9 Conclusion: Form and Function in the Twenty-First Century

2013 ◽  
pp. 137-154
Author(s):  
Neelam Sidhar Wright

This book examines changes in Bollywood's film production during the twenty-first century, and particularly after its economic liberalisation, giving rise to a ‘New Bollywood’. It shows how the Indian cinema has acquired evidently postmodern qualities and explains what postmodernism means in the context of Bollywood cinema. It also considers what postmodernism tells us about the change and function of Bollywood film language after the twenty-first century. The book describes Bollywood's ‘postmodern turn’ as a form of transformation that reworks or revisits previous aesthetic trends in order to produce a radically different aesthetic. ‘New Bollywood’ refers to contemporary films characterised by a strong postmodern aesthetic style which was not as present in the 1990s. This introductory chapter discusses the meaning of ‘contemporary Bollywood’, postmodernism as a means of reading and interpreting films, and the structure of the book.


2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 419-420
Author(s):  
Elżbieta Dutka

The article is a review of Dorota Siwor’s monography entitled Traces of Myth and Ritual On Contemporary Polish Prose (Tropy mitu i rytuału. O polskiej prozie współczesnej – nie tylko najnowszej). The affinities between literature and myth (and the ritual that is associated with myth) are analysed in this book from several perspectives – those of structure, theme, and function. Dorota Siwor’s interpretations generally focus on Polish prose composed in the second half of the twentieth century and the first several years of the twenty-first century (the literary works written by Andrzej Stasiuk, Olga Tokarczuk, Wilhelm Dichter, but also by Czesław Miłosz, Tadeusz Konwicki, Tadeusz Nowak and others). Essays included in this book are interpretative, but some of them also offer a systematic account. In this monograph, the main problem – the mythization strategy in prose – is explained as a type of search (search for order in the surrounding world, search for the origins and search for oneself). The analyses in mythical and ritualistic contexts highlight the interesting tendencies in prose but also show some kind of different topography (topography of mythization) and ritual of reading (not only private but also more universal).


Author(s):  
Gordon L. Clark ◽  
Adam D. Dixon ◽  
Ashby H.B. Monk

The worldwide rise of sovereign wealth funds is emblematic of the ongoing transformation of nation-state economic prospects. This book maps the global footprints of these financial institutions, examining their governance and investment management, and issues of domestic and international legitimacy. Through a variety of case studies—from the China Investment Corporation to the funds of several Gulf states—the book shows that the forces propelling the adoption and development of sovereign wealth funds vary by country. The book also shows that many of these investment institutions have identifiable commonalities of form and function that match the core institutions of Western financial markets. The book suggests that the international legitimacy of sovereign wealth funds is based on the degree to which their design and governance match Western expectations about investment management. Undercutting commonplace assumptions about the emerging world of the twenty-first century, the book demonstrates that even small countries with large and globally oriented sovereign wealth funds are likely to play a significant role in international relations. This book considers how such financial organizations have altered not only the face of finance, but also the international geopolitical landscape.


Author(s):  
Gordon L. Clark ◽  
Adam D. Dixon ◽  
Ashby H. B. Monk

This chapter looks to the future and rehearses the argument about form and function, recognizing that today's ideal form of the sovereign wealth fund (SWF) is based on two sets of rules: those related to who is responsible for investment decision-making and those related to the conceptual foundations of investment practice. Thereafter, it suggests that the form of SWFs may not be stable over the long term; the challenge facing SWFs is, in part, about transcending traditional forms of investment management in favor of a genuine commitment to long-term investment in the interest of both the SWF and the sovereign. The chapter argues that transcending the current paradigm may necessitate the transformation of the form of SWFs such that they become strategic investors rather than portfolio investors, knitting together their sponsors' geopolitical interests with investment management.


Author(s):  
Patricia G. Arscott ◽  
Gil Lee ◽  
Victor A. Bloomfield ◽  
D. Fennell Evans

STM is one of the most promising techniques available for visualizing the fine details of biomolecular structure. It has been used to map the surface topography of inorganic materials in atomic dimensions, and thus has the resolving power not only to determine the conformation of small molecules but to distinguish site-specific features within a molecule. That level of detail is of critical importance in understanding the relationship between form and function in biological systems. The size, shape, and accessibility of molecular structures can be determined much more accurately by STM than by electron microscopy since no staining, shadowing or labeling with heavy metals is required, and there is no exposure to damaging radiation by electrons. Crystallography and most other physical techniques do not give information about individual molecules.We have obtained striking images of DNA and RNA, using calf thymus DNA and two synthetic polynucleotides, poly(dG-me5dC)·poly(dG-me5dC) and poly(rA)·poly(rU).


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