Malnutrition among children is prevalent in almost all the states in India. This study assesses the extent and causes of malnutrition in two eastern Indian states with similar climates, namely West Bengal and Assam, using data from the National Family Health Survey 1998s educational status, working status of the mother, mother’s age at delivery of the children, source of drinking water, toilet facilities and standard of living of the household. Logistic regression was carried out separately for each of (...) the three indices on the explanatory variables for both the states. It was found that not all variables are equally important in determining whether a baby is underweight, or suffering from acute or chronic malnutrition. Also, the importance of variables is not the same in the two states. It was observed that the coefficients associated with the variables in determining weight-for-height are not significant compared with those for weight-for-age and height-for-age. (shrink)

This paper examines the case of a recent H5N1virus (avian influenza) outbreak in West Bengal, an eastern state of India, and argues that poorly executed pandemic management may be viewed as a moral lapse. It further argues that pandemic management initiatives are intimately related to the concept of health as a social 'good' and to the moral responsibility of protection from foreseeable social harm from an infectious disease. The initiatives, therefore, have to be guided by special moral obligations (...) towards biorisk reduction, obligations which remain unfulfilled when a public body entrusted with the responsibility fails to manage satisfactorily the prevention and control of the infection. The overall conclusion is that pandemic management has a moral dimension. The gravity of the threat that fatal infectious diseases pose for public health creates special moral obligations for public bodies in pandemic situations. However, the paper views the West Bengal case as a learning opportunity, and considers the lapses cited as challenges that better, more effectively conducted pandemic management can prepare for. It is hoped that this paper will provoke constructive bioethical deliberations, particularly pertinent to the developing world, on how to ensure that the obligations towards health are fulfilled ethically and more effectively. (shrink)

Globalization of the Indian economy has dramatically influenced social life in India. The expansion of the middle class is said to have occurred as a consequence of this process. Based on ethnographic research among lower-middle-class families in West Bengal, India, the author examines the apparent paradox between women's positive perceptions of empowerment and the overall negative impact of structural adjustment policies on women. Many scholars argue that globalization has been detrimental to women due to growing structural gender inequalities, (...) but many respondents identify greater opportunities to challenge preexisting patriarchal norms through the role models available in the globalized media. While there are increasing inequalities for households, women do not consider these to be gender disadvantages, emphasizing instead the opportunities for greater independence. The author pays particular attention to the confluence of the prowomen consumer discourses of the global market with earlier developmentalist notions of the public role of women. (shrink)

Many recent studies of technological change have focussed on the implementation of computer-based high technology systems. The research described here deals with the introduction of a new but ‘low’ technology into an ancient craft tradition in India. The paper describes a project to capture and archive aspects of the tacit knowledge content of the traditional cire perdue brass foundry (Dhokra) craft of Bikna village, near Bankura, West Bengal. The research involved collaboration between the Indian National Institute for Science, (...) Technology and Development Studies (NISTADS) and School of Art, Media and Design, University of Wales, Newport, UK in the context of the EU-India Cross-Cultural Innovation Network Project. NISTADS were proposing to introduce a new fuel-efficient furnace technology in place of the traditional form used in Bikna. It was expected that the introduction of the new furnace would catalyse major changes in the entire dhokra craft at Bikna. What was not anticipated, however, was the speed and extent of this change, to the extent that the old traditional way of doing things was changed within the space of a few months. A Multimedia record of the craft and the process was developed. These technologies make it possible to develop adequate representations of skilled performance mediated by the craftsman him- or herself. Particularly valuable in this respect is the capacity of multimedia systems to use a full range of modalities of description, including video, sound, still image, conventional text and technical diagrams. This enables the presentation of very complex information in a variety of formats and contexts. The context and process of developing this knowledge archive are described. (shrink)

This essay argues that important development and natural resource management initiatives that seek to expand meaningful participation by rural communities directly affected by such ventures can be usefully examined as democratic technologies. Drawing upon nearly two decades of experience designing, implementing, and researching forest co-management programs in India, the essay examines the analogous practices through which democracy and forest management science become contested regulatory ideals while creating the deliberative spaces in which post-Habermasian public spheres can be constructed. The analysis of (...) disciplinary tendencies, bureaucratic transition, and emerging solidarities among historically marginalised groups responding to the performance of democracy and scientific forest management is used to offer revisions to the more sweeping critiques of technology as fundamentally anti-democratic. (shrink)

The incident of 1971 is a historical concern. Both wings of Pakistan were united at the time of the creation of Pakistan but some policies that were adopted after the creation of Pakistan were inadequate to resolve the growing differences between the both wings. Writers are divided regarding the causes of the Fall of Dhaka. Indian involvement has been highlighted frequently and it is also said that East Bengal was on the distance of 1000 km from West Pakistan. (...) Apart from these causes, this study will highlight a new perspective regarding the separation of East Bengal. From 1947 to 1971 the central governments of Pakistan took some measure regarding formulating policies and the policies were not sufficient to bring people of the both wings closer. Thus, the major policies and their consequences would be analysed in this paper. Further, this research would be a new one in a sense that there would be a general description of the policies from both wings. (shrink)

