Caste and Nature

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mukul Sharma
Keyword(s):  
Social Entity ◽  
Environmental Discourses ◽  
Environmental Thought ◽  
Critical Challenge

Rarely do Indian environmental discourses examine nature through the lens of caste. Whereas nature is considered as universal and inherent, caste is understood as a constructed historical and social entity. Mukul Sharma shows how caste and nature are intimately connected. He compares Dalit meanings of environment to ideas and practices of neo-Brahmanism and certain mainstreams of environmental thought. Showing how Dalit experiences of environment are ridden with metaphors of pollution, impurity, and dirt, the author is able to bring forth new dimensions on both environment and Dalits, without valourizing the latter’s standpoint. Rather than looking for a coherent understanding of their ecology, the book explores the diverse and rich intellectual resources of Dalits, such as movements, songs, myths, memories, and metaphors around nature. These reveal their quest to define themselves in caste-ridden nature and building a form of environmentalism free from the burdens of caste. The Dalits also pose a critical challenge to Indian environmentalism, which has, until now, marginalized such linkages between caste and nature.

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick D. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Natural Resource ◽  
Global Media ◽  
The Core ◽  
Environmental Discourses ◽  
Environmental Thought ◽  
The Face ◽  
Contemporary Media ◽  
Market Driven

The conclusion digests the main issues explored in the previous chapters. The core argument put forward is that the global media landscape that materialized at the end of the twentieth century has become a central mediator of eco-consciousness around the globe. This landscape is defined primary by the Promethean discourse, which assumes that growth is perpetual and that individuals operating within the market have the agency to solve any and all environmental problems. This discourse is problematic when considered in the face of anthropogenic climate change and declining natural resource reserves. However, even powerful discourses co-produced and are hence not immune to challenges. This means that alternative environmental discourses can be found within market driven media, suggesting that while the contemporary media commons is the domain of non-ecologically responsive normative trends, its also offers openings for more progressive environmental thought and action.

Eco-casteism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mukul Sharma
Keyword(s):  
Rural Development ◽  
Caste System ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Religious Ecology ◽  
Environmental Discourses ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Environmental Thought

This chapter examines some of the significant lines of environmental conceptions in India since the 1980s. It pays critical attention to caste and its expression or marginalization in environmental discourses. It attempts to show how Brahmanical religious traditions and their arguments have had a powerful resonance in India’s dominant environmental leanings. It intermeshes these with some of the recent criticisms made by Dalit scholars regarding India’s environmental thought. Through the particular case study of Sulabh International (founded by Bindeshwar Pathak), a prominent organization working on sanitation and rural development, the chapter further shows how a noteworthy, well-intentioned, and much celebrated environmental initiative for the abolition of scavenging (which is deeply related to the Hindu caste system) in India assumes a Hindu religious ecology.

Barbara Hammer's Jane Brakhage

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 67-94
Author(s):  
Jennifer Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Short Film ◽  
Nonfiction Film ◽  
Feminist Thought ◽  
Environmental Thought ◽  
Stan Brakhage ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Creative Life

This essay analyzes Barbara Hammer's 1974 experimental nonfiction film Jane Brakhage. Both an homage and a rebuttal to the many films of Jane Brakhage made by her husband, Stan Brakhage, Hammer's film gives Jane the voice she never had in Stan's work. The article contextualizes Jane Brakhage's production at a moment when competing strands of feminist thought took different approaches to the fraught topic of nature. Hammer's films were criticized as essentialist by feminists in the 1980s, but this essay argues that Jane Brakhage complicates that reading of Hammer's work. The film documents Jane's creative life in the mountains, but critiques the limitations of her role as a heterosexual wife and mother. By locating this short film within a larger genealogy of feminist and environmental thought, we can better appreciate the extent to which Hammer's films explore the feminist and queer potential of nature.

Implementasi Strategi Bisnis dan Korporasi Melalui Merger dan Akuisisi

2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-81
Author(s):  
Suwinto Johan
Keyword(s):  
Common Goal ◽  
Social Entity

Setiap manusia selalu ingin bertumbuh dan berkembang ke arah yang lebih baik dari waktu ke waktu. Manusia bisa bertumbuh secara pribadi dengan meraih kehidupan yang lebih baik melalui berkarya dan belajar, Sebagai makluk sosial, manusia berkembang biak melalui pertemanan dan interaksi dengan lingkungannya, hingga menghasilkan turunannya. Begitu juga dengan sebuah organisasi yang merupakan kumpulan dari manusia-manusia yang berinteraksi guna mencapai sebuah tujuan. Menurut Stephen P Robbins (1990) organization is a consciously coordinted social entity, with a relatively identifiable boundary, that functions on relatively continous basis to achieve a common goal or set of goals. Common goal or set of goals di dunia bisnis atau tujuan sebuah perusahaan adalah memaksimunkan nilai perusahaan dengan salah satunya adalah untuk memperoleh keuntungan yang maksimun dalam menjalankan usahanya. Selain bertumbuh secara organik, perusahaan juga akan bertumbuh secara non-organik atau yang dikenal dengan melalui merger dan akuisisi seperti manusia melalui perkawinan. Akan tetapi, sama seperti manusia, organisasi juga tidak terlepas dari lingkungannya. Selama abad 20, perubahan lingkungan telah menjadi semakin kompleks dan yang belum dikenal sebelumnya baik dari segi jumlah perubahan yang terjadi maupun tingkat kecepatan perubahan itu sendiri (Ansoff, 1990).

