, (...) orientalist and neocolonialist perspectives about sexual violence in India. I examine the discourse generated by the Abused Goddesses campaign on social and mainstream media in order to trace how these images were circulated, perceived and engaged with by Indian and international audiences. While the campaign went viral on social media, I argue that its virality offers insufficient conditions for substantial social change around gender violence, including consciousness raising. Through analysis of the campaign and the ways in which it has been commented on, I demonstrate how the representation of domestic violence through the calendar art imagery of abused goddesses ultimately reaffirms classist, casteist, racist, sexist and orientalist discourses about Indian women and the violence they face. (shrink)

Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences has been further developed to focus on the research of human cognitive activities. Thus, the concept of emotional intelligence, which is the topic of the current paper, was introduced by John D. Mayer, Peter Salovey and ‎Daniel Goleman. General intelligence can be defined as the capacity to carry out abstract reasoning to understand meanings, to recognize the similarities and differences between two concepts and to make generalizations. Emotional intelligence is not a part of general intelligence. (...) Emotional intelligence can be defined as an ability of a human to perceive oneself and interact with others with the help of obtained and processed emotional information. Language acquisition is mediated by the necessity to communicate with others. Consequently, the ability to manage the process of communication is of utmost importance in learning a language. Virtual learning environment reduces dramatically the immediate interaction of the participants of the process of education. It undoubtedly affects the process of acquisition and demands to reconsider the distribution of different learning activities. (shrink)

Purpose Intellectual honesty and integrity are the cornerstones of conducting any form of research. Over the last few years, scholars have shown great concerns over questionable research practices (QRPs) in academia. This study aims to investigate the questionable research practices amongst faculty members of medical and dental colleges in Pakistan. Method A descriptive multi-institutional online survey was conducted from June-August 2022. Based on previous studies assessing research misconduct, 43 questionable research practices in four domains: Data collection & storage, Data analysis, (...) Study reporting and Collaboration & authorship were identified and investigated. Descriptive (Frequencies, Percentages, Mean, SD) and Inferential (chi square) statistics were calculated. Results A total of 654 faculty members responded. Every respondent reported committing at least one QRP in their career. The most common QRPs included deliberately failing to mention funding, publishing program evaluation data not meant for research purposes or approved by an ethical body, inappropriately storing identifiable information and non-disclosure of any conflicts. There was significant association of age, gender and academic rank with QRPs in ‘Data collection and storage’ and ‘Data Analysis’ domains. Conclusion Medical and dental faculty members participating in this study are involved in a range of questionable research practices (QRPs) in Pakistan. Their confession might have contributed to the faculty developing self-awareness and reinforcing academic integrity. There is a need for reviewing policies and practices to improve research culture. Future research should explore the factors resulting in such practices. (shrink)

Review of Drew Dalton, Longing for the Other: Levinas and Metaphysical Desire (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2009).

Due to a much more closely connected world, there is an accelerated interchange of cultures in the clinical setting. Alongside a pluralism of cultural beliefs for health and illness is a greater effort to value and respect freedoms for thoughts and belief pertaining to differing identities from legal, moral, societal and activist initiatives. When treating culture as part of the clinical consultation, there is a need for conceptual frameworks, communication skills, guidelines and policies to be implemented in a context where (...) there are certain dominant narratives such as scientific medicine and biomedical frameworks of the human body and mind that typically bracket out culture. The encounter of the clinic with culture is an ethical endeavour that requires expertise training and education; thus, the role of inter-culturality and cultural competence is significant for setting precedents in the translation from theory to practice. In this chapter, I discuss challenges for global bioethics in responding to culture in the clinic. (shrink)

Proceeding from a phenomenological perspective, the present study investigated the experiences of seven homeless women who had lived through childhood trauma and subsequent substance abuse, with specific focus on the recovery process experienced by each. Applying the analytical protocol of Giorgi to the written accounts obtained from the participants, 15 constituent themes of the recovery process were identified. In order to illuminate the participants’ experiences with minimal influence of any possible researcher bias, the researcher refrained from labelling, judging or diagnosing (...) the women’s life circumstances. Consequently, no treatment paradigm was applied to help explain, predict or judge the behaviour of the participants during the course of this research. (shrink)

