Flesh and Bones

2020 ◽  
pp. 180-190
Author(s):  
Nicolas Bommarito

This chapter discusses how many techniques in Buddhism involve reflecting in detail on physical bodies, both an individual’s own and those of others. These techniques typically emphasize the disgusting and repulsive aspects of each part of the human body. They also reveal ways in which the individual relates to their own body and subtle ways they are attracted to or repulsed by those of others. In traditional sources, women's bodies in particular are singled out for reflection and represented as impure and undesirable. As modern readers, this is one place where people are forced to consider the context of canonical Buddhist texts: Many were written by and for celibate monks in a cultural context where heterosexuality was assumed as the norm and women's status in society was far from equal to men's. There is no denying that today, such practices as written reinforce harmful body image norms and sexist attitudes. However, rather than pretending that such texts and practices do not exist, we are better off thinking about the underlying purpose of such reflections. This allows us to face up to uncomfortable historical facts while also illuminating how such practices might be adapted to be relevant in our own circumstances.

2011 ◽  
Vol 43 (5) ◽  
pp. 513-533 ◽  
Author(s):  
SUNITA BOSE

SummaryThis study uses the third National Family Health Survey (2005–06) in India to investigate whether differences in women's status, both at the individual and community levels, can explain the persistent gender differential in nutritional allocation among children. The results show that girls are less likely than boys to receive supplemental food and more likely to be malnourished. In general it appears that higher women's status within a community, as well as higher maternal status, have beneficial effects on a daughter's nutritional status. Further, the moderating effects of community appear to be more consistent and stronger than the individual-level characteristics. A positive relationship between the percentage of literate women in a community and the gender differential in malnutrition appears to be an exception to the general findings regarding the beneficial nature of women's status on a daughter's well-being, showing the need for more than just basic adult literacy drives in communities to overcome the problem of daughter neglect.


1996 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla Makhlouf Obermeyer

SummaryThis paper investigates the normative and behavioural dimensions of son preference in Morocco and Tunisia, using data from the Demographic and Health Surveys of the two countries. It considers three measures of son preference: (1) mothers' ideal number of children, and any preference for having more sons than daughters; (2) the desire for additional children, given their existing family; (3) reported use of contraception in relation to the existing number of children of each sex. The analyses indicate a moderate preference for sons in both countries, and suggest that this preference is somewhat stronger in Tunisia. These findings are interpreted within the cultural context of the two countries, and in particular societal notions of women's status.


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 133-146
Author(s):  
Miroslav Zelinský ◽  
Ivana Bulanda

The contribution is a consideration of the role of a human body in personal, physical reflections, in the field of art and in media space. The presented text is a thought starting point for a scientific study of the role and forms of the human body in contemporary advertising. In contemporary modern society, there is an increasing interest in the appearance and presentation of the body in its female or male modality. Body image is a complex, dynamic and multidimensional aspect of an individual’s personality, determined by a number of individual and socio-cultural factors. Body image creation takes place under the influence and experience of information and it can change throughout life. The perception of body image is linked to the general ideas that the culture connects with the ideal form of the body. It is not only a mental image, but also includes an assessment component, an attitude based on cognitive schemes and emotional processing of information with which the individual is confronted


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 78-87
Author(s):  
Petru TĂRCHILĂ

Judicial psychology is the science that analyzes and tries to understand the criminal phenomenon in general and its determinant factor in particular, by the complexity of factors that generate it and by the diversity of its forms of manifestation. Although the determining factor of criminal behavior is always subjective being generated by the psychic of the offender, this aspect must be correlated with the context in which it manifests itself: social, economic, cultural context etc. Judicial psychology investigates the behavior of the individual in all its aspects, seeking a scientific explanation of the mechanisms and factors enhancing criminal favors, thus enabling the identification of the preventive measures to be taken to reduce the categories of offenses. It studies the psycho-behavioral profile of the offender, identifying the causes that determined its behavior in order to take preventive measures.The domain of judicial psychology is mainly deviance, conduct that departs from the moral or legal norms that are dominant in a given culture. The object of judicial psychology is the criminal act, correlated with the psychosocial characteristics of the participants in the judicial action (offender, victim, witness, investigator, magistrate, lawyer, civil party, educator, etc.). The science of judicial psychology also analyzes how these characteristics appear and manifest themselves in concrete and special conditions of their interaction in three phases of the criminal act: the pre-criminal phase, the actual criminal phase and the post-criminal phase.


1995 ◽  
Vol 34 (4III) ◽  
pp. 1025-1039 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasmeen Mohiuddln

The purpose of the present paper is to formulate a composite index of the status of women and to rank both developed and developing countries on the basis of that index. This index is presented as an alternative or complement to the current status of women index, published by the Population Crisis Committee (PCC) and used by the World Bank and the United Nations, which focuses on indicators measuring health, education, employment, marriage and childbearing, and social equality. The paper argues that these indicators have a poverty-bias and measure women's status in terms of structural change rather than in terms of their welfare vis-ii-vis men. The PCC index is also based on the implicit assumption that women's status in developing countries ought to be defined in a similar way as in developed countries, thus including primarily only those indicators which are more relevant for developed countries. To remedy these defects, the paper presents an alternative composite index, hereafter labelled the Alternative Composite (AC) index, based on many more indicators reflecting women's issues in both developed and developing countries. The results of the statistical analysis show that the ranking of countries based on the AC index is significantly different from the PCC index.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document