Buddhism was not really known in the West until a little more than 150 years ago. Although since the thirteenth century there had been numerous contacts with local Buddhist traditions, the travellers and missionaries of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance had not yet brought to light the history of Buddhism and its unity across this immense diversity of worship and doctrine, disseminated through most of the countries of Asia. Of course, since the seventeenth century some Europeans had guessed (...) at the Indian origin of the Buddha and they succeeded in pinning down his historical existence after a fashion. In 1691 and 1693 Simon de la Loubère, Louis XIV's envoy at the court of the king of Siam, published remarkable research which established the possibility of a link between the different regions of Siam, Ceylon, Japan and China and conjured up the possible existence of a single founder long before Christ. But this far too isolated knowledge had scarcely any impact in Europe. It was only with the foundation of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784 that orientalism was to enjoy a rapid and decisive expansion. The word ‘Buddhism’ appeared from the 1820s onwards, and with it the first conceptualization of a tree with many branchings. But it was not until the publication, in 1844, of Eugène Burnouf's magisterial Introduction l'histoire du buddhisme indien, that more detailed knowledge became available, thanks to a critical scrutiny of the most varied sources. The works of the French scholar and of other pioneers in Buddhist studies - mainly Alexander Csoma de Koros and Edmond Foucaux on Tibet, Jean-Pierre Abel-Remusat and Stanislas Julien on China, Christian Lassen and Spence Hardy on Ceylon - were to give rise to a tremendous craze for Buddhism in Europe. Since then there has been no break in the successive waves disseminating it right up to the present day, when the majority of Western countries appear to be so receptive to the message of the Buddha that for some years the media have been insistently questioning the reasons for this ‘Buddhist wave’. (shrink)

Papers presented at the National Seminar on Language, Interpretation and Understanding: Hermeneutics from East-West Perspective, held in 2005 at the University of North Bengal in India.

The economic impacts of the Green Revolution have been studied widely, but not its social-cultural effects on different farming communities. The adoption of high yielding varieties (HYVs) of rice changed the nature of rice farming in the two West Bengal villages of Padulara and Naigachi. The villages present an interesting contrast of socio-economic and cultural change due to the differences in the level of adoption of agricultural technologies. This study documents the social and cultural impacts of agricultural technology (...) adoption, specifically the effect on rituals which guided the stages of traditional rice farming and communal life. Agricultural rituals are being modified to suit the processes of modern rice farming, while family rituals are holding strong. The study also shows the evolving nature of rituals as it reflects new found wealth, gender roles, and economic class in these villages. (shrink)

The article explores the digital innovations that are being used in a folk performance in West Bengal, namely the Chhau dance. The COVID-19 pandemic foregrounded the relevance of digital space across disciplines. Being an expression of the collective experience of the people of the Purulia district, Chhau dance is commonly associated with fostering and perpetuating folk and mythical beliefs through its extensive use of masks and dance movements steered by the Jhumur songs. While the common urge to archive (...) the traditional dance-drama form in its ‘authentic’ essence precipitates a digital turn within the performance, the digital contact paradoxically reorients the ‘authentic’ identity of this cultural practice. The present study seeks to use the ‘identity–authenticity’ interplay in the context of globalization as the crux of the article. Within this framework, the article analyses how a folk cultural practice like Chhau dance, with its recent innovations in masks and performances mandated by the pandemic, problematizes the debate. It further strives to recognize the implications of the digital presence of the performances as well as the performers, which, for many of the traditionalists, might have jeopardized the ritualistic practices that were considered the ‘essence’ of the performance. The research was conducted through ethnographic methods gathered through fieldwork to gain first-hand knowledge of the ground reality. (shrink)

This is a non-philosophical essay. Its value lies in highlighting the selfless work done by the Christian Brothers in the early 1990s in Calcutta/Kolkata. This essay should be read against the backdrop of the scandal which continues to haunt the Brothers globally. If we allow ourselves to forget the Brothers during that time at Calcutta, we fail to map the intellectual and interior lives they successfully created in Calcutta in their communities when there were no mobiles or the internet in (...) West Bengal. Through their lives they resisted the paralyzing effects of materialism in the last century. (shrink)

The concept of ‘human dignity’ sits at the heart of international human rights law and a growing number of national constitutions and yet its meaning is heavily contested and contingent. I aim to supplement the theoretical literature on dignity by providing an empirical study of how the concept is used in the specific context of legal discourse on sex work. I will analyse jurisprudence in which commercial sex was declared as incompatible with human dignity, focussing on the South African Constitutional (...) Court case of S v Jordan and the Indian Supreme Court case of Budhadev Karmaskar v State of West Bengal. I will consider how these courts conceptualise dignity and argue that their conclusions on the undignified nature of sex work are predicated on particular sexual norms that privilege emotional and relational intimacy. In light of the stigma faced by sex workers I will explore how a discourse, proclaiming sex work as beneath human dignity, may impact on the way that sex workers are perceived and represented culturally, arguing that it reinforces stigma. I will go on to examine how sex workers subvert the notion that commercial sex is undignified, and resist stigma, by campaigning for the right to sell sex with dignity. I will demonstrate that an alternative legal approach to dignity and sex work is possible, where the two are not considered as inherently incompatible, concluding with thoughts on the risks and benefits of using ‘dignity talk’ in activism and campaigns for sex work law reform. (shrink)

