scholarly journals The ‘Public’ Indian Museum, Calcutta, 1858–1878

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-114
Author(s):  
Amit Kumar Gupta

The first museum to be set up in India in 1814 by the British Orientalists underwent a significant change when the Government of India took it over in 1858. The change was shaped by the experience of the great Indian uprising of 1857 to which, most importantly, the ordinary people (artisans, peasants, the unemployed etc.) rallied. Though the Raj succeeded eventually in suppressing the Revolt, its officials were deeply disturbed by the popular uprising and its effects. Policies were designed thereafter with these anxieties in mind—notably the one for running the museum in Calcutta. The authorities designed the museum as a ‘public’ space rather than as an ‘imperial’ edifice, and they hoped to get over their prolonged alienation from the masses by opening its doors to the ordinary people. This article examines the background and intent of the establishment of the Museum in Calcutta and its administration in the nineteenth century, with particular attention to the conception of the ‘public’ that underpinned it. It also outlines how the public in question responded to the museum.

Author(s):  
Aleksandr Solov'ev ◽  
Galina Pushkareva

As digital technologies develop, a new form of relations between the state and the public is developing as well. Additional opportunities for the expression of public interests and the establishment of values preferred by the society arise, new mechanisms of political mobilization develop, new forms of public organization and self-organization emerge, the social media gain more power, and local and general public narrative develop on a number of online platforms. With the digitization of the public space, the state is forced to change its communication strategies and improve the dialogue between the government and the society based on deliberative democracy principles. After analysing the architecture of public communication emerging in new conditions the paper concludes that Russia is making certain efforts to adapt for the new digitized reality. However, current state priorities are shifting towards e-government and the digital economy. On the one hand, it seems justified, as it allows to bring the public services to a completely new level, reduce corruption risks, and simplify state management of economic processes. On the other hand, the lack of due attention to the issues of openness of public administration and involvement of citizens in making public decisions results in accumulation of contradictions in the public area of public administration, as well as increasing mutual misunderstanding and distrust between the state bodies and the civil society, which may entail bursts of social discontent and protests.


Comunicar ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 13 (25) ◽  
Author(s):  
María-Magdalena da-Costa-Oliveira

To transform an individual pain into a collective feeling of suffering is a capacity of all mass media. However, television has, in this point, a tremendous power. The capacity to join millions of TV viewers in front of itself is its most admirable merit, but it’s also its most dreadful danger. Principally when the point are the human rights, as the right of privacy or the right of not suffer in the public space, the demand of quality appears not only as an obligation of the Government but also as a duty of citizenship of all TV viewers. Although it is not properly a novelty in some European countries, the existence of a TV Ombudsman2 will be a reality in Portugal only this year. The Government has approved a legal diploma to create this figure, which will evaluate the programming and information of the public channel RTP. As the ombudsmen of press that we already know, the TV Ombudsman will be the person who receives the critics and observations of TV viewers, evaluates them and writes about them an impression to the administration of the channel. Being a self-regulatory proceeding, the TV Ombudsman is fundamentally a mechanism that implicates citizens. It is not only an entity of vigilance on ethics of Television. It is essentially a platform of dialogue between journalists, programmers and TV viewers. As in the press, the Ombudsman is a mediator. Although it is probably not an absolute guarantee of quality, TV Ombudsman is surely an argument of citizens against the bad things diffused by the box that we believe is the one by which the most important of our lives goes trough. Transformar uma dor individual num sentimento colectivo de sofrimento é uma capacidade de todos os meios de massa. Todavia, a televisão tem a este título um poder tremendamente grande. A capacidade de reunir milhões de telespectadores à sua frente é o seu mais admirável mérito, mas também o seu mais temível perigo. Sobretudo quando estão em causa direitos humanos, como o direito à privacidade ou a não sofrer no espaço público, a procura de qualidade surge não somente como uma obrigação do governo como também como um dever de cidadania de todos os espectadores. Não sendo propriamente novidade em alguns países europeus, a existência do Provedor do Telespectador1 só será uma realidade em Portugal este ano. O governo aprovou um diploma para a criação desta figura que deverá avaliar a programação e a informação do canal público RTP. Como os provedores dos leitores que conhecemos, também o Provedor do Telespectador será a pessoa que receberá as críticas e as observações dos telespectadores, as avaliará e emitirá sobre elas um parecer para a administração do canal. Sendo um procedimento de auto-regulação, o Provedor do Telespectador é fundamentalmente uma entidade de vigilância da ética da televisão. Essencialmente é uma plataforma de diálogo entre jornalistas, programadores e telespectadores. Tal como na imprensa, o Provedor é um mediador. Ainda que não seja provavelmente uma garantia absoluta de qualidade, o Provedor do Telespectador é seguramente um argumento dos cidadãos contra os males difundidos pela caixa que se crê ser aquela por onde passa o mais importante das nossas vidas.


