Hinduisms and Histories in Nepal

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Vantine Birkenholtz
Keyword(s):  
Political History ◽  
One Dimensional ◽  
High Caste ◽  
Political Narrative ◽  
Devotional Practices ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many

Chapter 1 introduces Nepal’s popular Svasthānī tradition: the goddess Svasthānī, the Svasthānīvratakathā text that Nepali Hindus recite annually, and the Svasthānī vrat (ritual vow) that is described in the text and performed annually to honor the goddess. Both Nepal’s Newar Hindus and high-caste (Brahman and Chetri) hill Hindus, Parbatiyās, participate in these devotional practices, and have influenced in different ways the many stories that the Svasthānīvratakathā contains within its pages. The chapter also enumerates the theoretical concerns that fuel the book, such as the tensions between local (Newar) and translocal (Brahmanical Hindu) influences, and the methodology that underpins it. Finally, the chapter maps out in very broad strokes a general political history of Nepal that subsequent chapters in this book reinvigorate with a focused discussion of concurrent religious, sociocultural, literary, and linguistic developments that round out Nepal’s often one-dimensional master political narrative.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rembert Lutjeharms
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Political History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Poetry And Poetics ◽  
Sanskrit Poetics ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sanskrit Poetry ◽  
The Way

This chapter introduces the main themes of the book—Kavikarṇapūra, theology, Sanskrit poetry, and Sanskrit poetics—and provides an overview of each chapter. It briefly highlights the importance of the practice of poetry for the Caitanya Vaiṣṇava tradition, places Kavikarṇapūra in the (political) history of sixteenth‐century Bengal and Orissa as well as sketches his place in the early developments of the Caitanya Vaiṣṇava tradition (a topic more fully explored in Chapter 1). The chapter also reflects more generally on the nature of both his poetry and poetics, and highlights the way Kavikarṇapūra has so far been studied in modern scholarship.

Pandora’s Blocks

2020 ◽  
pp. 11-30
Author(s):  
Jack Parkin
Keyword(s):  
Short History ◽  
Key Stakeholders ◽  
Political Economies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Technical Functions ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The Many

Chapter 1 opens the lid on Bitcoin so that all of its attributes, problems, and connotations come spilling out. At the same time, it pulls these disparate strands back into focus by outlining the many discrepancies examined in subsequent chapters. So while in some ways the chapter acts like a primer for cryptocurrencies, blockchains, and their political economies, the material laid out works to set up the book’s underlying argument: asymmetric concentrations of power inevitably form though processes of algorithmic decentralisation. In the process, a short history of Bitcoin introduces some of its key stakeholders as well as some of its core technical functions.

Land Rent, Peasant Migration, and Political Power in Yao Cun, 1911–1937

1982 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Thaxton
Keyword(s):  
Political Power ◽  
Political History ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Henan Province ◽  
Modern China ◽  
Land Rent ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Village

In April of 1980 I was received by the Henan Province History Research Institute of the Henan Province Chinese Academy of Social Sciences to begin the first systematic oral political history project on peasant revolution in modern China. The focus of this project is on the problems of livelihood faced by the peasants of Lin county and several other counties in the pre-Liberation period, roughly 1911–49. In May I began an investigation of the history of rural Lin county and the village of Yao Cun, Lin county, Henan. In this essay I will sketch the general social and political history of Yao village in Republican years, and then draw from my preliminary field research to explain the relationship between land rent, the impoverishment of peasant smallholders, and political power in pre-Liberation China in one North China village. This relationship has received minimal emphasis in the literature on peasantry and change in pre-1949 China. One of the many reasons for this has been the tendency of past scholarship to stress the critically important role of the ‘middle peasant village’ in the Chinese revolution. The evidence from Yao cun offers a slight qualification of this middle peasant thesis.