I have suggested elsewhere that, when we wander out of our own academic and First-World enclosure, we share something like a relationship with Senanayak's doublethink.2 When we speak for ourselves, we urge with conviction: the personal is also political. For the rest of the world's women, the sense of whose personal micrology is difficult for us to acquire, we fall back on a colonialist theory of most efficient information retrieval. We will not be able t speak to the women out (...) there if we depend completely on conferences and anthologies by Western-trained informants. As I see their photographs in women's studies journals or on book jackets, indeed, as I look in the glass, it is Senanayak with his anti-Fascist paperback that I behold. In the inextricably mingling historico-political specificity with the sexual differential in a literary discourse, Mahasveta Devi invites us to begin effacing that image.· 2. See my "Three Feminist Readings: McCullers, Drabble, Habermas," Union Seminary Quarterly Review 1-2 , and "French Feminism in an International Frame."Mahasveta Devi teaches English at Bijaygarh College in Jadavpur, India, an institution for working-class women. She has published over a dozen novels, most recently Chotti Munda ebang Tar Tir, and is a prolific journalist, writing on the struggle of the tribal peasant in West Bengal and Bihar. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin. The translator of Derrida's De la grammatologie, she has published essays on Marxist meminism, deconstructive practice, and contemporary literature and is currently completing a book on theory and practice in the humanities. (shrink)

Contributed research papers presented in UGC sponsored National Seminar on "God and the Universe: Religious and Scientific Approaches" organized by the Department of Sanskrit, Mugberia Gangadhar Mahavidyalaya, Purba Medinipur, West Bengal on 22nd and 23rd November, 2016.

Contributed research papers presented as National Seminar on Vedic Astro Sciences, organized by S.V. Vedic University on 7th and 8th June, 2008 in association with the Centre for Theoritical Studies and Research, Birbhum, West Bengal).

Becoming Vaishnava in an Ideal Vedic City centers on a growing multinational community of ISKCON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness) devotees in Mayapur, West Bengal. While ISKCON's history is often presented in terms of an Indian guru 'transplanting' Indian spirituality to the West, this book focusses on the efforts to bring ISKCON back to India. Paying particular attention to devotees' failure to consistently live up to ISKCON's ideals, and the ongoing struggle to realize the utopian vision of (...) an 'ideal Vedic city', this book argues that beyond a focus on virtue, the anthropology of ethics must account for how moral systems accommodate the problem of moral failure. (shrink)

Contributed articles presented at the national seminar entitled "Ethical Issues in Anthropological Research", organized by Department of Anthropology, West Bengal State University during 19-20 January 2012.

As a response to the invitation to a form of global thought, this paper asks: what is the relationship between Indian classical music and everyday seasonal life? Indian classical music has been studied in the social sciences as a tradition belonging to a distinctly South-Asian past (Neuman, 1980; Mukherjee, 2006), in which newness has emerged only as a consequence of techno-auratic reconfigurations (Neuman in Asian Music, 40(2), 100–123, 2009), or as a construct of India’s post-colonial modernity (Neuman, 1980; Mukherjee, 2006). (...) This paper departs from this literature to suggest a different route into the study of this form, which grounds it within the aesthetic labors of thinking and feeling, and the ways in which they relate to everyday variations in the earth’s tempos. It argues that a raag is not simply a sequence of notes that represents a culturally specific way of being, but an aesthetic relation that expresses and intervenes in seasonal and diurnal rhythms. By studying raag Malhar within the context of drought-prone rural West Bengal, this paper examines the life of Indian classical music outside the institutional frameworks of concert halls and academies of learning, and begins instead to explore the ways in which it forges and animates everyday life. As such, it works towards a conception of the classical that can be located within the ordinary, and asks, in relation to the concepts of raag and season, what it means for the temporal resonances of everyday life to be musically rendered. (shrink)

Contributed articles on the philosophical concept of "other" as reflected in the culture of West Bengal, India.

This article takes up the appearance in the club circuits of Europe of cultural matter derived from radical peasant insurgency in West Bengal. It asks why the political content of cultural performance is so often glossed as exotica, and writes back some of the history of transnational, or internationalist, politics into this forum. Linking this to the celebrated Booker Prizewinning text of Arundhati Roy, and Gayatri Spivak's translations of Mahasweta Devi's writing, the contradictions of cultural politics are foregrounded.