BackgroundThe principles of informed consent, confidentiality and privacy are often neglected during patient care in developing countries. We assessed the degree to which doctors in Lahore adhere to these principles during outpatient consultations.Material & MethodThe study was conducted at medical out-patient departments (OPDs) of two tertiary care hospitals (one public and one private hospital) of Lahore, selected using multi-stage sampling. 93 patients were selected from each hospital. Doctors' adherence to the principles of informed consent, privacy and confidentiality was observed through (...) client flow analysis performed by trained personnel. Overall patient perception was also assessed regarding these practices and was compared with the assessment made by our data collectors.ResultsSome degree of informed consent was obtained from only 9.7% patients in the public hospital and 47.8% in the private hospital. 81.4% of patients in the public hospital and 88.4% in the private hospital were accorded at least some degree of privacy. Complete informational confidentiality was maintained only in 10.8% and 35.5% of cases in public & private hospitals respectively. Informed consent and confidentiality were better practiced in the private compared to the public hospital (two-sample t-test > 2, p value < 0.05). There was marked disparity between the patients' perspective of these ethical practices and the assessment of our trained data collectors.ConclusionObservance of medical ethics is inadequate in hospitals of Lahore. Doctors should be imparted formal training in medical ethics and national legislation on medical ethics is needed. Patients should be made aware of their rights to medical ethics. (shrink)

Stock markets accurately reflect countries’ economic health, and stock returns are tightly related to economic indices. One popular area of financial research is the factors that influence stock returns. Several investigations have frequently cited macroeconomic factors, among numerous elements. Therefore, this study focuses on the empirical analysis of the relationship between macroeconomic factors and stock market returns. When a stock market becomes increasingly volatile, it becomes susceptible to economic uncertainty news, and information on social media platforms. Thus, we incorporated a (...) new dimension of economic uncertainty news sentiment for stock return predictions. We employed the daily data ofgold index, crude oil price, interest rate, exchange rate, and stock returns for a set of countries from January 2010 to December 2020. Subsequently, to compute coefficients, we conducted a regression analysis using one of the more sophisticated approaches: single-layer neural networks and ordinary least square regression. In addition, we only computed EUNS for the period of the fiscal budget announcement for the US, Turkey, and Hong Kong. The results indicate that the gold index, interest rate, and exchange rate are highly significant and negative macroeconomic factors for all analyzed countries. These findings also indicate that EUNS is important and detrimental for projecting stock returns. (shrink)

This article probes the link between anti-colonial nationalist thought and a theory of jihad in early twentieth-century India. An emotive affinity to the ummah was never a barrier to Muslims identifying with patriotic sentiments in their own homelands. It was in the context of the aggressive expansion of European power and the ensuing erosion of Muslim sovereignty that the classical doctrine of jihad was refashioned to legitimize modern anti-colonial struggles. The focus of this essay is on the thought and politics (...) of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. A major theoretician of Islamic law and ethics, Azad was the most prominent Muslim leader of the Indian National Congress in pre-independence India. He is best remembered in retrospectively constructed statist narratives as a , who served as education minister in Jawaharlal Nehru's post-independence cabinet. Yet during the decade of the First World War he was perhaps the most celebrated theorist of a trans-national jihad. (shrink)

Quran and you -- Relationship with the Quran -- Istiqamah with your quran -- Conclusion -- Special section Quran tag -- Special section duaas.

This article reflects on the challenges of developing academic research that is undertaken to create social change. I describe the ways that my research has been generated and guided by activism. Even though the descriptor of my research interests is generally gender‐based violence and mental health, my research is situated within an ongoing political discourse that fundamentally opposes and normatively challenges ideologies such as those implemented at a governmental level during the Taliban regime in Afghanistan that continue to have power (...) over Afghan women’s lives. I critique the emergence of two research projects that work with women survivors of violence and develop trauma therapeutic interventions using traditional storytelling. My positionality as a woman of Muslim origin and an academic in the U.K. resulted in inescapable juxtapositions and the necessary blurring of the boundaries between personal and professional viewpoints as well as highlighting the potency of traumatic stories in contexts of conflict, oppression, silencing and marginalization. I go on to explain why I have a moral obligation as an ethicist working in global health, with resources and expertise, to systematically develop my research questions and objectives in accordance with the end‐goal of tackling and deconstructing harmful ideologies and practices towards women and girls in societies marred by the violent complexities of national and international conflicts. (shrink)

