Goddess traditions have much to contribute to reflections on the feminine in Imago Dei. Christian theologians and scholars have found goddess traditions in Hinduism as a source of enrichment for Christian theology. Using the Yogini Tantra, a seventeenth-century Tāntric text from India, I argue that the role of Kālï in the Tāntric Trinity and the conceptualization of Kālï-ness as explicated in Hindu Tantra helps us reconsider the role of the feminine in the Christian conception of the trinitarian Godhead and Imago (...) Dei. Kālï-ness offers the feminist scholar of theology a way of doing “thealogy.” Reflecting on the pneumatological dimension of the Tāntric trinitarian godhead and the role of Kālï as pneuma manifesting within and outside of the Godhead helps us reflect on the theological understandings of the Christian trinitarian godhead. I explore the kind of possibilities that such a comparison opens us up to in interreligious learning. (shrink)

Hinduizm’de ibadet genellikle bireysel bir şekilde gerçekleştirilmekle birlikte topluca uygulanan biçimleri de bulunmaktadır. Yıllık festivaller toplu ibadetlerin en belirgin örnekleridir. Dini ve kültürel yaşamın önemli bir parçasını oluşturan bu festivallerin her biri farklı tanrılarla yahut tanrıçalarla ve mitolojik olaylarla ilişkilidir. Hindu festivalleri ritüelleri, duaları, dansları, festivalle ilişkili heykellerin yapılmasını, kutlamanın konusuyla ilgili olayların sergilendiği çadırların hazırlanmasını ve birlikte yenilen yemekleri içerir. Birlik ve beraberlik içinde kutlanan festivaller bir yandan tapınılan tanrıya, tanrıçaya bağlılığı kuvvetlendirirken diğer yandan toplumsal birliği pekiştirir. Hinduizm’deki festivallerin (...) kutlama biçimleri bölgeden bölgeye değişiklik gösterdiği gibi dini geleneklere göre de farklılıklar ihtiva eder. Çalışmamızın konusu olan Durgā Pūcā ve Kālī Pūcā festivalleri tüm Hindular tarafından kutlanan önemli bir festivaldir. Tanrıçaya adanan bu festivallerden Durgā Pūcā tüm Hindistan’da Kālī Pūcā ise Batı Bengal, Assam, Odişa/Orissa ve Tripura gibi doğu Hindistan bölgelerinde kutlanır. Makale Durgā Pūcā ve Kālī Pūcā festivallerini ve bu festivallerde yer alan tantracı unsurları incelemeyi amaçlar. İnceleme konusu olarak bu iki festivalin seçilmesinin sebebi genel olarak Hinduizm’deki temel kutlama şekillerini devam ettirmekle beraber tanrıçaya tapımın ve hayvan kurbanının festivalin merkezinde yer almasıdır. Makalede Durgā Pūcā ve Kālī Pūcā festivallerinden söz edildikten sonra Tantracılığın ne zaman ve nerede ortaya çıktığından ve tantracı unsurlardan bahsedilecektir. Durgā Pūcā ve Kālī Pūcā festivallerinde tantracı unsurların nasıl yer aldığı ve bu unsurların dini açıdan ne anlama geldiği üzerinde durulacaktır. Bu bağlamda tanrıçaya tapım ve hayvan kurbanının bu festivallerin merkezinde yer alması tantracı düşüncenin etkisini anlamak açısından önemlidir. Zira Tantracılık yüce varlık anlayışında şaktiye önem verir ve onun tezahürleri olarak görülen tanrıçayı merkeze koyar, geleneksel Hindu düşüncesinin kabul etmediği ibadetleri kabul eder ve uygular. Zaman içerisinde bu ibadetler belirli gruplar tarafından devam ettirilmekle birlikte bazı ibadetlerin ve festivallerin kutlanış biçimlerinde kendini gösterir. Çalışmada dinler tarihinin betimleyici yöntemi kullanılarak festivaller, kavramlar ve fenomenler tanımlanmaya çalışılmıştır. Din fenomenolojisi metodundan faydalanarak Durgā Pūcā ve Kālī Pūcā festivallerinde gerçekleştirilen ritüellerin incelemesi yapılmıştır. Kavramların Türkçe’ye doğru ve eksiksiz bir şekilde aktarılabilmesi için Türkçe’de karşılığı olan harflerin yanında Hint hükümeti tarafından kabul edilen ISO 15019 çeviri yazım tablosu kullanılmıştır. (shrink)

