Guest is God

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Drew Thomases
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Sacred Space ◽  
Wide Spectrum ◽  
Daily Basis ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Northwestern India ◽  
Gathering Place ◽  
Short Time ◽  
The Town

This book is based on ethnographic fieldwork in Pushkar, a Hindu pilgrimage site in northwestern India whose population of 20,000 sees an influx of two million visitors each year. Since the 1970s, the town has also received considerable attention from international tourists, a group with distinctly hippie beginnings but that now includes visitors from a wide spectrum of social positions and religious affiliations. To locals, though, Pushkar is more than just a gathering place for pilgrims and tourists: it is where Brahma, the creator god, made his home; it is where pilgrims feel blessed to stay, if only for a short time; and it is where Hindus would feel lucky to be reborn, if only as an insect. In short, it is their paradise. But even paradise needs upkeep. Thus, on a daily basis the town’s locals, and especially those engaged in pilgrimage and tourism, work to make Pushkar paradise. The book explores this massive enterprise to build “heaven on earth,” paying particular attention to how the articulation of sacred space becomes entangled with economic changes brought on by globalization and tourism. As such, the author not only attends to how tourism affects everyday life in Pushkar but also to how Hindu ideas determine the nature of tourism there; the goal, then, is to show how religion and tourism can be mutually constitutive.

scholarly journals Becoming Citizen: Spatial and Expressive Acts when Strangers Move In

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 210-228
Author(s):  
Peter Kærgaard Andersen ◽  
Lasse Mouritzen ◽  
Kristine Samson
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Community Living ◽  
Retirement Home ◽  
Local Society ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The Town

This article examines the conditions and expressions of how refugees in Denmark become citizens. Through visual and collaborative ethnographic fieldwork, which took place during 2017, the case study follows the everyday life of an Eritrean community living in a former retirement home in the town of Hørsholm. The article investigates how becoming citizen can be understood as mediatised, spatial and expressive negotiations between the refugees and the local society. We look at the conditions of becoming citizen through the local framing of the Eritrean community—understood as political, social, cultural and material framing conditions. We draw on Engin Isin’s concept of performative citizenship (Isin, 2017), and we suggest how everyday life and becoming potentially hold the capacity to re-formulate and add to the understanding of citizenship. We suggest that becoming citizen is not merely about obtaining Danish citizenship and civic rights nor tantamount with settling down. On the contrary, the analysis shows that becoming citizen is a process of expressed and performed desires connected to global becomings beyond the sedentary citizenship, and therefore holds capacity for transforming and diversifying the notion of citizenship.

scholarly journals ON SOME SELECTED PROBLEMS OF KOREAN ABBREVIOLOGY

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 137-164
Author(s):  
Anna BOROWIAK
Keyword(s):  
Adverse Effect ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Effective Communication ◽  
Word Formation ◽  
Maximum Effect ◽  
Insufficient Amount ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Short Time ◽  
Reduced Forms ◽  
Language Meaning

Given the fact that we live in the era where the pace of life is constantly speeding up, it is no surprise that ‘the economy of language’ - meaning the efficient usage of language in order to achieve the maximum effect for the minimum effort has become so important in everyday life. Using abbreviated forms of different kinds is supposed to help us to economize continuously insufficient amount of time. Their overuse, however, can hamper effective communication and bring the adverse effect from what the speaker’s intention was – namely to communicate the message clearly and unambiguously and receive a response to it in a short time. Incomprehension or misunderstanding of the message leads, in fact, to unnecessarily prolonging the conversation since it requires asking additional questions in order to explain what is unclear to the listener. Reduced forms used mainly in spoken Korean can largely be divided into lexical and grammatical ones. Lexical shortenings of different kinds such as acronyms, blends, clippings etc. although rarely and rather briefly discussed by Korean linguists and basically excluded from the debate on word-formation issues definitely deserve much more attention taking into account their extensive usage. As for grammatical abbreviations, despite its frequent occurrence, the subject is not that often taken up and discussed either. The aim of this article is to present some characteristic properties of grammatical abbreviations used mainly in spoken Korean. The reduced forms in question will be divided into three categories namely - particles, endings and grammatical constructions and discussed separately. This article however focuses only on those abbreviated forms, which means leaving the subject of particle or word ellipsis beyond its scope.

scholarly journals Various Factors that Interfere with the Accurate Assessment of the Three-rods Test and Modified Three-rods Test to Resolve Monocular Cues

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Atsuya Takeuchi ◽  
Nami Kawaguchi ◽  
Naofumi Uesaka ◽  
Yukiko Tsujimoto
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Test Performance ◽  
Visual Function ◽  
Practice Effect ◽  
Accurate Assessment ◽  
Simple Modification ◽  
Multiple Tests ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Short Time ◽  
Occupational Settings