Cryonics is a technique for freezing dead bodies at very low temperatures in the hope they will be revived at some time in the future when medical technology becomes available. At present, there are no known revival methods; however, the role of innovation in medical practice leads certain individuals to hypothesize that death will be reversible in the future. While cryonics might resonate with certain questionable contemporary Western cultural themes of death denial and neoliberalism its uptake remains minuscule. Several reasons (...) may be pertinent. First cryonics does not fit with existing western cultural views of death and medicine. Second, poor marketing, prohibitive cost, and the lack of involvement with the funerary industry may be significant factors impacting poor intake. Third, the cryonics discourse around ideas of ‘death’ constructs a barrier that prevents ‘outsiders’ from relating to the task of cryonicists. Fourth, the general public may have a poor understanding of this technology. Finally, there may be religious objections and cultural reductions due to the lack of ritual and thus no possibility of memorializing the dead, which impacts the human appeal of cryonics. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung In den frühen Arbeiten von Schelling findet sich eine empirische Historie des Christentums. Diese muss jedoch zusammengesetzt werden, und dazu muss zunächst geklärt werden, wie er zwei Begriffe unterscheidet: Geschichte und Historie. Erstere meint das spekulative Geschichtsverständnis; letztere das empirische Verständnis. Setzt man Schellings Historie, bzw. sein rein historisches Verständnis des Christentums zusammen, wird deutlich, dass es von der indischen Religion bis zum Protestantismus reicht. Sich über Schellings empirische Historie des Christentums im Klaren zu sein, ermöglicht, sein spekulatives Geschichtsverständnis, (...) seine historische und spekulative Konstruktion des Christentums und seine Auffassung von Theologie im Allgemeinen besser zu verstehen. (shrink)

This study adds to the growing research exploring the consequences of knowledge hiding in organizations. Drawing from the social exchange theory and the norm of reciprocity, this paper examines the direct and indirect—via distrust in supervisor—relationships between supervisor knowledge hiding and supervisee organizational citizenship behavior directed at the supervisor in the context of the Middle East. Using a supervisor–supervisee dyadic design, two-source data were obtained from 317 employees of 41 Saudi firms. The findings suggest that supervisees’ distrust in their supervisors (...) mediates the significant and negative relationship between SKH and supervisees’ OCB-S. Furthermore, the significant and positive relationship between SKH and distrust in supervisor is more pronounced for foreign workers than for local workers. This study provides empirical support and a better understanding of the existence and consequences of SKH for local and foreign workers and also discusses the theoretical and practical implications of the findings. (shrink)

Papers presented in three conferences, supported by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the Excellence Cluster 16: 'Cultural Foundation of Integration' at the University of Konstanz, and the Institute of German Studies and the Forum Scientairum at the Univesity of Tubingen.

Protecting women and children is one of the core values of the Islamic legal tradition. In Muslim countries religious, constitutional, and legal frameworks obligate the state to take special measures to provide protection to women and children within families and in society. However, despite such provisions, post-divorce maintenance rights are not granted to women in Pakistan and Iran. Family law enacted in Pakistan and Iran still differs in form and substance from what has been mentioned in the primary sources of (...) Islamic law and from the previous articulations of early Islamic law scholars. Moreover, patriarchal notions of male authority are still sustained through law and judicial interpretations when it comes to the question of giving post-divorce maintenance to women. As a result in the absence of a welfare system divorced women are left in a vulnerable situation. Although in Iran, some financial compensation under the concept of Ujrat ul Misl is given to divorced women, but it remains unclear whether the right to Mata’at-ul-Talaq has been recognised under the family law. In Pakistan the law does not include any provision for giving women Ujrat ul Misl and Mata’at- ul -Talaq. Moreover in the absence of a welfare system, divorced Muslim women in both countries are left in a vulnerable situation. This article engages with plural normative sources and contemporary notions of human rights to make the case for family law reform and for awarding post-divorce maintenance rights to Muslim women in Pakistan and Iran. (shrink)

