The Many Faces of a Himalayan Goddess

Author(s):  
Ehud Halperin

Haḍimbā is a major village goddess in the Kullu Valley of the West Indian Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh, a mountainous, rural area known as the Land of Gods. This book is an ethnographic study of Haḍimbā and her dynamic, mutually formative relationship with her community of followers. It explores the part played by the goddess in her devotees’ lives, particularly in their encounters with players, powers, and ideas both local and external, such as invading royal forces, colonial forms of knowledge, and, more recently, modernity, capitalism, tourism, and ecological change. Haḍimbā is revealed as a complex social agent, a dynamic ritual and conceptual compound, which both mirrors her devotees and serves as a platform for them to reflect on, debate, give meaning to, and sometimes resist their changing realities. The goddess herself, it emerges, also changes in the process. Drawing on diverse ethnographic and textual materials gathered during periods of extensive fieldwork from 2009 to 2017, this study is rich with myths, accounts of dramatic rituals, and descriptions of everyday life in the region. The book employs an interdisciplinary approach to tell the story of Haḍimbā from the ground up, or rather from the center out, portraying the goddess in varying contexts that radiate outward from her temple to local, regional, national, and indeed global spheres. The resulting account makes an important contribution to the study of Indian village goddesses, lived Hinduism, Himalayan Hinduism, and the rapidly growing field of religion and ecology.

Author(s):  
Frederick C. Beiser

The Jewish writings of these final years develop themes of the earlier years. Cohen continues to explore one of his favorite topics: the affinity of German and Jewish character. Despite his cosmopolitan conception of Judaism, Cohen still thought that the Jews were most at home in Germany. Yet, despite his belief in the special affinity between Germans and Jews, Cohen still shows his cosmopolitanism by his sympathy for the Ostjuden; he maintains that they should be freed from the many immigration controls imposed on them. Cohen continues to worry about the growing weakening of Jewish communities in Germany, and argues, as Socrates did in the Crito, that people have a special obligation to stay within the communities which nurtured them. In a remarkable 1916 lecture on Plato and the prophets Cohen argues that they are the two major ethical voices in the Western world: Plato gave the West a rational form while the prophets gave it moral content. Cohen now reduces his earlier striving for a unity of religions down to the demand for a unity of conscience.


Author(s):  
Jane S. Gerber

Sephardi identity has meant different things at different times, but has always entailed a connection with Spain, from which the Jews were expelled in 1492. While Sephardi Jews have lived in numerous cities and towns throughout history, certain cities had a greater impact on the shaping of their culture. This book focuses on those that may be considered most important, from Cordoba in the tenth century to Toledo, Venice, Safed, Istanbul, Salonica, and Amsterdam at the dawn of the seventeenth century. Each served as a venue in which a particular dimension of Sephardi Jewry either took shape or was expressed in especially intense form. Significantly, these cities were mostly heterogeneous in their population and culture — half of them under Christian rule and half under Muslim rule — and this too shaped the Sephardi worldview and attitude. While Sephardim cultivated a distinctive identity, they felt at home in the cultures of their adopted lands. The book demonstrates that Sephardi history and culture have always been multifaceted. The book's interdisciplinary approach captures the many contexts in which the life of the Jews from Iberia unfolded, without either romanticizing the past or diluting its reality.


Antiquity ◽  
1928 ◽  
Vol 2 (7) ◽  
pp. 328-336
Author(s):  
F. Wildte

The Scandinavian peoples emerge into the light of history much later than their neighbours in the South and the West, the Teutons on the Continent and in England. It was only through the Viking raids that the Nordic peoples came into touch with the rest of Europe, and were gradually converted to Christianity. Long after the introduction of the Christian faith they preserved many peculiar and archaic traits. Thus the Nordic peoples retained, with great tenacity and conservatism, their ancient judicial system. This system has therefore been the object of considerable interest even outside Scandinavia, although the manuscripts through which it has become known are much later than the corresponding documents of other Teutonic nations.An investigation of the localities where justice was dispensed in former ages is of importance not only for the history of civilization, but also as a complement to the study of oral and written tradition, and thus to the history of law itself. In view of the many points of similarity between the judicial systems of the various Teutonic nations, some notes on the Thing-steads, or places of assembly, in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, may perhaps be of interest to English-speaking readers.