Markomanske vojne so bile največji in najobsežnejši oboroženi spo­pad rimske vojske in barbarskih plemen ob osrednjem Podonavju – Markomanov, Kvadov in Sarmatov skupaj s še drugimi plemeni. Vojne z germanskimi plemeni so svoje prve kali kazale že v obdobju Antonina Pija, miroljubnega predhodnika Marka Avrelija, ki je težnje uzurpatorjev skrbno umirjal s konsistentnim pacifizmom. V Panonijo so prihajala poslanstva germanskih kraljevin izza Donave, ki so vznemirjala z vestmi o premikih barbarskih ljudstev s severa. Trgovanje barbarskih ljudstev z rimskimi državljani (...) na mejah rimske države in migracije v germanskem bazenu plemen so v pasu ob limesu predstavljali težnje le-teh po dodatnem habitatu znotraj imperija. Apijan piše, da so poslanstva teh plemen prišla celo v Rim k cesarju Antoninu Piju in ga prosila za sprejem v imperij. Kontinuirani pritiski so eskalirali najverjetneje v l. 166, ko je bil velik del rimske garnizije stacioniran na vzhodni meji v boju s Parti. Limes je bil v tem obdobju slabo zavarovan, saj so bile čete legij, stacioniranih od Rena do Donave, poslane na fronto s Parti. Kljub prizadevanju cesarskih namestnikov v obeh Panonijah, da bi preprečili izbruh vojne na utrjeni državni meji z Donavo, je barbarom uspel preboj čez limes in posledično prodor vse do Akvileje in Opitergija. Boleča zavest o ranljivosti Italije, ki jo je avgustejski mir (Pax Romana) uspaval za več rodov, je prinesla nagel zasuk v obrambi. Pričujoče besedilo pretresa dva glavna vira za dogodke med germansko-sarmatsko vojno in postavlja vprašanja o odsotnosti omemb pomembnega obrambnega sistema, t.i. »Pre­tenture Italije in Alp«. (shrink)

This essay explores a problem for Nyāya epistemologists. It concerns the notion of pramā. Roughly speaking, a pramā is a conscious mental event of knowledge-acquisition, i.e., a conscious experience or thought in undergoing which an agent learns or comes to know something. Call any event of this sort a knowledge-event. The problem is this. On the one hand, many Naiyāyikas accept what I will call the Nyāya Definition of Knowledge, the view that a conscious experience or thought is a knowledge-event (...) just in case it is true and non-recollective. On the other hand, they are also committed to what I shall call Nyāya Infallibilism, the thesis that every knowledge-event is produced by causes that couldn’t have given rise to an error. These two commitments seem to conflict with each other in cases of epistemic luck, i.e., cases where an agent arrives a true judgement accidentally or as a matter of luck. While the Nyāya Definition of Knowledge seems to predict that these judgements are knowledge-events, Nyāya Infallibilism seems to entail that they aren’t. In this essay, I show that Gaṅgeśa Upādhyāya, the 14th century Naiyāyika, solves this problem by adopting what I call epistemic localism, the view that upstream causal factors play no epistemically significant role in the production of knowledge. (shrink)

We read with interest Dominic Wilkinson’s article “Frailty Triage: Is Rationing Intensive Medical Treatment on the Grounds of Frailty Ethical?” on the utility of the Clinical Frailty Score in...

We are told that some of the most important points discussed at the recent conference of East-West philosophers were the following.

section 1. Reason, language, and the self -- section 2. Law, emergency, and exception -- section 3. Terrorism as a paradigm of (in)security -- section 4. Terrorism and the crisis of the political.