One cannot deny that, even when not explicit, ethical themes run throughout Deleuze's works. Indeed, the method of dramatization directly relates to the production of ethical forms of being. As a method of investigation – critique, if one will – dramatization offers a consistent but dynamic method for interpreting and creating concepts. At the heart of such a method is the attempt to seek the anti-anthropological, anti-hegemonic and anti-representational forces described by Friedrich Nietzsche. It is at the level of this (...) pre-individual multiplicity of forces that an axiology can be grounded. At this level, the singularity of a given object, domain or field of knowledge reveals itself. Most importantly, however, the method of dramatization resists the unethical relationship to being enacted throughout history by means of the logic of representation. (shrink)

The authors have undertaken a study to explore the views in non-Western cultures about ending the lives of newborns with genetic defects. This study consists of including active euthanasia alongside withdrawal and withholding of treatment as potential methods used.Apart from radicalising the support for active euthanasia in certain instances of neonatal diagnoses, is another interesting point that views of children and death are shaped by religion and culture and are especially highly charged with culturally specific symbolism/s. Furthermore, this is augmented (...) in the context of non-Western cultures—further polarising the positivist ethics of Western scientific medicine from the cultures that affect only those who are members of ‘other’ societies.From this starting point, the authors shift the focus from clinical explanations of the causation and prognosis of the genetic defects and enter a dialogue with cultural narratives. Consequently, their argument is, broadly, a reassessment of medical practice as a contextualisation of a particular culture/s rather than indifferent or independent from cultural forces or influences.This is a radical claim. …. (shrink)

This research focuses upon tracing the acculturative trends of the Hui Muslim community in Xi'an. It suggests that the existence of Muslims in China is a dialectical process between the adaptation to the Chinese culture and the retention of essentially Islamic religious traits. It is exclusively based upon ethnography and aims to investigate qualitatively the patterns of acculturation/retention of the Hui in the light of four socio-religious variables, i.e. identity, dietary habits, religious festivals and life passage rituals, social networking and (...) marital homogamy. This is a small scale qualitative research based on participant observation, interviews, and an analysis of historic, archival, and documentary material. The sample consists of Hui people of Xi'an both from within and outside the Muslim Quarter without any restriction of age and gender. The archival and qualitative data is derived from the iconography and fieldwork in Xi'an between November 2011 and December 2014. Applying Gans definitions of acculturation and assimilation, this paper concludes that the Hui are acculturated in the Han society but not assimilated, as they exhibit retention of ethnic religious traits. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Chapter 4, verse 34 of the Qur'an permits husbands to physically discipline recalcitrant wives. Modern Muslims who find this husbandly privilege discomfiting often rely on Muhammad's prophetic practice to mitigate the meaning of this verse. In light of Muhammad's example of never hitting his own wives, as found in one prophetic report, they reinterpret the verse as restricting and/or voiding a husband's right to physically discipline his wife. This essay provides a critical and expository survey of prophetic reports related (...) to the husbandly privilege to physically discipline wives. The essay argues that the modernists are correct in positing that Muhammad's prophetic practice was to morally censure husbands who hit their wives. However, taken as a whole, it is impossible to ignore that Muhammad's example also unilaterally upheld physical discipline as a husband's marital right. (shrink)

CONTEMPORARY MUSLIM SCHOLARS WHO SEEK TO RECONCILE GENDER egalitarian values with the premodern patriarchal Islamic tradition face a dilemma. Because the two values—gender egalitarianism and patriarchy—are fundamentally at odds with each other, scholars must choose one to privilege over the other. If the premodern Islamic tradition is privileged, then the ideal of gender egalitarianism is compromised. However, favoring gender egalitarian values at the expense of the premodern Islamic tradition leads to the loss of authority within the believing community. This essay (...) explores the options available to Muslim scholars as they negotiate the egalitarian—authoritative dilemma in the context of the Qur'anic exegesis of the husbandly privilege to discipline wives in Qur'an 4:34. (shrink)

The concept of »similarity« lies at the centre of this interview with Anil Bhatti. Distinguishing itself from a culturalistic hermeneutic of the familiar and the strange, it concentrates on the »as-well-as«, on the area »between« theories of difference and such aspects of identity. Through the notions of »translation« and »over-lapping«, of »the vague« and »the preliminary« this concept seeks to ameliorate cultural theory.