In this paper the sameness and difference between two distinguished Indian authors, Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880–1932) and Mahasweta Devi (b. 1926), representing two generations almost a century apart, will be under analysis in order to trace the generational transformation in women’s writing in India, especially Bengal. Situated in the colonial and postcolonial frames of history, Hossain and Mahasweta Devi may be contextualized differently. At the same time their subjects are also differently categorized; the former is not particularly concerned with (...) subalterns whereas the latter specifically focuses on the effect of race and class on gender. The quest for the ‘self’ and ‘subjectivity’ is more pertinent in the latter and consequently the appeal for agency is based on a crude power struggle. Hossain, a philanthropist who championed the woman question, believed that striving for equality should be a collective process which could be achieved by spreading awareness among fellow-inmates inhabiting the prison of patriarchy. Like Euro-American first-wave feminists, Rokeya advocated the necessity of education among women in order for them to be able to comprehend their plight and ‘awake’ for the cause. She addresses fundamental issues of feminism like education and the systematized claustrophobia within the domestic space. Whereas Mahasweta Devi, has been an activist writer who is regarded as the brand ambassador for the support of the marginalized, deprived and denotified tribes of India. It is her mission to provide succour to the marginalized sections, especially tribes from the Purulia district of West Bengal, like the Kherias and Shabars. As an activist writer she explores tribal life and allied socio-political issues which reflect their agony. (shrink)

The study examines the consequences of the COVID‐19 pandemic‐induced lockdown on the socio‐economic status of 212 female migrant workers employed in the informal sector, originating from four underprivileged districts of West Bengal, India. The study assesses the changes in their scope of employment, financial instability, and the level of violence experienced within households and workplaces in the pre‐pandemic and post‐lockdown phases. We apply the binary logistic regression to identify factors influencing their low employment scope, the t‐test to observe (...) changes in their income as a consequence of the pandemic, and the Wilcoxon signed‐rank test alongside effect size analysis to detect any rise in experiences of violence and exploitation against women. The findings suggest a notable decrease in their employment scope due to the absence of previous jobs, low wages, insecure workplaces, and family constraints; a decline in earnings; and an increased incidence of violence against them. The research suggests designing reforms to improve the current situation of female migrants, who represent one of the most marginalized sections of society. Formalizing the labor market and ensuring proper registration of these women would enable them to gain access to social security benefits, pension schemes, and relief packages that are vital for their well‐being. (shrink)

Biography of a philosopher and scholar from West Bengal, India.

Urbanization affects concurrent human-animal interactions as a result of altered resource availability and land use pattern, which leads to considerable ecological consequences. While some animals have lost their habitat due to urban encroachment, few of them managed to survive within the urban ecosystem by altering their natural behavioral patterns. The feeding repertoire of folivorous colobines, such as gray langur, largely consists of plant parts. However, these free-ranging langurs tend to be attuned to the processed high-calorie food sources to attain maximum (...) benefits within the concrete jungle having insignificant greenery. Therefore, besides understanding their population dynamics, the effective management of these urbanized, free-ranging, non-human primate populations also depends on their altered feeding habits. Here, we have used a field-based experimental setup that allows gray langurs to choose between processed and unprocessed food options, being independent of any inter-specific conflicts over resources due to food scarcity. The multinomial logit model reveals the choice-based decision-making of these free-ranging gray langurs in an urban settlement of West Bengal, India, where they have not only learned to recognize the human-provisioned processed food items as an alternative food source but also shown a keen interest in it. However, such a mismatch between the generalized feeding behavior of folivorous colobines and their specialized gut physiology reminds us of Liem's paradox and demands considerable scientific attention. While urbanization imposes tremendous survival challenges to these animals, it also opens up for various alternative options for surviving in close proximity to humans which is reflected in this study, and could guide us for the establishment of a sustainable urban ecosystem in the future. (shrink)

Contributed seminar papers presented at Akhilabhāratīyavaidikasaṅgoṣṭhī Vaidikavāṅmayasya Vividhāyāmaḥ (All India Vedic Seminar on Various Branches of Vedic studies) held and organized by Department of Sanskrit, Sidho-Kanho-Birsha University, Purulia, West Bengal and sponsored by Maharshi Sandipani Rashtriya Ved Vidya Pratishthan on 26th and 27th October 2017.

As the world has been left reeling by the large and continuous loss of human lives due to the current pandemic, Pope Francis offered "Urbi et Orbi" (To the City and the World) in his blessings. He led a recitation of the Lord's Prayer on the feast of the Annunciation which was live streamed around the world, renewing his invitation to pray incessantly for the cure of the sick as well for the medical caregivers. As places of worship across the (...) world are closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, people of faith need to either offer prayers within the restricted walls of their homes or make use of the virtual platforms available. One way to sustain communal worship is to rely on technology and that is how some of the temples and Gurudwaras in India are engaging with their communities. They have resorted to audio kirtan (call and response chanting) and songs through which they are delivering sermons and messages to their devotees. Whilst many temples have remained closed, some temples and Gurudwaras are still not ready to follow the restrictions implemented against gatherings. Flouting lockdown, several devotees have assembled outside the local temples of West Bengal and Patna on the occasion of Ram Navami and to offer Pujas (prayer rituals) seeking relief from COVID19. However, the annual festivals to honour Lord Ram at Ayodhya – where thousands gather – have been called off. (shrink)