Abstract Binocular stereopsis is a higher-order visual function and is thought to play an important role in spatial cognition in everyday life and many occupational settings. Various stereotests are used clinically to evaluate binocular stereopsis, and the three-rods test is used to assess stereopsis in various occupations in Japan. It is known that there are factors such as monocular cues in various stereotests that make it difficult to accurately evaluate the stereoscopic function, but the existence of such factors in the three-rods test has not been clarified. Here, we show that practice effect and monocular cues exist in the conventional three-rods test and that we devised a modified three-rods test to address the monocular cues. In the conventional three-rods test, performance improved when multiple tests were performed in a short time under binocular condition, and performance was significantly better in the monocular condition compared to the blind condition, indicating the existence of practice effect and monocular cues, respectively. The modified three-rod test with a wider central rod excluded the effect of monocular cues and maintained binocular cues on test performance. Their results suggest that the three-rod test with the simple modification can be a useful method for testing stereoscopic functions.

‘Hy die nie vir sy eie mense sorg nie is slegter as ’n heiden’

KWALON ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry van der Burgt
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Critical Event ◽  
Social Drama ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Differences Of Opinion ◽  
The Town

‘He who does not care for his own people is worse than a heathen’: A peek behind the scenes of the Orania community Henry van der Burgt The town of Orania stands out in contemporary South Africa as a community with the objective to restore Afrikaner freedom. For this purpose, the town strives towards self-determination: the community has its own land, its own institutions, and does its own labor. Following my ethnographic fieldwork, this article describes one critical event in which Orania allowed me, as an outsider, to take a peek behind the scenes. By analyzing this incident as a social drama we can look past the homogeneity through which Orania presents itself, and see meaningful differences of opinion with regard to how the community responds to outsiders.

Women’s Everyday Resistance and the Infrapolitics of Ṣumūd

2018 ◽  
pp. 97-132
Author(s):  
Sophie Richter-Devroe
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Daily Basis ◽  
Major Site ◽  
Fine Grain ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Colonial Policies ◽  
Everyday Resistance ◽  
Israeli Occupation

Chapter 3 deals with women’s less spectacular strategies of quotidian resistance and survival—ṣumūd, as they are often referred to in Palestine. Classic political analysis might consider the silent, ordinary acts that women practice on a daily basis uninteresting, or irrelevant for political change. But the fact that women’s everyday resistance is largely covert does not render it apolitical or without broader significance. The Israeli occupation and settler-colonial policies reach into and dominate the very fine grain of Palestinian everyday life; the everyday and the ordinary today has become a major site where politics is enacted. This chapter argues that women with their daily mundane struggles resist not only the physical occupation of their land and people, but they also the occupation of their mind.

First-Timer Learning Experiences in Global Game Jam

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikko Meriläinen
Keyword(s):  
Wide Spectrum ◽  
Learning Experiences ◽  
Self Determination Theory ◽  
Psychological Needs ◽  
Basic Psychological Needs ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Global Game ◽  
Psychological Mechanisms ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Short Time

Game jams are accelerated game creation events usually taking place over the course of a short time period. A variety of learning outcomes from game jamming has been discussed in previous research, with learning being a common motivation for attending game jams. Despite this, there has been little research into the psychological mechanisms driving learning and participation. In this article, the learning experiences of four first-time participants in the Global Game Jam are examined through self-determination theory. Results suggest that a wide spectrum of learning is experienced during a game jam, and game jams offer at least a temporary heightened sense of creativity and competence. Assessment remains an issue, however, and learning benefits may be contingent on the jam setting. All three basic psychological needs listed in self-determination theory are potentially fulfilled by game jam attendance, suggesting the relevance of self-determination theory in further jam research.

Thermal Control in Solids With Rapid Relaxation

2003 ◽  
Vol 125 (4) ◽  
pp. 563-568 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Y. Tzou
Keyword(s):  
Feedback Control ◽  
Wide Spectrum ◽  
Thermal Relaxation ◽  
Thermal Control ◽  
Heat Propagation ◽  
High Rate ◽  
Neutral Stability ◽  
Heating Rates ◽  
Effective Feedback ◽  
Short Time

Feedback control of temperature in solids with a finite speed of heat propagation is investigated in this work. The emphases are placed on the effect of rapid thermal relaxation in high-rate heating and the possible delay during the short-time operations. Fundamental characteristics and dominating parameters are identified for effective feedback control in proportional heating. Transient instability, including the intrinsic transition from the desirable stability, neutral stability, to the ultimate unstable response are investigated in a wide spectrum of heating rates. Delayed heating is found to have a destabilizing effect during the short-time transient.