Physical activity and cognitive function in older persons

2016 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Cognitive Impairment ◽  
Cognitive Function ◽  
Executive Functions ◽  
Cognitive Aging ◽  
Clinical Studies ◽  
Older Persons ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
Critical Challenge

Strategies to improve cognitive aging are highly needed. Among those, promotion of exercise and physical activity appears as one of the most attractive and beneficial intervention. Indeed, results from basic and clinical studies suggest that exercise and physical activity have positive effects on cognition in older persons without cognitive impairment, as well as in those with dementia. Despite inconsistent results, aerobic exercise appears to have the strongest potential to enhance cognition. However, even limited periods of walking (45 minutes, three times a week, over a 6-month period) have also been shown to enhance cognition, particularly executive functions. Changing long-term lifestyle habits in these older persons remains a critical challenge and attractive programs susceptible to gain adherence are needed to succeed in achieving improved cognitive aging.

Legal and regulative foundation of securing the development of consolidated territorial communities in conditions of decentralization

2019 ◽  
pp. 16-19
Author(s):  
Oryslava Korkuna ◽  
Ivan Korkuna ◽  
Oleh Tsilnyk
Keyword(s):  
Development Strategy ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
Legal Regulation ◽  
Major Elements ◽  
The Development Strategy ◽  
Social Entity ◽  
European Standards ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
State Regional

Development of a territorial community requires efficient use of its capacity taking into account all possible aspects in the course of elaboration and implementation of the development strategy and other local legal and regulative documents. The approach is directly related to maintaining the living activity of a territorial community and should correspond to the interests of population and European standards of state regional policy. In addition to the definition of a community provided by the Law of Ukraine “On Local Governance in Ukraine”, there are also some other. For example, some authors understand territorial community as a single natural and social entity that operates in spatial boundaries of a state and realizes daily needs and interests of population. The paper aims to analyze legal and regulative foundation of the development of territorial communities in conditions of decentralization. The authors analyze current condition of legal and regulative maintenance of local governance reforming in Ukraine in conditions of decentralization of authorities. The paper argues that the major elements of management strategy in CTCs in Ukraine are independence, efficiency, management innovations, quicker and more substantiated decision-making and everything to meet the needs of community’s residents. Management of this sector is grounded on the principles of the provisions of European Charter of Local Self-Government that provides for decentralization of authorities and transfer of resources and responsibilities to local governments. Liabilities of local governments (of consolidated territorial communities) and the mayors are analyzed. The authors prove that in general legal provision of decentralization of local governance corresponds to European requirements and creates reliable ground for practical stage of the reform. The list of issues that require further legal regulation is outlined.

African Sustainability Advocacy Against Extractivism

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Bond
Keyword(s):  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Fossil Fuels ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Social Activism ◽  
Ecological Factors ◽  
Energy Economics ◽  
Extractive Industries ◽  
The One ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Critical Challenge

<p class="p1"><span class="s2"><strong>Abstract </strong></span>| The challenge of interdisciplinary intellectual and strategic work in the extractive industries is particularly acute at the interface of research and social activism. Numerous social movements which are dedicated to sustainability fail to ‘connect the dots’ between their campaigns and broader political-economic and political-ecological visions<span class="s3"><strong>. </strong></span>This is becoming a critical challenge in Africa, where the extreme damage done by mining and fossil fuels has generated impressive resistance<span class="s3"><strong>.</strong></span>However, the one obvious place to link these critiques from African activists was the Alternative Mining Indaba in Cape Town in February 2015, and a survey of narratives at that event leads to pessimism about interdisciplinary politics. The potential for much greater impact and deeper critiques of unsustainable extractivism lies in greater attention to combining social reproduction and production (as do eco-feminists), and to tackling social, economic, political and ecological factors with a more explicit structuralist critique and practical toolkit<span class="s3"><strong>. </strong></span>Areas such as energy, economics and climate are ripe for linkages<span class="s3"><strong>. </strong></span>One reason for optimism is a climate justice declaration made by leading civil society activists in Maputo in April 2015.<strong></strong></p>

Ambedkar and Environmental Thought

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mukul Sharma
Keyword(s):  
Wide Range ◽  
Environmental Thought

Building on the previous chapter, which deals with a wide range of Dalit materials and writers, this chapter focuses primarily on Ambedkar’s views, and their relationship to Indian agrarian and environment traditions. While the previous chapter provided a mosaic of Dalit voices, this chapter concentrates on one figure, and his significance in the modern environment movement of the country. A deeply perceptive thinker, a trenchant opponent of caste Hinduism, and a fighter of Dalit liberation, Ambedkar’s environmental perspectives are central to Dalit ecological visions.

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