Philosophical thinking, as it is thinking of existence, is essentially finite thinking. This is to say that as thinking of existence, philosophical thinking is essentially also thinking of finitude. This ‘also' is not the accidental relationship between existence and finitude. Rather, to think existence in its finitude, insofar as existence is finite, is to think existence in its existentiality. Philosophy that gives itself the task of thinking the relationship between existence and finitude, must in the same gesture, be concerned with (...) its own finitude: to philosophize is not only to think the finitude of existence, but the very finitude of thinking that thinks finite existence. To philosophize is not only to philosophize the finitude of existence as such, but also in so far as philosophising itself is a task which is essentially in itself finite. To assume as the task of thinking the finitude of existence is to think the very finitude of philosophical thinking: this is the profound relationship that exists between existence and philosophy, which is that philosophizing existence and an existential philosophy are essentially finite. This is perhaps what Socrates says of philosophizing: ‘to philosophize is to learn how to die.' "To philosophize is to learn how to die": this is to say, to philosophize is to learn that philosophy and existence are essentially finite. Philosophy and existence belong to finitude and gifts of finitude; therefore to philosophize is to learn how existence is this gift. To be able to learn how existence is this gift of finitude, to be able to assume this gift that makes existence essentially finite, which is to be able to assume existence at all, is to be able to die.' Learning to die' then comes to signify the ability of dying, which is in the same gesture, the ability of existing: existence, and dying at the end must be this ability, of existing and dying. Philosophizing must provide, then, the learning of this ability: to be capable of death and existence. To be capable of death is to master it, to be equal to it, to surpass or transcend it and to be immortal. There seems to be a paradox here which we must bring to thought. If to philosophize is to learn how to die, to be equal to or master death, it thereby means to be immortal, to be able not to die, to be capable of immortality; by learning to die, by learning to be capable of death, we become capable of not-dying, or of immortality. To learn to die is to learn how not to die. (shrink)

Views of western ethicists on conduct of life by human beings and existential ethics; contributed articles translated from various western languages.

Sejak 2001 Collége de France, lembaga pendidikan tinggi Prancis paling bergengsi yang berisi para filsuf dan pemikir terkenal dari berbagai bidang, menginisiasi munculnya sebuah fakultas baru. Modern and Contemporary History of the Political adalah nama fakultas baru tersebut. Pierre Rossanvallon, seorang ahli filsafat politik dan penulis buku yang produktif, didaulat sebagai Guru Besar untuk yang pertama kali dan masih menjabat hingga saat ini. Nama fakultas tersebut rupanya sejalan dengan perkembangan termutakhir dalam kajian filsafat politik, yaitu penelaahan kembali asas-asas politik (...) demokratis dalam masyarakat yang heterogen dan plural, bangsa-bangsa yang semakin melintas batas, negara yang tidak lagi digerakkan oleh ideologi-ideologi besar, dunia yang semakin terhubung, serta kecenderungan konflik yang semakin acak menyebar. Perkembangan dalam kajian filsafat politik ini sebenarnya bukan sesuatu yang baru sebab telah dimulai sejak periode 1980-an oleh beberapa tokoh kunci dalam filsafat politik, seperti Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Claude Lefort, dan Leo Strauss. Pada umumnya, para ahli filsafat politik tersebut menghidupkan kembali pemikiran Carl Schmitt, seorang pakar hukum dan ahli politik di Republik Weimar, Jerman mengenai Das Politische (Yang Politis/The Political) sebagai dasar penggerak politik yang selalu konfrontatif, konfliktual, agonistik, dan senantiasa mengelak dari prosedur-prosedur rasional demokratis. Pierre Rosanvallon berada di dalam satu barisan para pemikir kontemporer tersebut, barisan yang kini dikenal dengan nama para pemikir post-foundational. Sebelum menerbitkan buku Democratic Legitimacy, Rosanvallon telah menerbitkan beberapa karya monumental dan telah diterjemahkan ke dalam berbagai bahasa, seperti L’âge de l’autogestion (1976), Le capitalisme utopique (1979), Le nouvel âge des inégalités (1996), dan La contre-democratie (2006). Buku Democratic Legitimacy: Impartiality, Reflexivity, Proximity, merupakan kelanjutan dari karya-karya awalnya sekaligus pendalaman dari buku terakhirnya Counter-Democracy: Politics in an Age of Distrust (2008)...... Sebagai sebuah karya filsafat politik, Democratic Legitimacy memiliki tujuan praktis yang dirumuskan secara jelas. Maka buku ini juga memuat beberapa kemungkinan solusi dan resolusi atas kontradiksi-kontradiksi internal demokrasi seperti misalnya re-institusionalisasi lembaga-lembaga demokrasi. Untuk Indonesia yang sedang bergumul dengan demokrasi, sistem kepartaian, otonomi daerah, serta munculnya persoalan-persoalan seperti fundamentalisme agama, korupsi, inefisiensi birokrasi, dan sebagainya, buku Democratic Legitimacy merupakan buku yang wajib dibaca oleh para ahli filsafat, para politisi, para penasihat penguasa, dan penyelenggara negara serta pengambil kebijakan. Democratic Legitimacy mampu menjelaskan dengan kalem berbagai persoalan yang acapkali dipeributkan dalam politik nasional/lokal kita, sekaligus memberikan kerangka pemahaman yang solid dan jelas mengenai arah demokrasi untuk 50 tahun ke depan. (Ito Prajna-Nugroho, Alumnus Program Sarjana dan Pascasarjana STF Driyarkara, Jakarta). (shrink)