Daily monitoring of retrogressive thaw slumps in the Fosheim Peninsula, Ellesmere Island, Canada

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Ward Jones ◽  
Benjamin Jones ◽  
Wayne Pollard
Keyword(s):  
Time Scales ◽  
Air Temperature ◽  
Polynomial Regression ◽  
Pearson Correlation ◽  
Daily Basis ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Regression Equations ◽  
Daily Monitoring ◽  
Sediment Redistribution ◽  
Short Time

<p>Retrogressive thaw slumps (RTS) occur from the mass wasting of ice-rich permafrost. These horseshoe-shaped features have an ablating or retreating ice-rich headwall with fluidized sediment that is transported along the RTS floor. RTS can remain active for up to decades and enlarge as the headwall retreats. With observed increases in RTS number, rates and sizes in recent decades, there is a need to understand these highly dynamic landforms, however there is a general lack of detailed field observations of RTSs. We monitored 3 RTS for over half of the 2017 thaw period by setting up and tracking survey transects on a near daily basis. We correlated mean daily and cumulative retreat to mean daily air temperature (MDAT), total daily precipitation (TDP) and thawing degree days (TDD) using various polynomial regressions and Pearson correlation techniques. Our results show that July retreat was highly variable and periods of increased RTS retreat did not always align with periods of increased air temperature. Also, multiple periods of increased retreat could occur within a single period of increased air temperature. These retreat trends were observed to be largely driven by sediment redistribution in the RTS floor. Retreat rates decreased suddenly in early August, indicating a threshold of either air temperature, solar radiation or a combination of both must be reached for increased retreat rates. There was a statistically significant correlation between daily mean and mean cumulative retreat with MDAT (p < 0.001) and TDD (p < 0.001 and < 0.0001) but not with TDP. Correlating mean cumulative retreat and cumulative TDD using polynomial regression (quadratic and cubic) generated R<sup>2 </sup>values greater than 0.99 for all 3 sites as these variables account for past and current conditions within the monitoring period, as well as lag responses of retreat. This suggests the potential of accurately modelling RTS retreat with minimal field data (air temperature and headwall position), however this is currently restricted to individual RTSs and only within short time scales. We tested this idea by modelling 2 weeks of cumulative retreat in 2018 for 2 of our sites we monitored using the 2017 regression equations. Percent prediction error was 8% at one site and 16% at the other. Monitoring RTS on a daily scale allows RTS behaviour and trends to be identified that may be obscured at annual time scales. With the widespread increased numbers of RTSs being observed around the Arctic, understanding their dynamics is critical as these landforms impact surrounding ecosystems and infrastructure which will be exacerbated with climate change.  </p>

Construction and Reconstruction of Sacred Space in Vārānasī

Numen ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Bakker
Keyword(s):  
Sacred Space ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Capital ◽  
Significant Discrepancy ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
The Town

AbstractIt is widely believed that Vārānasī (Benares) ranks among the oldest holy cities on earth. Archaeological and textual sources, however, begin only to testify to the construction of sacred space in the first millennium AD. A significant discrepancy is found between the archaeological data (mainly seals) and early textual sources belonging to the 5th to 8th centuries. While seals provide us with the names of temples that apparently were frequented by the ordinary pilgrim, the oldest Māhātmya text that has recently become available, three chapters of the ‘original’ Skandapurāna, depicts Vārānasī as a place of ascetics and yogis. The spheres of devotion and world-renouncing are further complicated in the 11th and 12th centuries, when Vārānasī is made the political capital of the Gāhadavāla dynasty. Inscriptions reveal yet another dimension of sacred space, that of state ritual. After the destruction of the town by the Muslim conquerors, a process of reconstruction sets in during the 13th and 14th centuries, resulting eventually in the sacred Vārānasī as we know it today.

Public Engagement in Public Transportation Projects

2015 ◽  
Vol 2537 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey M. Casello ◽  
Will Towns ◽  
Julie Bélanger ◽  
Sanathan Kassiedass
Keyword(s):  
Public Engagement ◽  
Public Transportation ◽  
Wide Spectrum ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Daily Basis ◽  
Light Rail ◽  
Transit Planning ◽  
Public Investments ◽  
Direct Benefits ◽  
In Transit

Public participation for transit projects faces a number of unique challenges compared with many other similar public investments. For example, a smaller subset of the community uses transit on a daily basis as compared with highways; moreover, public transit is seen to be limited—both spatially and demographically—in its appeal. Combined, these factors can limit the widespread engagement of the public in the development and evaluation of transit projects. Further, given the lack of direct benefits from transit, it is often more difficult to garner public support for public transport projects. Specific considerations and techniques are demonstrated that can be undertaken by planners and policy makers to actively engage the community beyond those strongly in favor of or opposed to a transit project. Strategies employed in the Region of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, in the context of public engagement before the introduction of light-rail transit are explored. In light of these strategies and the experiences of planners in Waterloo and in conjunction with evidence from the literature, a number of conclusions are drawn regarding an effective framework for engaging a wide spectrum of community members in transit planning.

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