Studies on small and medium enterprises or SMEs in India are scarce. What little is known shows that there is a need to know more about this sector, specially on their performance on responsible business practices. This paper reports the findings on the environmental awareness and practices of some Indian SMEs, from a study conducted by the present authors on 200 SMEs, in the manufacturing and service sectors, in the two Indian states of West Bengal and Odisha. The (...) study results show that environmentally responsible practices and the related concept of social responsibility of business are yet to take root at the Indian SME level. Some of the major findings reported are the lack of knowledge and interest about environmentally responsible business practices among the SME owner–managers, the perceived disconnect between environmental practices and socially responsible business practices, the total absence of reporting practices in the sector, and the disinterest in the 14001 certification. The study also mentions the perceived barriers and constraints reported by the SME owner–managers in the path of greater engagement with the environment. On the whole, the study concludes that there is an urgent need for sensitization, training, and mentoring the Indian SME owner–managers in order to develop their capabilities for improved environmentally responsible business practices. (shrink)

Miscellaneous articles chiefly on the folk religion of West Bengal and Bangladesh.

Study of the educational philosophy of Sir Rabindranath Tagore, 1861-1941, and Shanti Niketan, West Bengal.

This is the first draft of a paper presented in an international conference in West Bengal.

This volume contains the major papers presented at the Second International Conference of the International Society For Metaphysics held at Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, West Bengal, India. The Society was conceived at the 14th International Congress of Philosophy meeting in Vienna in 1968, sponsored by leading members of the Metaphysical Society Of America, and was initiated at the International Congress of Philosophy held at Varna, Bulgaria in 1973. This is the first volume of their proceedings to be published. Subsequent (...) volumes are in preparation presenting the meetings in New York, also in 1976, and in Jerusalem in 1977. The theme of the Calcutta meeting in India was "Man And Nature," reflecting the renewed import of discussions of nature evident in the twentieth century, including the limits and possibilities it may offer for human personality. The depth and variety of the metaphysical analysis is too complex for serious comment in this brief space. The pluralism, geographical diversity and range of the conference is most evident from the contents of this volume: Part I, Science And Nature, includes papers by E. Agazzi, A. Mercier, and E. E. Harris. Part II, Progress and Nature, includes papers by M. Chatterjee, J. E. Smith, J. Kuszynski, A. N. Woznicki, and S. Chakravarti. Part III, Person And Nature, includes papers by K. Bhattacharya, S. C. Thakur, C. Chung-yuan, and T. A. Fay. Part IV, Transcendence And Nature, includes papers by M. Abe, K. K. Banerjee, T. M. P. Mahadevan, W. N. Clarke, E. Deutsch, and B. Bhattacharya. The essays offer considerations of animism, aesthetics, buddhism, causality, existentialism, Marxism, pragmatism, Tao, and conclude with a tribute to R. Tagore. It is most appropriate that in this journal congratulations be offered to the International Society For Metaphysics for the success of its early endeavors, and for this initial contribution to international discussion as evidence of the vitality of metaphysical reflection.--Harold A. Durfee, American University. (shrink)

The work of Amartya Sen and his collaborators on Indian economic development compares three Indian states so as to demonstrate the superior performance of interventionist, left‐wing governments in West Bengal and Kerala compared to the more typical state of Uttar Pradesh. A careful analysis of the evidence, however, shows that Sen et al. ignore the anti‐interventionist implications of their own evidence of corruption in the state of Uttar Pradesh; dramatically overstate the success of leftist governments in West (...) Bengal; and overlook the role of Kerala's culture and its private education system in accounting for its famously high levels of literacy and female independence. (shrink)