In this article, I cast doubt on an apparent truism, namely, that if evidence is available for gathering and use at a negligible cost, then it’s always instrumentally rational for us to gather that evidence and use it for making decisions. Call this ‘value of information’ (VOI). I show that VOI conflicts with two other plausible theses. The first is the view that an agent’s evidence can entail non-trivial propositions about the external world. The second is the view that epistemic (...) rationality requires us to update our credences by conditionalization. These two theses, given some plausible assumptions, make room for rationally biased inquiries where VOI fails. I go on to argue that this is bad news for defenders of VOI. (shrink)

BackgroundThe expectation of pandemic-induced severe resource shortages has prompted authorities to draft and update frameworks to guide clinical decision-making and patient triage. While these documents differ in scope, they share a utilitarian focus on the maximization of benefit. This utilitarian view necessarily marginalizes certain groups, in particular individuals with increased medical needs.Main bodyHere, we posit that engagement with the disability critique demands that we broaden our understandings of justice and fairness in clinical decision-making and patient triage. We propose the capabilities (...) theory, which recognizes that justice requires a range of positive capabilities/freedoms conducive to the achievement of meaningful life goals, as a means to do so. Informed by a disability rights critique of the clinical response to the pandemic, we offer direction for the construction of future clinical triage protocols which will avoid ableist biases by incorporating a broader apprehension of what it means to be human.ConclusionThe clinical pandemic response, codified across triage protocols, should embrace a form of justice which incorporates a vision of pluralistic human capabilities and a valuing of positive freedoms. (shrink)

Textures of the Ordinary shows how anthropology finds a companionship with philosophy in the exploration of everyday life. Based on two decades of ethnographic work among low-income urban families in India, Das shows how the notion of texture aligns ethnography with the anthropological tone in Wittgenstein and Cavell, as well as in literary texts. The book shows different routes of return to the everyday as it is corroded not only by catastrophic events but also by repetitive and routine violence within (...) everyday life itself. As an alternative to normative ethics, this book develops ordinary ethics as attentiveness to the other and as the ability of small acts of care to stand up to horrific violence. Textures of the Ordinary offers a model of thinking in which concepts and experience are shown to be mutually vulnerable. The book is an intellectually intimate invitation into the ordinary, that which is most simple yet most difficult to perceive in our lives. (shrink)