Author(s):  
N. Thyagaraju

The present seminar paper mainly highlight  the concept of  water pollution, causes of water pollution,  Its Effects, Elements of  pollutants, Methods  used to prevent the water pollution in environment  and the mandatory initiatives taken by the concerned authorities for prevention of  water pollution. Water   is essential for survival of all living organisms on the earth. Thus for human beings and plants to survive on land, water should be easily accessible. The term “Pollution” is generally refers to addition of any foreign body either living or non – living or deletion of anything that naturally exists. The basic Sources of Water pollution causes due to Culmination into lakes, rivers, ponds, seas, oceans etc. Domestic drainage and sanitary waste, Industrial drainage and sewage, Industrial waste from factories, Dumping of domestic garbage, Immersion of Idols made of plaster of Paris, Excess use of Insecticides , pesticides, fungicides, Chemical fertilizers, Soil erosion during heavy rains and floods, Natural disasters, tsunami etc. General pollutants  which are also caused for water pollution  which include Organic, Inorganic, and Biological entities, Insecticides, Pesticides, Disinfectants ,Detergents, Industrial solvents, Acids, Ammonia fertilizers, heavy metals, Harmful bacteria, Virus, Micro –Organisms and worms, Toxic chemicals. Agricultural lands become infertile and thereby production also drops, Spread of epidemic diseases like Cholera, Dysentery, Typhoid, Diarrhea, Hepatitis, Jaundice etc. The  basic responsibility of the Government, NGOs, National Pioneer scientific Research Institutions may conduct  research oriented programs on control of water pollution by create  awareness among the public through mass media and Environmental Education on recycling units,  and  water treatment plants must be established both at domestic levels and Industry levels, Every citizen must feel responsible to control water pollution. There have been many water pollution prevention acts that have been set up by the governments of the world. But these are not enough for permanent water pollution solutions. Each of us needs to take up the responsibility and do something at an everyday at individual level. Otherwise we can’t survive in a society forever in a future. 


Author(s):  
Jonathan Stutz

AbstractWith the present paper I would like to discuss a particular form of procession which we may term mocking parades, a collective ritual aimed at ridiculing cultic objects from competing religious communities. The cases presented here are contextualized within incidents of pagan/Christian violence in Alexandria between the 4th and 5th centuries, entailing in one case the destruction of the Serapeum and in another the pillaging of the Isis shrine at Menouthis on the outskirts of Alexandria. As the literary accounts on these events suggest, such collective forms of mockery played an important role in the context of mob violence in general and of violence against sacred objects in particular. However, while historiographical and hagiographical sources from the period suggest that pagan statues underwent systematic destruction and mutilation, we can infer from the archaeological evidence a vast range of uses and re-adaptation of pagan statuary in the urban space, assuming among other functions that of decorating public spaces. I would like to build on the thesis that the parading of sacred images played a prominent role in the discourse on the value of pagan statuary in the public space. On the one hand, the statues carried through the streets became themselves objects of mockery and violence, involving the population of the city in a collective ritual of exorcism. On the other hand, the images paraded in the mocking parades could also become a means through which the urban space could become subject to new interpretations. Entering in visual contact with the still visible vestiges of the pagan past, with the temples and the statuary of the city, the “image of the city” became affected itself by the images paraded through the streets, as though to remind the inhabitants that the still-visible elements of Alexandria’s pagan topography now stood as defeated witnesses to Christianity’s victory.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Weiss

Teylers Museum was founded in 1784 and soon thereafter became one of the most important centres of Dutch science. The Museum’s first director, Martinus van Marum, famously had the world’s largest electrostatic generator built and set up in Haarlem. This subsequently became the most prominent item in the Museum’s world-class, publicly accessible, and constantly growing collections. These comprised scientific instruments, mineralogical and palaeontological specimens, prints, drawings, paintings, and coins. Van Marum’s successors continued to uphold the institution’s prestige and use the collections for research purposes, while it was increasingly perceived as an art museum by the public. In the early twentieth century, the Nobel Prize laureate Hendrik Antoon Lorentz was appointed head of the scientific instrument collection and conducted experiments on the Museum’s premises. Showcasing Science: A History of Teylers Museum in the Nineteenth Century charts the history of Teylers Museum from its inception until Lorentz’ tenure. From the vantage point of the Museum’s scientific instrument collection, this book gives an analysis of the changing public role of Teylers Museum over the course of the nineteenth century.