The need for new “pull” incentives to stimulate antibiotic R&D is widely recognized. Due to the global diversity of health systems, combined with different challenges faced by antibiotics used in different types of healthcare settings, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Instead, different “pull” incentives should be tailored to local contexts, priorities, and antibiotic types. Policymakers and industry should collaborate to identify appropriate solutions at the local, regional, and global levels.

Among his later works, Peter Lamborn Wilson—known to many as Hakim Bey—began performing ritual art pieces in Upstate New York, which he referred to as acts of “Endarkenment.” This paper explores Endarkenment from the beginning of its organic growth in the fertile soil of The Temporary Autonomous Zone, to its blossoming as fully‐realized ritual art, nourished by Bey's intention of returning enchantment back to the land. Through parallels in the works of antiquity, Surrealism, Georges Bataille, Giordano Bruno, Djuna Barnes, and (...) others, an adumbration of the body of Endarkenment comes into view at the very moment of its disappearance into Nature, giving an idea of what Endarkenment could be as a fully realized form of internal transformation. (shrink)

The Diagnosis Confirmation Model includes a dual-pricing mechanism designed to support value-based pricing of novel antibiotics while improving the alignment of financial incentives with their optimal use in patients at high risk of drug-resistant infections. DCM is a market-based model and complementary to delinked models. Policymakers interested in stimulating antibiotic innovation could consider tailoring the DCM to their reimbursement systems and incorporating it into the suite of incentives to improve the economics of antibiotics.

Whilst there have been serious attempts to locate the practice of male circumcision for religious motives in the context of the (respective) religion's narrative and community, the debate, when referring to a clinical context, is often more nuanced. This article will contribute further to the debate by contextualising the Islamic practice of male circumcision within the clinical setting typical of a contemporary hospital. It specifically develops an additional complication; namely, the child has a pre-existing blood disorder. As an approach to (...) contributing to the circumcision debate further, the ethics of a conscientious objection for secular motives towards a religiously-motivated clinical intervention will be explored. Overall, the discussion will provide relevance for such debates within the value-systems of a multi-cultural society. This article replicates several approaches to deconstructing a request for conscientious refusal of non-therapeutic circumcision by a Clinical Ethics Committee (CEC), bringing to light certain contradictions that occur in normatively categorizing motives for performing the circumcision. (shrink)

This narrative symposium examines the relationship of bioethics practice to personal experiences of illness. A call for stories was developed by Tod Chambers, the symposium editor, and editorial staff and was sent to several commonly used bioethics listservs and posted on the Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics website. The call asked authors to relate a personal story of being ill or caring for a person who is ill, and to describe how this affected how they think about bioethical questions and the (...) practice of medicine. Eighteen individuals were invited to submit full stories based on review of their proposals. Twelve stories are published in this symposium, and six supplemental stories are published online only through Project MUSE. Authors explore themes of vulnerability, suffering, communication, voluntariness, cultural barriers, and flaws in local healthcare systems through stories about their own illnesses or about caring for children, partners, parents and grandparents. Commentary articles by Arthur Frank, Bradley Lewis, and Carol Taylor follow the collection of personal narratives. (shrink)

This is an exploratory paper of the ethical implications for genomic research and mental illness with specific reference to Singapore. Singapore has a unique context due to its social and political systems, and although it is a relatively small country, its population is religiously and culturally diverse. The issues that we identify here, therefore, will offer new perspectives and will also shed light on the existing literature on psychiatric genomics in society. We contextualise issues such as risk and stigma in (...) the identification and diagnosis of psychosis in the way they relate to Singaporean society, and use a current study as a case example. Genomic research has the potential to change significantly he practice of clinical medicine if, as expected, fast and inexpensive sequencing becomes a reality. It will likely also change how society thinks and acts in respect to multi-factorial diseases, conditions, traits, and syndromes that have a genetic component. Genomic research already raises a number of ethical concerns relating to the privacy of individuals, including the disclosure of research results and incidental findings, surreptitious tests, third party access to data, and the re-emergence of genetic determinism. These issues are potentially exacerbated when genomics - the study of whole genomes to understand complex illness and behavioural traits - is applied to psychiatric research, because of the stigma that is often attached to mental illness. In this paper, we discuss some of the issues that have arisen in the context of a study in Singapore that is currently investigating the genomics and biomarkers of psychosis. We argue that although a genomic study rarely creates data that is directly useful to the participant, it can have incidental benefits to the individual who is identified during the study as being at high risk of developing psychosis and its related states. Understanding these potential benefits requires us to examine the implications that this type of research may have on public understandings of genomic data and risk. (shrink)