Extant scholarship on Hindu war ethics uses the term dharma yuddha as a synonym of the term, just war, as conceptualized within Christian theo-ethical frameworks developed primarily in the Western academy. Dharma in the term dharma yuddha is presented as equivalent to the term just in just war, and an antonym of adharma or kuta, i.e., unjust. I track the documentary origins of the term dharma yuddha by surveying the usage of this and similar terms in ancient Hindu sources, including (...) the Mahabharata, the Arthashastra, and selected Dharmasastras. I find that the usage of the term dharma yuddha in primary Hindu sources is markedly different from how it is used in contemporary scholarship: the texts mention a range of types of war that are closely related to, but not the same as, the concept of dharma yuddha; this taxonomical richness and complexity is not captured by a binary analytical framework of just versus unjust. In addition, the relationship between dharma and war remains under-explored and merits a more nuanced study than a one-to-one comparison with Christian just war ethics. I, hence, offer a taxonomical model for dharma yuddha, which places it as part of the yuddha family; the model presents attributes of dharma yuddha that are necessary and/or sufficient and which bear conceptual similarities with attributes of other members in the yuddha family. The model presents these attributes in a hierarchical fashion as is reflected in the texts surveyed. The paper makes two types of contributions: firstly, theoretically, it fills a lacuna in the scholarship on Hindu war ethics by presenting a taxonomical and constructive framework to study war that draws from a systematic survey of wars as presented in the Hindu canon; secondly, methodologically, it seeks to decolonize studies on Hindu ethics by studying the texts on their own terms, as opposed to seeing them through the eyes of Christian and, primarily, Western, analytical categories of war. (shrink)

This article tries to understand the role of marriage in the religious lives of women during early Buddhism through the narrative of a relatively understudied text, Pāli Vimānavatthu. Marriage played a significant role in the lives of Buddhist laywomen as opposed to laymen since greater emphasis was placed on the third lay precept—prohibiting sexual misconduct—and the Buddhist ideology of patibbatā. However, complications arose when the ideal wives—in whose lives domesticity and family issues played an important role—were placed in problematic marital (...) situations. This article explores three such situations: the difficulties of marrying into a non-Buddhist family; the difficulties of being falsely accused of adultery; and the difficulties posed to merit-making by the state of pregnancy. In addition to all of the ordinary virtues that allowed a layperson to acquire merit, being an ideal wife and successfully resolving marital problems constituted a special category of merit-making virtue for Buddhist women. At the same time, whilst merit could be helpful to a woman in resolving marital difficulties, her commitment to Buddhism was finally meant to take precedence over any marital difficulties she might have. (shrink)

This paper exploits the fact that the variability in the inter-spike intervals, in the spike train issuing from a neuron, carries substantial information regarding the input to the neuron. A framework for neuronal information processing is proposed which utilizes the above fact to distinguish phenomenal from non-phenomenal mental representation. In the process, an explanation is offered as to what is it, in the nature of conscious mental states, that imparts them a subjective feeling – there is something it is like (...) to be in those mental states. To give empirical support, it is shown how the proposed framework can neatly explain, the delay in eliciting conscious awareness as observed by Libet and the related backwards referral in time. (shrink)

It is widely supposed that evolutionary debunking arguments against morality constitute a type of epistemological objection to our moral beliefs. In particular, the debunking force of such arguments is not supposed to depend on the metaphysical claim that moral facts do not exist. In this paper I argue that this standard epistemological construal of EDAs is highly misleading, if not mistaken. Specifically, I argue that the most widely discussed EDAs all make key and controversial metaphysical claims about the nature of (...) morality or the possibility of moral truth that belie their apparently epistemological character. I show that the debunking force of these EDAs derives largely from metaphysical claims about morality and their implications for the possibility of moral reduction, rather than from epistemological worries associated with the existence of an causal/non-moral explanation of our moral judgments. The paper briefly concludes with a dilemma that I believe confronts all EDAs such as those discussed in this paper: either such arguments are unsound, or else they prove too much, debunking our knowledge of science and the external world, as well as morality. (shrink)