The term Bāul is universally associated with singing. It is a form of folk music that emerges from Bengal in India. However, Bāul does not simply imply singing. It is more of a philosophy which is deeply rooted in the quest for self-realization. The raison d’être for the kind of attraction the music of Bāuls and the poetry of Kabir had for the West is that their music and poetry was essentially a poetry of simplicity, peace and celestial (...) love. Since Bāul music and Kabir’s poetry transcends religious boundaries, it was easily accepted by the Western canon that was looking to the East for newer inspiration and life philosophies. This paper focuses on the oral Indian tradition of Bāulgan and the Dohas of Kabir and how they influenced the writing of the legendary Beat poet Allen Ginsberg. The paper also partially focuses on Purna Das and Laxman Das, two famous Bāul singers who went to live in Woodstock at the house of Bob Dylan in the mid-1960s and their resulting friendship. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feeding Tiger, Finding GodScience, Religion, and "the Better Story" in Life of PiGregory Stephens (bio)Yann Martel's Life of Pi is an allegorical castaway story about a sixteen-year-old Indian polytheist who survives 227 days on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger. Martel frames this postmodern variant on the Noah's ark tale as "a story that will make you believe in God" (viii). But these words are neither Martel's, nor (...) those of the semifictional "Martel-like" narrator one encounters in the "Author's Note" (Innes 25). Rather, they are voiced by Mr. Adirubasamy, an elderly Indian man whom the Canadian quasi-author meets at a coffee house in Pondicherry. The virtual author, like the real Martel, is the author of two failed books, and looking for a capital-S "Story."1 Yet after tracking down the primary narrator of the novel (Pi Patel) in Toronto, reading his diaries of his Pacific Ocean ordeal, and listening to taped interviews with Pi, the quasi-author agreed with Mr. Adirubasamy that "this was, indeed, a story to make you believe in God" (x).That apparently "evangelical premise" could awaken resistance among readers who take this "explicit but deceptive statement" too literally (Ishmael). As one reviewer notes, "Martel's statement is likely to have the opposite effect on his reader, provoking a determined counter-reaction not to succumb to a didactic religious agenda."2 Although the novel has its didactic moments, most reviewers seem to have taken a measured view of the author's "religious agenda." In interviews, Martel notes that he comes from a secular background in Quebec. There are no indications that writing this book represented a Damascus conversion experience for him. Life of Pi is not a conversion narrative perse, but it is in part an ascent narrative (a journey toward enlightenment) that also contains elements of descent narratives.3 As a secular writer with sympathies for the religious imagination, Martel can pitch his revisioning of comparative religion to readers who have what Salman Rushdie once called a "God-shaped hole" in their heart.4 These "implied readers" (Iser) would have a hunger for some of the animating power of faith, if not a capacity for blind commitment to dogmatic faith itself.Reviewing Life of Pi for the Nation, Charlotte Innes describes it as "a religious book that makes sense to a nonreligious person" (25). In similar fashion, the Pequod argues that Martel's book "achieves something more quietly spectacular" than a literal conversion, or a restoring of one's faith in God: "it makes the reader want to believe in God. Martel gives the reader the democratic choice: the desire to believe rather than the belief itself" (Ishmael).Those responses of the secular left contrast sharply with the responses of my first-year students at the University of the West Indies, to whom I have twice taught Life of Pi. For students from a fundamentalist background, it is a challenge to buy into a narrative [End Page 41] that proclaims a God that transcends the imaginations of most believers in the three faiths in which the young Pi has been trained (Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam). In analyzing the theme of finding God, I position the text at a midway point between two different kinds of reception: secular readers for whom the notion of religious belief is at best metaphorical, and religious readers who may resist the narrative's conceit that the true God exists outside the confines of institutional religion.Life of Pi is suffused by a pervasive liminality.5 The teenaged Pi is in motion between continents, between faiths, and between childhood and adulthood, which means that the novel is also a bildungsroman.6 I here focus above all on the text's and Pi's location in the contested space between believers and nonbelievers, and on the novel's attempted mediation between those seeming binary opposites. I ask two perhaps paradoxical questions: In what ways would this be seen by the nonreligious as a religious book with appeal? Put differently, to what degree and in what ways might this text actually give secular readers a desire to believe, even if it does... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.3 (2000) 453-471 [Access article in PDF] Liberty, Authority, and Trust in Burke's Idea of Empire Richard Bourke When Edmund Burke first embarked upon a parliamentary career, British political life was in the process of adapting to a series of critical reorientations in both the dynamics of party affiliation and the direction of imperial policy. During the period of the Seven Years' War, (...) a reconstituted militia became a focus for patriotic enthusiasm, uniting national sentiment against France and effectively eradicating the remnants of Jacobite rhetoric and aspiration. Traditional opposition between Tory and Whig became irrelevant, while Court and Country jointly came to the support of the Pitt-Newcastle ministry. However, in due course the Old Corps disintegrated as George III succeeded to the throne with the promise of an end to factional strife and the beginning of a patriotic alliance in government. But while competing ideologies and interests on the domestic political scene were undergoing comprehensive realignment, the pursuit of a blue-water policy in tandem with strategic continental campaigns brought Britain's struggle against France into North America, the Caribbean, and India. Trade continued to expand into Asia and West Africa, but the principles of commercial advantage were continually brought into open conflict with the exigencies of war. The division of power in Europe became embroiled in a substantial redivision of empire, and by 1763 British territorial expansion had reached its zenith.When Burke was appointed private secretary to the Marquis of Rockingham, with the national debt standing at an all time high and the demands of imperial defense unlikely to diminish, the politics of empire called for urgent attention from all sections of the political establishment. In particular the Rockinghamites, adopting a posture of aloofness from venality and petty interest, were obliged to advance policies for imperial government on the solid basis of political principle. 1 Coming into parliament as a member for Wendover in the wake of [End Page 453] Grenville's Stamp Act, at a time when the East India Company was assuming control of the revenue in Bengal, Burke set about formulating a doctrine of imperial sovereignty which would be serviceable to the party either in power or in opposition and which would be adequate to the complex reality of detached and extensive empire. The immediate reception of that inquiry, both in Britain and on the Continent, into the fraught world of post-Revolutionary political debate has had the long-term effect of distorting the order of emphasis in terms of which his career as a whole ought properly to be understood.The vigorous elaboration, in opposition to the Jacobin experiment in France, of the conditions under which moderate government could be exercised within the context of an absolute sovereignty was expressed in terms which had originally been invoked as part of a sustained attempt to reconcile civility with empire. As we shall see, that attempt involved a process of delicate coordination by means of which the interests of freedom would be brought into harmony with the demands of public power. In that sense the effort to make liberty and authority mutually responsible can be said to constitute the core ambition of Burke's political rhetoric. In this context responsibility defines the optimally beneficial relation between government and people on the one hand and national sovereignty and the extended empire on the other. This article outlines the practical and theoretical exploration of those relations within the frame of Burke's intervention in the world of eighteenth-century political discourse.Burke was of course well placed in 1765 to evolve a theory of imperial government that was at once ideologically compelling and politically viable. In his capacity as secretary to William Gerard Hamilton in the early 1760s he had already examined the corruption of legitimate empire as represented by the introduction of penal legislation into Ireland after 1694. The Tracts Relating to Popery Laws set out to convict the Irish Parliament in Dublin of flagrant misrule. A subordinate legislature within the empire is charged with having employed... (shrink)