Introduction

The Rohingya ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Nasir Uddin
Keyword(s):  
Literature Review ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Political History ◽  
Logical Analysis ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
Extensive Literature Review ◽  
History Of ◽  
Central Argument

Chapter 1 grounds a foundation to enter into the realm of the Rohingyas with a critical reconsideration of the ethnic, regional, and political history of the Arakan/Rakhine State across time. It lays down the central argument of the book with an extensive literature review on the Rohingyas in particular and the stateless people, refugees, asylum seekers, and transborder mobility in general. It critically discusses the theoretical and scholarly contributions to the field of refugee, stateless, and citizenship studies and finds that there is a theoretical inadequacy and academic vacuum in understanding the critical conditionalities of what the Rohingyas have been living through for decades. In order to fill up this vacuum and meet the scholarly needs, this chapter proposes a new theoretical alternative along with an empirically informed analysis which has been substantiated by rich ethnographic details and solid logical analysis in the following chapters to establish the idea of ‘subhuman’ life.

scholarly journals The Myth of Perfect Fidelity

2021 ◽  
pp. 16-43
Author(s):  
Melle Jan Kromhout
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Noise Reduction ◽  
Random Noise ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Sound Media ◽  
The Many ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Chapter 1 gives a brief history of the noise of sound media from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century, tracing the development of different concepts of noise in dialogue with and reaction to ever more complex and sophisticated technologies. It explores the many ways in which inventors, engineers, producers, and musicians have sought to prevent, reduce, and eliminate this noise. The chapter thereby draws the contours of a myth of perfect fidelity or the idea that reproduced sound can in principle be separated from the noise of the medium and complete similitude between original and copy can be achieved. This myth is illustrated by two examples of noise-related technologies: Dolby analog noise reduction, which actively reduces the noise of sound media, and the counterintuitive practice of “dithering” in digital recording, by means of which small amounts of random noise are introduced to reduce digitization errors.

Roman history and the ideological vacuum

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. P. Wiseman
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Roman Republic ◽  
Political History ◽  
Roman History ◽  
The Political ◽  
History Of ◽  
Concepts Of Democracy ◽  
The Many

For the twentieth century, the political history of Athens was essentially ideological, involving great issues of freedom and tyranny, while that of the Roman Republic was merely a struggle for power, with no significant ideological content. But why should that be? The Romans were perfectly familiar with the concepts and terminology of Greek political philosophy and used them to describe their own politics, as Cicero explains in writing in 56 bc. Not surprisingly. Greek authors who dealt with Roman politics used the concepts of democracy and oligarchy, the rule of the many or the rule of the best, without any sense that it was an inappropriate idiom.

Fancy

2020 ◽  
pp. 19-45
Author(s):  
Alexandra J. Finley
Keyword(s):  
Reproductive Labor ◽  
The Past ◽  
Enslaved Women ◽  
Boarding House ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many

Chapter 1 tells the history of Corinna Hinton, an enslaved woman who had children with the man who enslaved her, slave trader Silas Omohundro, in Richmond, Virginia, to consider the lives of women caught in the so-called fancy trade, or the sale of enslaved women for sex. Omohundro paid Hinton for clothing the enslaved people he jailed; Hinton also ran the boarding house connected to his slave jail, cooking, sewing, doing laundry, and running errands for boarders. Hinton's experiences highlight the many forms that women's socially reproductive labor could take under capitalism: enslaved and free, waged and unwaged. The chapter draws primarily on financial records to uncover Hinton's life, highlighting the ways in which the archive limits the stories historians can and cannot write about the past.

The Hum of Progress: Motorcars and the Modernization of West Africa

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindsey B. Green-Simms
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
West Africa ◽  
World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many

Chapter 1 focuses on the history of motorization from the colonial moment to the decolonizing decades following World War II. Examining various events or episodes alongside key literary and cinematic texts, this chapter explores the many ambivalences and conflicts present in the process of motorization. The chapter also discuss how African entrepreneurs took the lead in importing automobiles and establishing a system of transportation while Europeans were often ambivalent or even hostile to the idea of motorizing Africa.

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