South Asian English fiction, in recent decades, has significantly manifested its deepest concern for history and its relevance in the contemporary global scenario. The last couple of years have noticed the publication of many English novels by Indian and Pakistani authors that in fact belong to the very genre of postmodern historiographic metafiction. In fact, postmodern fiction writers usually deviate from the traditional representation of past events. The current study examines the way history writing is reconfigured in the selected postmodern (...) novel. In these novels, the writers retell the traditional history through innovative narrative techniques and multiplicity of the views that de-centralize the conventional history. The present research attempts to explore Amitav Gosh’s The Glass Palace and Kamila Shamsie’s Burnt Shadows as historiographic metafiction, that is a sub-genre of postmodern fiction. The study focuses on the selected texts to explore how these novels transform the traditional history through the incorporation of magic realism, intertextuality and self-reflexivity. This research is qualitative and descriptive, while the textual analysis has been used as a research method. The theoretical concept of Linda Hutcheon is incorporated in this current study that ends with findings and recommendations for future research. (shrink)

This study examines the connections among cultural tourism, spirituality, and associated factors among religious tourists in Saudi Arabia. It focuses on how cultural tourism impacts spiritual fulfilment, considering visitors' intentions to visit religious sites, while also factoring in cultural competence and trust in tourism brands as moderators. This study involved 244 participants, who were administered self-report surveys during their visits to religious sites and cultural attractions in Saudi Arabia. Data analysis employed Stata-SEM software, utilizing structural equation modelling (SEM) to assess (...) the hypothesized relationships among the variables. The results indicate noteworthy positive associations between cultural tourism and the spiritual experiences of tourists, with mediating effects observed through their intentions to visit religious sites. Additionally, the study identified that cultural competence and trust in tourism brands exerted a moderating influence on the relationship between cultural tourism and spiritual experiences. This research contributes to the advancement of knowledge and practical applications in the realms of spirituality and cultural tourism. It substantiates the proposition that cultural tourism has the potential to influence the spiritual dimensions of visitors. The results underscore the significance of incorporating cultural and spiritual components in tourism marketing and destination management strategies. Moreover, they provide insights for destination stakeholders seeking to enhance cultural tourism initiatives, not only in Saudi Arabia but also in other contexts. (shrink)

The role of digitization and globalization have changed consumers’ online buying behaviors, specifically in the times of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. This seriously influences the online retail industry in developing countries that are already struggling to move toward digital trading through e-business. Pakistan being a developing country is no exception, and it is, therefore, pertinent to examine factors that contribute to digital trading. Employing theories of reasoned action and the technology acceptance model, this study aims to investigate how personal innovativeness (...) and perceived usefulness impact consumers’ online purchase intentions through a serial mediational model. The data were collected through an online survey from 410 respondents. Structural Equation Modeling was used to test the proposed model. This study showed significant results for the direct effect of personal innovativeness and perceived usefulness on online purchase intentions as well as the indirect serial effect via internet browsing and attitude toward online purchasing. The study results have some important practical implications for selling firms, especially in the times of COVID-19. The study suggests that online retailers should be more responsive to the aforementioned factors to facilitate consumers to spend more time browsing, which influences consumers’ interest and intention to make online purchases. As the social distancing and lockdown approaches were implemented in Pakistan and other parts of the world, the trend toward online purchases has increased. Due to this shift in the overall purchasing behavior of consumers and the potential for strong growth in e-commerce, organizations need to consider the post-COVID situation to expand their business in an online platform for addressing the future pandemic crisis. (shrink)