The Sundarban forest in southern Bengal was for many centuries a frontier zone—an economic frontier for communities of wet rice farmers who brought with them technologies and forms of social organization from points further to the west; a political frontier for large centralized states expanding from North India; and a cultural frontier for the worldwide community of Muslims. This paper investigates the forces that, between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries, lay behind the transformation of Bengal's natural forest (...) into rice paddy, a transformation that was accompanied by conversion to Islam, state formation, and the evolution of new land tenures. (shrink)

Bankimchandra was a stalwart in terms of his writings in the nineteenth-century Bengal. He was one of the pioneers of nationalism in India and a Hindu revivalist. Prior to the publication of his prose writings in the forms of novels, articles and essays, nationalism was not an Indian phenomenon. It had been imported from the West through English education. Such English education gave the Indians an exposure of utilitarianism and the ideologies of French Revolution. Bankimchandra’s political thought accords (...) with the characteristic of utilitarianism and the ideologies of French revolution. He thought that like Europe the rise of India would be possible only with the help of nationalism. He was well aware that the rational element of English education, which is the basis of nationalism, independence and political liberty, could not solely revive Hindu society. There are certain differences between the European concept of nationalism and the Indian concept of nationalism. Bankim’s idea of nationalism or patriotism is based on the ideal of love for the well-being of all. His concept of nationalism took its shape in his revolutionary novel Anandamath. Both the novel and the song vandemātaram used in that novel played a crucial role in the nationalist movement in India. In this article, an attempt has been made to understand the concept of nationalism as found in Bankimchandra’s writings. (shrink)

Abstract:Sundarbans attracts worldwide attention for being the largest single block halophytic mangrove forest and for Royal Bengal Tiger. Along with ecological conservation, recent scholarly works demonstrate the importance of mangrove preservation for withstanding climate change-induced natural calamities. These conservation programs following the trend of the West separate human settlements from the forest and restrict human access to forest for maintaining wilderness; this I mark as the first wave of territorialization. Based on a case study of one of the (...) village islands in Sundarbans, adjacent to the core forest, I illustrate how in this dynamic delta the recent changes in the islanders' outlook toward life and livelihoods, as induced by the first wave of territorialization, leading them to embrace a second wave of territorialization and to what extent that is impacting the sustainability of human settlements in this dynamic delta. It also elaborates as soon as islanders’ living practice turns into livelihoods, they become reluctant to take up those traditional livelihoods as being perceived ‘risky,’ ‘painful,’ ‘uncertain,’ and ‘destructive for Sundarbans.’ The villagers' intention to find a better and more respected livelihood directs them toward the city and leads them to normalize and in turn concretize the already-imposed forest—settlement territorial division. This concretization of the boundary is termed here as the second wave of territorialization. I posit the upshot of this is a double layer of distancing, which is detrimental to the longterm sustainability of nature—human relationship in this dynamic delta. In a nutshell, this article argues that the inherent understanding about this liminal landscape that these islanders gather while engaging with traditional livelihoods are crucial to combat the massive climate change-induced alterations that this delta is going to witness in the near future. Therefore, this disengagement is not only devastating for the ecology of the Sundarbans; it is going to be even more threatening to the human settlements of this area. (shrink)

Śrīgupta, a Buddhist philosopher in the Middle Way tradition, was born in Bengal in present-day India in the seventh century. He is best known for his Introduction to Reality with its accompanying auto-commentary,1 in which he presents the first Middle Way iteration of the influential "neither-one-nor-many argument."2 This antifoundationalist line of reasoning sets out to prove that nothing enjoys ontologically independent being.Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was born some one thousand years later, in the city of Leipzig, situated on the outskirts (...) of European learning and thought. He is best known today for having co-invented the infinitesimal calculus, for his... (shrink)