1930 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 883-887
Author(s):  
George A. Grierson

In the Linguistic Survey of India the language spoken in the Western Panjāb is called Lahndā. Previously it had, in India, not been recognized as any independent form of speech, the many local dialects there spoken—Mūltānī, Sirāikī, Hindkī, Jaṭkī, and so on—being looked upon merely as so many dialects of Panjābī. Panjābīs themselves had no general name for this group as a separate entity. When they wished to express that idea they employed a periphrasis, such as Lahndē-dī bōlī, or “ the dialect of the West ”.European scholars, however, had by that time long recognized the fact that a general name for the whole group was needed, and more than forty years ago one of the first describers of the language, Mr. Tisdall, named it “ the Lahindā ”, i.e. Lahndā, “ dialect.” I am not especially enamoured, myself, of this name, but as it had not been challenged for some thirty years, as it was not inconsistent with English idiom, and as no better name had been suggested, I employed it in the Survey.


Author(s):  
Shanthi Thomas

Teacher empowerment, as a process that enables teachers’ intrinsic motivation and brings out their innate potential, is of critical importance in modern times. However, the teacher empowerment construct in existing education literature originated in the west, and its dimensions are aligned to the western cultural scenario. The purpose of this study was to understand the behaviours of school leaders, teacher colleagues, students as well as their parents, and themselves, that teachers perceived as empowerment-facilitating and/or empowerment impeding. This study took place in a secondary school in Brunei Darussalam, a private secondary school. This study was designed as a ‘focused ethnography’, a methodological adaptation of the conventional anthropological ethnography. Fieldwork took place over a span of six months. The study concluded that teacher empowerment is relevant to non-western contexts, only if it is adapted to the contextual cultures. Finally, this study asserted that teacher empowerment is a self-driven phenomenon, and that the contextual culture decided the nature and extent of empowerment that can possibly take place in a particular setting.


2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 263-284
Author(s):  
Christopher Roy Fraser Jenkins ◽  
◽  
Barbara Sydney Parris ◽  

We outline the phytogeographical relations of Turkish pteridophytes following revision of our previous check-list. Although mainly European, the Turkish fern-flora has c. 40% of its species and subspecies in common with or related to the West Himalayan European phytogeographical element. In the pteridophyte accounts of the recent Illustrated Flora of Turkey, it is clear that many specimens have been misidentified and various species incorrectly illustrated. In addition the extensive Turkish pteridophyte collections in international herbaria made by non-Turkish collectors, including those of the present first author, were not drawn upon and international consultation was intentionally not entered into. Although it is unfortunately not possible in the present circumstances to study and re-identify the great bulk of authentic specimens in Turkish herbaria cited in the Flora, we have reassessed some important records and corrected the many obvious anomalies in the Flora and we have added to the distributional data from our own critically studied collections. We therefore present an updated and taxonomically revised checklist with notes and additional distributions, including a few taxa overlooked in the Flora. We also treat the important subspecies which were omitted there. A new hybrid Asplenium and another of Cystopteris are described and a few necessary new combinations are made.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-278
Author(s):  
Melissa Finn ◽  
Eid Mohamed ◽  
Bessma Momani