Author(s):  
Gabriel Giorgi

Resumen: Distintas intervenciones desde prácticas activistas y culturales en torno al VIH escenifican poéticas y políticas del resto corporal en las que se juegan, por un lado, una reorganización de los modos en que se dramatiza en umbral entre lo vivo y lo muerto en lo público –redefiniendo así el tejido mismo de lo que llamamos “comunidad”—; y por otro, indican los modos en que estos activismos impulsan una disputa sobre los “marcos de temporalización” desde los cuales lo viviente se vuelve reconocible políticamente y donde la noción de supervivencia adquiere una centralidad decisiva. Combinando materiales heterogéneos el artículo busca iluminar los modos en que los activismos y las culturas en torno al VIH configuran un terreno decisivo para pensar políticas de la supervivencia del presente. Palabras clave: VIH, ACT-UP, Supervivencia, Temporalidades, Biopolítica. Abstract: Different interventions from activist and cultural practices around HIV staged poetics and politics of the body remmant. They implie, on the one hand, a reorganitzation of the dramatization of the threshold between the living and the dead in the public space; and on the other, they indicate the ways in which these activisms mobilize a dispute over the “frames of temporalization” from which the living becomes politically recognizable and where the notion of survival acquires a decisive centrality. Combining heterogeneous materials, the article seeks to illuminate the ways in which activism and cultures on HIV constitute a decisive ground for thinking about the present policies of survival. Keywords: IHV, ACT-UP, Survival, Biopolitics.


2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Temitayo Isaac Odeyemi ◽  
A. Sat Obiyan

The police are expected to perform functions critical to relations between the government and citizens in democratic societies. However, in Nigeria, the reality is that the police organisation suffers limitations that undermine effective and democratic policing. Although the Nigeria Police Force has a long and chequered history, its services are dogged by challenges including adversarial police–citizen relations and mutual suspicion and police misconduct. To address these problems and enhance policing, the Nigeria Police Force has deployed digital technologies through a Complaint Response Unit [later renamed the Public Complaint Rapid Response Unit (PCRRU)]. The PCRRU allows the public to connect with the police through dedicated phone numbers for calls and SMS, and a round-the-clock presence on Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, Blackberry Messenger and a mobile application. Although this initiative often draws attention and commendation, it also raises doubts about sustenance and utility value. Drawing on David Easton’s input–output nexus as a theoretical underpinning on the one hand, and data sourced through expert opinion interviews and web measurement on the other hand, this article investigates how these digital policing technologies, through the PCRRU, enhance efforts at mutually rewarding police–citizen relations and police accountability, as requisites of democratic policing, in Nigeria. The findings expand discussion on the dimensions of Nigeria’s police–citizen relations and the potentials of technology in promoting positive outcomes. The findings also suggest means through which police managers can optimise technology in ways that aid strategic efforts at improving public security.


2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-165
Author(s):  
Marcin Kotras

This article concerns discourse in the 4th Republic and its role in creating the divisions and cleavages of Polish society. The author analyzes the argumentation strategies used by the press supporting the government and its so-called “good change” (the weeklies Sieci and Uważam Rze, which were published in the years 2012–2017). He concentrates on selected rhetorical practices such as labeling, categorization, and discrimination, and determines that the center of the argumentation strategy of the weeklies analyzed is a discursively constructed division between the “elites” and the “masses” ordinary people”). This type of strategy allows the building of a Me-Them dichotomy, which serves not only to strengthen divisions but also to de-legitimize the social space of the 3rd Republic and give legitimacy to the “good change” of the 4th Republic. These activities are exemplified by the manner in which the writers in opinion-forming weeklies describe and explain selected topics and events, such as the Round Table Talks or the migration crisis. The author finds that in the argumentation strategies analyzed, the “nation” is understood as an exclusive community defined from an essentialist perspective. He relates these and other findings to the problem of the new, simplified form of political rivalry and contemporary election campaigns.