A ‘companions in guilt’ strategy against moral error theory aims to show that the latter proves too much: if sound, it supports an implausible error-theoretic conclusion in other areas such as epistemic or practical reasoning. Christopher Cowie [2016 Cowie, C. 2016. Good News for Moral Error Theorists: A Master Argument Against Companions in Guilt Strategies, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 94/1: 115–30.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] [Google Scholar]] has recently produced what he claims is a ‘master argument’ against (...) all such strategies. The essence of his argument is that CG arguments cannot work because they are afflicted by internal incoherence or inconsistency. I argue, first, that Cowie's master argument does not succeed. Beyond this, I argue that there is no good reason to think that any such argument—one that purports to identify an internal incoherence in CG arguments—can succeed. Second, I argue that the main substantive area of disagreement between error theorists and CG theorists essentially concerns the conceptual profile of epistemic reasons—specifically, whether they are strongly categorical—not the ontological question of whether such reasons exist. I then develop an argument in favour of the CG theorist's position by considering the moral error theorist's arguments in support of the conceptual claim that moral reasons are strongly categorical. These include, notably, criticisms made by Joyce [2011] and Olson [2014] of Finlay's [2008] ‘end relational’ view of morality, according to which moral reasons are relative to some end or standard, hence not strongly categorical. Examining these criticisms, I argue that, based on what moral error theorists have said regarding the conceptual profile of moral reasons, there is a strong case to be made that moral reasons are strongly categorical if and only if epistemic reasons are. (shrink)

Recently, several epistemologists have defended an attractive principle of epistemic rationality, which we shall call Ur-Prior Conditionalization. In this essay, I ask whether we can justify this principle by appealing to the epistemic goal of accuracy. I argue that any such accuracy-based argument will be in tension with Evidence Externalism, i.e., the view that agent's evidence may entail non-trivial propositions about the external world. This is because any such argument will crucially require the assumption that, independently of all empirical evidence, (...) it is rational for an agent to be certain that her evidence will always include truths, and that she will always have perfect introspective access to her own evidence. This assumption is in tension with Evidence Externalism. I go on to suggest that even if we don't accept Evidence Externalism, the prospects for any accuracy-based justification for Ur-Prior Conditionalization are bleak. (shrink)

This paper is about a tension between two theses. The first is Value of Evidence: roughly, the thesis that it is always rational for an agent to gather and use cost‐free evidence for making decisions. The second is Rationality of Imprecision: the thesis that an agent can be rationally required to adopt doxastic states that are imprecise, i.e., not representable by a single credence function. While others have noticed this tension, I offer a new diagnosis of it. I show that (...) it arises when an agent with an imprecise doxastic state engages in an unreflective inquiry, an inquiry where they revise their beliefs using an updating rule that doesn't satisfy a weak reflection principle. In such an unreflective inquiry, certain synchronic norms of instrumental rationality can make it instrumentally irrational for an agent to gather and use cost‐free evidence. I then go on to propose a diachronic norm of instrumental rationality that preserves Value of Evidence in unreflective inquiries. This, I suggest, may help us reconcile this thesis with Rationality of Imprecision. (shrink)

Book Information World Poverty and Human Rights. World Poverty and Human Rights Thomas Pogge Cambridge Polity Press 2002 vii + 284 Paperback US$28, £18 By Thomas Pogge. Polity Press. Cambridge. Pp. vii + 284. Paperback:US$28, £18.

An important question in epistemology is whether the KK principle is true, i.e., whether an agent who knows that p is also thereby in a position to know that she knows that p. We explain how a “transparency” account of self-knowledge, which maintains that we learn about our attitudes towards a proposition by reflecting not on ourselves but rather on that very proposition, supports an affirmative answer. In particular, we show that such an account allows us to reconcile a version (...) of the KK principle with an “externalist” or “reliabilist” conception of knowledge commonly thought to make that principle particularly problematic. (shrink)

According to Bayesian orthodoxy, an agent should update---or at least should plan to update---her credences by conditionalization. Some have defended this claim by means of a diachronic Dutch book argument. They say: an agent who does not plan to update her credences by conditionalization is vulnerable (by her own lights) to a diachronic Dutch book, i.e., a sequence of bets which, when accepted, guarantee loss of utility. Here, I show that this argument is in tension with evidence externalism, i.e., the (...) view that an agent's evidence can entail non-trivial propositions about the external world. I argue that this tension casts doubt on the idea that diachronic Dutch books can be used to justify or vindicate updating plans. (shrink)