When transnationally constructed art forms, such as the works of diasporic cultural productions of Arabs in the West, are made available in open-source on a digital archive, this supports the transnational flow or exchange of citizenship-enhancing ideas, skill-sets, technologies, tools, capacities, and practices. In this theoretical investigation, we explore imagined outcomes when new audiences can engage with diasporic cultural productions of Arabs. Digital archiving of ethnically diverse cultural productions can expand civility, solidarity, and common ground among people; these latter behaviors are the ideational foundations of agency-based claims of transnational citizenship. Such cultural productions help to reconfigure the questions, opportunities, and nature of political and social agency in ways that empower diaspora communities and expand their abilities to make citizenship claims in multiple societies. This is what the Internet enables despite its tendency towards parochialism in globalized pockets. Moreover, we highlight the possibilities of open-source digital archiving—with a focus on literature, poetry, biographies, and letters—for agency-based claims of citizenship and the many caveats that require further attention and consideration.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1963 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 319-325
Author(s):  
S. Z. LEVINE

THERE ARE A number of reasons why I appreciate deeply your invitation to join in these dedication exercises of the Clinical Research Center for Premature Infants. This Center for the care and study of premature infants extends to the West Coast a field of study in which I, on the East Coast, have been interested for many years. Equally gratifying is the circumstance that it will have Dr. Norman Kretchmer, my long-time colleague and good friend, as its Principle Investigator; and Dr. Sumner Yaffe, his distinguished associate, as its first Program Director. Under their direction and with a team of competent workers, with splendid facilities and an adequate budget, we are assured of imaginative exploration and new approaches to the many unknowns still awaiting solution.


2012 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 231-237 ◽  
Author(s):  
KH Woldendorp ◽  
W van Gils

There are many musicians with acquired limitations in making music, and there are many people with a disability who would like to play a music instrument in a modified way. There is discouragingly little information about this topic in literature. This article gives an overview of “making music in a modified way.” It focuses on the possibilities for musicians with one-handed functionality to overcome problems with regards to their physical condition, insufficient muscle strength, or missing parts of the upper extremity. Five categories of possibilities for the functional one-handed musicians are described: 1) one-hand reconstructed instruments, 2) one-hand compositions, 3) adaptations of the instrument for the other hand, 4) prostheses to make it possible to play with both hands/arms, and 5) other techniques which enable the use of the leg(s). The solutions described make clear that playing music in an adaptive way requires an interdisciplinary approach. The purpose of this article is to inform, and to inspire, the healthcare professional about the many possibilities for functional one-handed musicians.


2011 ◽  
pp. 1991-1998
Author(s):  
Amy B. Woszczynski ◽  
Janette Moody

The role of women in technology-related fields began with promising contributions from pioneers like Grace Hopper. In recent years, women have moved away from information technology (IT) fields, and the number of women selecting IT majors in universities continues to decline. Likewise, the number of women employed in the IT workforce remains low and declining. Researchers have recognized the problem and have investigated the many reasons for low participation of women in IT-related fields. Researchers have proposed various interventions to fill the pipeline and retain women in computing. In this chapter, we provide an overview of the current state of women in IT. We focus on girls and women at various life stages, from early education to the IT workplace. We also provide a discussion of the various methods and appropriate interventions that may be employed to encourage women to become empowered users of technology worldwide. We use a broad definition of IT, which includes computer science (CS), computer engineering, information systems (IS), information technology (IT), and related professional fields. By examining research from multiple technologyrelated fields, we gain a clearer picture of the many ways that women may participate in IT. Recent research on gender and IT has used an interdisciplinary approach, which has greatly expanded our potential for understanding why women decide not to pursue IT-related fields and how to implement appropriate interventions. Researchers from topics as diverse as IS, psychology, social sciences, education, and feminism, have taken a distinctive approach to understanding why women are not better represented in the IT workplace. We believe this broad, interdisciplinary approach has great potential to understand motivations for women pursuing IT-related careers. As Trauth & Niederman (2006, p. 8) said, “…the IT profession is challenged with meeting the demand to enlarge the IT workforce by recruiting and retaining personnel from historically underrepresented groups.” This chapter looks at women in IT, shedding light on one historically underrepresented group.


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