2006 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 77-85
Author(s):  
Hui-min Wang ◽  
Leslie L. Shieh

In Taiwan, particularly in rural settlements, the temple serves as the religious and social centre. In the past 30 years, as Taiwan experienced rapid economic growth, modernizing temple architecture was something worshipers viewed as the newest and best offering. Many old temples were demolished entirely or in parts to build larger temples using modern materials and construction methods. In the early 1990s, finding the old temple too small to fulfil the large number of worshipers from outside the community, the Chen-An Temple Association proposed to raise funds for a new temple. It commissioned a Japanese architecture firm, well known for several public projects in I-Lan, to design the new temple. The design partially preserved the old temple building, integrating it into the landscape design of the new temple. At the time, the central government cultural bureau was promoting the preservation of community historic spaces, and at first had agreed to give funding. However, after reviewing, funding was refused because the jurors had failed to see community involvement in the design. It was under these circumstances that the Er-Jie community invited our organization to work with them, in hope that by bringing in a new perspective, the original scheme could be altered to satisfy government funding. Through a nine month participation process, the community realized that what meant the most to them about the old temple was the public square defined by the temple building, the large canopy of the Banyan trees, and the social activities that took place there. After much deliberation and numerous design workshops with the architects of the new temple, the resulting design preserved the entire old temple building by moving it to an unused space across from its current location; and to recreate the character of the temple square through attention to design elements. Our work in Er-Jie demonstrated that although language is a vital part of preservation efforts, most community members do not have a grasp of the planning and design language, including words, drawings, body language, and actions. Not having adequate language ability leads to misunderstanding, prevents one’s voice from being heard, and creates obstacles in dialogue. In retrospect, the lack of a common language was the cause of many of the difficulties and issues we confronted during the project. There were five key players in the project -the government, the Chen-An Temple Association, the community, the architects, and us. The participation process was about encouraging a common language. Through the process, we observed a rise in the community’s confidence, as they were increasingly able to share their thoughts with and define their values to the others involved. Accordingly, we were able to draw from the community that the temple square was what they valued most. The end product of the preservation effort is more than a conserved temple building. The revitalization effort also preserved the meaning the public square holds for the community. For the community, temple preservation is about public space because of the cultural and historical attachments the local residents have to that space. Revitalization is about providing the opportunity for the community to redefine the role of the building given the community’s current needs. The success of the conservation effort can be measured by the effect the process has on the community. Following the preservation of the Chen-An Temple, the community led the restoration of a waterway that runs through their community. As the community became more comfortable with the language of participation, preservation, space, and design, there emerges a preservation and environmental design consciousness in the community.


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽  
Author(s):  
M Grbic ◽  
D Stimac Grbic ◽  
L Stimac ◽  
Z Sostar

Abstract Introduction The coronavirus outbreak has set off alarms around the world, leading to border closures, trade controls, travel bans and other measures. The Wuhan coronavirus epidemic continues to spread globally to the new European hotspot in Italy. New information about the epidemic and the virus is changing rapidly as the virus spreads and appears in parts of the world. Although official announcements by the Croatian Government and Crisis Staff calmed the public with pictures and data on the disease, it showed something else that heightened public concern and caused two conflicting phenomena among citizens - on the one hand, the majority showed understandable doubt about the information that could have raised the concern for their own health while the rest of the population ignored the facts. The market showed complete unwillingness to cope with this epidemic and a chronic shortage of protective equipment (masks, disinfectants...) emerged. Most of the citizens' queries and concerns were moving in the direction of personal protection, child protection and justification for holding large gatherings. Results By March 8, 2020, twelve COVID-19 patients were recorded in Croatia, of which 5 were patients in Rijeka, 3 in Zagreb and 4 in Varaždin. The first sick person is a Croatian citizen from Zagreb who became infected during his stay in Italy (Milan, Lombardy province). Conclusions In this crisis, several basic principles of crisis communication with the public have been forgotten: The first source of communication often becomes the source against which everyone else is measured.Accuracy is crucial to credibility.Emotion cannot be countered by facts. People must first know that the government cares.The public should regain a sense of control over circumstances beyond control.A lack of public respect in a crisis undermines trust.Honesty is fundamental to maintaining trust. Key messages Accuracy is crucial to credibility. Emotion cannot be countered by facts.


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