Literary renditions of cities have always gravitated towards the spatial imagination and its ethical counterpart outside the textual space. This paper explores the multicultural geography of the North Indian city Allahabad observed through Neelum Saran Gour’s postcolonial narratives Allahabad Aria and Invisible Ink, projecting the narrative alignment of spatial aesthetics and cultural ethics. Interrogating the spatial dimensions of a “narrative world” within narrative theory and its interdisciplinary crossover with cultural geography, the article seeks to examine Gour’s literary city not simply (...) as an objective homogeneous representation, but as a “kshetra” of spatio-cultural cosmos of lived traditions, memories, experiences and collective attitudes of its people, in the context of E. V. Ramakrishnan’s theoretical reflections. The article proposes new possibilities of adapting the Indian concept “kshetra” to spatial literary studies; its aim is also to suggest a new source of knowledge about the city of Allahabad through a community introspection of “doing culture” in the texts, bringing into view people’s shared experiences, beliefs, religious practices and traditions as offshoots of the postcolonial ethos. The article aims to re-contextualize the city’s longstanding multicultural ethics in the contemporary times of crisis, which may affect a shift in the city’s relevance: from regional concern to large-scale significance within ethnically diverse South Asian countries and beyond. (shrink)

With regards to ecology, there has been a constant struggle between the scientific perspective and the philosophical approaches. This commentary dwells on the nature and structure of voices emerging from feminist environmentalists. Analogous to the feminist understanding that environmental degradation is a symbol of masculine domination leading to the suppression of the feminine, this paper tries to excavate the nature of a feminist perspective to environmental ethics.

This article examines the relationship between gender, nations and nationalisms vis-a-vis the Indian state's nationalist identity and perceptions of security. It explores how the postcolonial Indian state's project of nation-building — reflective of a western secular-modern identity and a Hindutva-dominated identity — incorporates gender, with continuities and discontinuities, to articulate divergent forms of nationalist/communalist identities, `cartographic anxieties' and nuclear securities. The article contends that with the recent rise of the Hindu-Right BJP, guided by Hindutva ideology, the nature of representing the (...) Indian nation, its women and securities has changed from a geopolitical to a cultural perception — thereby necessitating a rereading of the Indian nation, nationalism, gender and its perceptions of security. (shrink)

In 2016, summarily outlawing all chemical inputs, the Indian state of Sikkim transitioned to completely organic agriculture. Despite “organic discontents” of farmers and citizens about autocratic implementation, lowered yields, and unsatisfactory prices, “Sikkim Organic” enjoys global accolades and local compliance. The paradox of alternative agriculture in the Global South is that it is often promoted by the same state-science-capital hegemonic formation that pushed the conventional paradigm. How has the Sikkimese state negotiated this paradox and continued to claim success, when other (...) radical state-led organic transformations have failed? Recent scholarship advocates for contextual definitions of organic success, beyond the parameters of yield and profit. They examine the socio-political concerns of farmers, middlemen and consumers that shape their engagement with the phenomenon. This lens is seldom applied to the state. Drawing on ethnographic conversations with farmers, local consumers, state officials and discourse analysis of governmental literature and speeches, this article analyzes the Sikkimese state’s efforts at consolidating its hegemony as a process of political brand-building. Highlighting the cultural aspects of policy implementation, it analyzes the affective resonances about traditional agrarian practices and about the morality of organic markets that the state discursively creates to support its organic regime. This extends the critique of the state beyond the focus on governmentality and neoliberalization through state-led certification/standardization. The article neither absolves the state of its failures nor dismisses the potential of progressive organic policies. It shows the significance of contextual cultural-political framings in determining outcomes of large-scale experiments towards sustainable agrarian futures. (shrink)

The use of single-use items is now ubiquitous in medical practice. Because of the high costs of these items, the practice of reusing them after sterilisation is also widespread especially in resource-poor economies. However, the ethics of reusing disposable items remain unclear. There are several analogous conditions, which could shed light on the ethics of reuse of disposables. These include the use of restored kidney transplantation and the use of generic drugs etc. The ethical issues include the question of patient (...) safety and the possibility of infection. It is also important to understand the role of informed consent before reuse of disposables. The widespread practice of reuse may bring down high healthcare costs and also reduce the huge amount of hospital waste that is generated. The reuse of disposables can be justified on various grounds including the safety and the cost effectiveness of this practice. (shrink)