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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

School-based education in England has undergone significant changes since 2010, with a huge expansion of academies, schools outside local authority control, funded directly by central government. Academies and local authority (LA) maintained schools are subject to different legislative and regulatory frameworks. This paper focuses on the governance of LA maintained schools, single academy trusts (SATs) and schools that are part of multi-academy trusts (MATs). The research involved analysing legislative provision, policy documents, and documents addressing the governance arrangements of a sample (...) of 23 secondary schools. Our findings reveal a fragmented state-funded secondary school system as regards overall governance, school admissions, the curriculum, and the use of funding. Significantly schools in MATs, which are governed by the trust board, lack the autonomy of either SATs or maintained schools and are instead under the ultimate control of the trust board. The paper argues that there is a need for greater consistency regarding the governance of state-funded schools. (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.

Animal research remains a deeply controversial topic in biomedical science. While a vast amount has been written about the ethical status of laboratory animals, far less academic attention has been devoted to the public and, more specifically, to public opinion. Rather than what the public think, this article considers the role of ‘public opinion’. It draws on a recent empirical study which involved interviews with laboratory scientists who use animals in their research, and with other UK stakeholders. The first section (...) of the paper demonstrates that public opinion has become a kind of resource in the animal research debate. Public opinion polls, in particular, are frequently cited. The second section explores this further and argues that, for all sides, appealing to public opinion is a key way to show legitimacy. Finally, the paper shifts gear to consider whether public opinion should matter, both for ethical reasoning and for science policy. (shrink)

Progress in addiction science is hampered by disagreements and ambiguity around its core construct: addiction. Addiction Ontology (AddictO) offers a path to a solution of the kind that has addressed similar problems in other areas of science: a set of clearly and uniquely defined entities to which terms such as ‘addiction’, addictive disorder’ and ‘substance dependence ’can be applied for ease of reference while recognizing that it is the construct definitions and their unique IDs that are central, not the terms.

‘Alcman lived sometime in the seventh century.’‘At some period in the seventh century Sparta was occupied with the Second Messenian War, but we do not know its date or whether Alcman lived before or during or after it.’Between these two utterances, part of a papyrus commentary on Alcman was published,3 from which it appeared that the poet mentioned names known to us from the Spartan king-lists. It might have been expected that this discovery would lead to a more precise dating (...) for Alcman. Some people think, that in fact it does, and I am one of them. (shrink)

Several of the treatises and lectures that make up the Hippocratic corpus begin with more or less extended statements about the physical composition and operation of the world at large, and approach the study of human physiology from this angle. We see this, for example, in De Natwra Hominis, De Flatibus, De Carnibus, De Victu; it was the approach of Alcmaeon of Croton, Diogenes of Apollonia, and according to Plato of Hippocrates himself. The work known as De Hebdomadibus would appear (...) to be a prime example of the type. The first twelve chapters are cosmological. They are dominated by two ideas: that everything in nature is arranged in groups of seven, and that the human body is constructed on the same pattern as the whole world. In the later part of the book we pass to the subject of fevers, their causation and treatment. But as Roscher observed, the cosmology and the pathology do not belong together. (shrink)

They used to believe that mankind began in 4004 B.C. and the Greeks in 776. We now know that these last five thousand years during which man has left written record of himself are but a minute fraction of the time he has spent developing his culture. We now understand that the evolution of human society, its laws and customs, its economics, its religious practices, its games, its languages, is a very slow process, to be measured in millennia. In the (...) case of Greek religious usage it is now appreciated that it has its roots not in Mycenaean but in Palaeolithic times. As for Greek poetry, comparative studies have shown that it goes back by a continuous tradition to Indo-European poetry. (shrink)

This important and extensive fragment of the Catalogues is preserved on a papyrus of the third century A.D., no. 10560 in the Berlin collection. First published in 1907 by Schubart and Wilamowitz, Berliner Klassikertexte, v. 1. 31 ff., it was also collated by Crönert, who published his readings in Hermes xlii, 610 ff. The most recent edition is that of Merkelbach, Die Hesiod-fragmente auf Papyrus, pp. 24 ff. The photograph mentioned above is the only one published. It covers only a (...) small portion of the text; most of the rest is too faint to be suitable for photography. (shrink)

Professor Rudolf Keydell has recently given us a greatly improved text of Nonnus' Dionysiaca. But much remains to be done. Many problems are still unsolved: many a corruption may still lie unsuspected, since the manuscript on which we rely is one in which obvious corruption tends to be concealed by conjecture.

The recent publication of a new edition of Dionysius Periegetes, the first since 1861, and the first ever to provide adequate information about the MS. tradition, has no doubt stimulated many of us to re-read this author, a rotten geographer but a competent versifier and recycler of Alexandrian flosculi. The new recension is a distinct improvement on Müller's, and the collection of citations and parallels is a valuable complement to the critical apparatus. Here are half a dozen suggestions for further (...) amelioration of the text. (shrink)

The Works and Days is contained in far more manuscripts than the other Hesiodic poems. Altogether there are something over 260, as against seventyodd for the Theogony and sixty-odd for the Shield. Over a hundred of them are later than 1480, the approximate date of the earliest printed edition of the poem; but even when these are subtracted, a formidable number remains, many of which have never been investigated. The present century has seen more done in the way of cataloguing (...) them than the nineteenth, but less in the way of collating them. Since N. A. Livadaras published his list of Hesiod manuscripts in 1963, the disparity between what has been done and what might be done has become more apparent than ever before. (shrink)

Catalexis was the subject of an important recent article by L. P. E. Parker. There is one particular aspect of it that she does not touch, and that ought not to be left out of account: its presumable Indo-European origins. Consideration of this aspect leads to the drawing of distinctions which otherwise tend to escape notice.