Using the corpus of JSTOR articles, we investigate the role of gender in collaboration patterns across the scholarly landscape by analyzing gender-based homophily--the tendency for researchers to co-author with individuals of the same gender. For a nuanced analysis of gender homophily, we develop methodology necessitated by the fact that the data comprises heterogeneous sub-disciplines and that not all authorships are exchangeable. In particular, we distinguish three components of gender homophily in collaborations: a structural component that is due to demographics and (...) non-gendered authorship norms of a scholarly community, a compositional component which is driven by varying gender representation across sub-disciplines, and a behavioral component which we define as the remainder of observed homophily after its structural and compositional components have been taken into account. Using minimal modeling assumptions, we measure and test for behavioral homophily. We find that significant behavioral homophily can be detected across the JSTOR corpus and show that this finding is robust to missing gender indicators in our data. In a secondary analysis, we show that the proportion of female representation in a field is positively associated with significant behavioral homophily. (shrink)

To commemorate 40 years since the founding of the Journal of Business Ethics, the editors in chief of the journal have invited the editors to provide commentaries on the future of business ethics. This essay comprises a selection of commentaries aimed at creating dialogue around the theme The Ethics and Politics of Academic Knowledge Production. Questions of who produces knowledge about what, and how that knowledge is produced, are inherent to editing and publishing academic journals. At the Journal of Business (...) Ethics, we understand the ethical responsibility of academic knowledge production as going far beyond conventions around the integrity of the research content and research processes. We are deeply aware that access to resources, knowledge of the rules of the game, and being able to set those rules, are systematically and unequally distributed. One could ask the question “for whom is knowledge now ethical’”? (See the Burrell commentary.) We have a responsibility to address these inequalities and open up our journal to lesser heard voices, ideas, and ways of being. Our six commentators pursue this through various aspects of the ethics and politics of academic knowledge production. Working with MacIntyre’s scheme of practices and institutions, Andrew West provides commentary on the internal good of business ethics learning and education. Inviting us to step out of the cave, Christopher Michaelson urges a clear-eyed, unblinking focus on the purposes and audiences of business ethics scholarship. As developmental editor, Scott Taylor uncovers some of the politics of peer review with the aim of nurturing of unconventional research. Mike Hyman presents his idiosyncratic view of marketing ethics. In the penultimate commentary, Julie Nelson attributes difficulties in the academic positioning of the Business Ethics field to the hegemony of a masculine-centric model of the firm. And finally, Gibson Burrell provides a powerful provocation to go undercover as researcher-investigators in a parallel ethics of the research process. (shrink)

Cornel West is one of the nation's premier public intellectuals and one of the great prophetic voices of our era. Whether he is writing a scholarly book or an article for Newsweek, whether he is speaking of Emerson, Gramsci, or Marvin Gaye, his work radiates a passion that reflects the rich traditions he draws on and weaves togetherÑBaptist preaching, American transcendentalism, jazz, radical politics. This anthology reveals the dazzling range of West's work, from his explorations of ”Prophetic Pragmatism” (...) to his philosophizing on hip-hop.The Cornel West Reader traces the development of West's extraordinary career as academic, public intellectual, and activist. In his essays, articles, books, and interviews, West emerges as America's social conscience, urging attention to complicated issues of racial and economic justice, sexuality and gender, history and politics. This collection represents the best work of an always compelling, often controversial, and absolutely essential philosopher of the modern American experience. (shrink)

Effective communication during a pandemic, such as the current COVID-19 crisis, can save lives. At the present time, social and physical distancing measures are the lead strategy in combating the spread of COVID-19. In this study, a survey was administered to 705 adults from Switzerland about their support and practice of social distancing measures to examine if their responses depended on (1) whether these measures were supported by a government official or an internationally recognized celebrity as a spokesperson, (2) whether (...) this spokesperson was liked, and (3) the respondent’s age. We also considered several attitudinal and demographic variables that may influence the degree to which people support and comply with social distancing measures. We found that the government official was more effective in eliciting responses supportive of social distancing, particularly as manifested in the stated current compliance with social distancing measures. The effect was substantially stronger among older respondents, although these respondents expressed a lower risk perception. Although there was a general trend for greater endorsement of the social distancing measures among participants who liked the spokesperson, this was non-significant. In addition, respondents’ greater support and compliance was positively associated with (1) higher concern for the current situation, (2) higher concern for the well-being of others, and (3) greater belief that others were practicing social distancing, and negatively with (4) greater self-reported mobility. Current compliance correlated negatively with (5) household size. Since different parts of the population appear to have different perceptions of risk and crisis, our preliminary results suggest that different spokespersons may be needed for different segments of the population, and particularly for younger and older populations. The development of evidence-based knowledge is required to further identify who would be the most effective spokesperson, and in particular to groups with low risk perception and low compliance. (shrink)