Widely adopted for classroom use, this book offers translations of four major works of ancient Greek literature which treat the life and thought of Socrates, focusing particularly on his trial and defense (the platonic dialogues Euthyphro,...

Medical ethics committees are increasingly called on to assist doctors, patients, and families in resolving difficult ethics issues. Although committees are becoming more sophisticated in the substance of medical ethics, little attention has been given to the processes these committees use to facilitate decision-making. In 1990, the National Institute for Dispute Resolution in Washington, D.C., provided a planning grant from its Innovation Fund to the Institute of Public Law of the University of New Mexico School of Law to look at (...) what ethics committees can learn from facilitation and mediation techniques. The study's thesis was that, if adapted for use by medical ethics committees, facilitation and mediation techniques can be helpful to those bodies in case review consultations and in other internal committee processes. This article reports on that project. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

Disagreement about the nature of ‘addiction’, such as whether it is a brain disease, arises in part because the label is applied to a wide range of phenomena. This creates conceptual and definitional confusions and misunderstandings, often leading to researchers talking past one another. Ontologies have been successfully implemented in other fields to help solve these problems by creating unifying frameworks that can accommodate divergence while clarifying the basis for it. We argue that ontologies can help transform the way we (...) think and communicate about addiction as well, providing a basis for a shared understanding of the domain and a shared means for communicating and achieving that understanding. -/- We introduce the use of ontologies in science and medicine and show how they can unify differing perspectives on addiction. We also show how ontologies provide a practical tool for organizing our collective knowledge in this field, even, and especially, when that knowledge is garnered through distinct disciplinary approaches adopting disparate methodologies or perspectives (e.g., neurobiological, psychological, sociological, etc.). In the end, we believe that ontologies can help to avoid letting questions like “Is addiction a brain disease?” divide the field, hamper communication, or otherwise disrupt the ability to make meaningful progress. (shrink)

First published: 2010; Previous edition: 2012..

This collection reflects the profound impact of Martha Nussbaum's philosophical writings on law and legal scholarship. The range of topics covered include the nature of the emotions, the capabilities approach to welfare, the demands of global feminism and constitutionalism, and the role of narrative and literature in our political and legal lives. Taken together, along with the introduction by the editor, the essays collected in this volume demonstrate the far-reaching impact of Nussbaum's philosophical oeuvre.

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)

Taking Emerson as his starting point, Cornel West’s basic task in this ambitious enterprise is to chart the emergence, development, decline, and recent resurgence of American pragmatism. John Dewey is the central figure in West’s pantheon of pragmatists, but he treats as well such varied mid-century representatives of the tradition as Sidney Hook, C. Wright Mills, W. E. B. Du Bois, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Lionel Trilling. West’s "genealogy" is, ultimately, a very personal work, for it is imbued (...) throughout with the author’s conviction that a thorough reexamination of American pragmatism may help inspire and instruct contemporary efforts to remake and reform American society and culture. "West... may well be the pre-eminent African American intellectual of our generation."—The Nation "_The American Evasion of Philosophy_ is a highly intelligent and provocative book. Cornel West gives us illuminating readings of the political thought of Emerson and James; provides a penetrating critical assessment of Dewey, his central figure; and offers a brilliant interpretation—appreciative yet far from uncritical—of the contemporary philosopher and neo-pragmatist Richard Rorty.... What shines through, throughout the work, is West's firm commitment to a radical vision of a philosophic discourse as inextricably linked to cultural criticism and political engagement."—Paul S. Boyer, professor emeritus of history, University of Wisconsin–Madison. Wisconsin Project on American Writers Frank Lentricchia, General Editor. (shrink)

The Term ‘liberty’ invokes such universal respect that most modern political economists and moralists endeavour to find a conspicuous place for it somewhere in their systems or prescriptions. But in view of the innumerable senses of this term an insistence on some kind of definition prior to any discussion seems to be justified. For our present purposes attention to two particularly conflicting interpretations will be sufficient. These are sometimes called the ‘negative’ and the ‘positive’ notions of Liberty. According to the (...) ‘negative’ notion, my own liberty implies the reduction to a minimum of the deliberate interference of other human beings within the area in which I wish to act. Conversely the absence of liberty, or coercion, is regarded as undesirable because it amounts to the prevention by other persons of my doing what I want. On the other hand, the ‘positive’ sense of the word ‘liberty’ consists in the attainment of self-mastery, or, in other words, the release from the domination of ‘adverse’ influences. This ‘slavery’ from which men ‘liberate’ themselves is variously described to include slavery to ‘nature’, to ‘unbridled passions’, to ‘irrational impulses’, or simply slavery to one's ‘lower nature’. ‘Positive’ liberty is then identified with ‘self-realisation’ or an awakening into a conscious state of rationality. The fact that it is contended that such a state can often be attained only by the interference of other ‘rational’ persons who ‘liberate’ their fellow beings from their ‘irrationality’, brings this interpretation of liberty into open and striking conflict with liberty in the ‘negative’ sense. (shrink)