Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ally McBeal and Arranged Marriages: Globalization on the Ground in India

Contexts ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 12-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Dernéa

After a decade of frenzied globalization, the rich of India welcome consumer goods and experiment with new arrangements between men and women. But because the economic opportunities of middle-class Indian men have not expanded, most of them merely welcome Western media images that reinforce their power and masculine self-image.

2011 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 659-662 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Waddell

Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson's Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class is both a work of political science and a contribution to broad public discussion of distributive politics. Its topic could not be more relevant to a US polity wracked by bitter partisan disagreements about taxes, social spending, financial regulation, social insecurity, and inequality. The political power of “the rich” is a theme of widespread public attention. The headline on the cover of the January–February 2011 issue of The American Interest—“Inequality and Democracy: Are Plutocrats Drowning Our Republic?”—is indicative. Francis Fukuyama's lead essay, entitled “Left Out,” clarifies that by “plutocracy,” the journal means “not just rule by the rich, but rule by and for the rich. We mean, in other words, a state of affairs in which the rich influence government in such a way as to protect and expand their own wealth and influence, often at the expense of others.” Fukuyama makes clear that he believes that this state of affairs obtains in the United States today.Readers of Perspectives on Politics will know that the topic has garnered increasing attention from political scientists in general and in our journal in particular. In March 2009, we featured a symposium on Larry Bartels's Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age. And in December 2009, our lead article, by Jeffrey A. Winters and Benjamin I. Page, starkly posed the question “Oligarchy in the United States?” and answered it with an equally stark “yes.” Winner-Take-All Politics thus engages a broader scholarly discussion within US political science, at the same time that it both draws upon and echoes many “classic themes” of US political science from the work of Charles Beard and E. E. Schattschneider to Ted Lowi and Charles Lindblom.In this symposium, we have brought together a group of important scholars and commentators who offer a range of perspectives on the book and on the broader themes it engages. While most of our discussants are specialists on “American politics,” we have also sought out scholars beyond this subfield. Our charge to the discussants is to evaluate the book's central claims and evidence, with a focus on three related questions: 1) How compelling is its analysis of the “how” and “why” of recent US public policy and its “turn” in favor of “the rich” and against “the middle class”? 2) How compelling is its critique of the subfield of “American politics” for its focus on the voter–politician linkage and on “politics as spectacle” at the expense of an analysis of “politics as organized combat”? 3) And do you agree with its argument that recent changes in US politics necessitate a different, more comparative, and more political economy–centered approach to the study of US politics?—Jeffrey C. Isaac, Editor


2002 ◽  
Vol 22 (5) ◽  
pp. 647-663 ◽  
Author(s):  
GAIL WILSON

This paper discusses the material aspects of globalisation and the effects of the movements of trade, capital and people around the world on older men and women. While some older people have benefited, most notably where pensions and health care are well developed, the majority of older men and women are among the poor who have not. Free trade, economic restructuring, the globalisation of finance, and the surge in migration, have in most parts of the world tended to produce harmful consequences for older people. These developments have been overseen, and sometimes dictated, by inter-governmental organisations (IGOs) such as the International Monetary Foundation (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation (WTO), while other IGOs with less power have been limited to anti-ageist exhortation. Globalisation transfers resources from the poor to the rich within and between countries. It therefore increases social problems while simultaneously diminishing the freedom and capacity of countries to make social policy. Nonetheless, the effects of globalisation, and particularly its financial dimensions, on a nation's capacity for making social policy can be exaggerated. Political will can combat international economic orthodoxy, but the evident cases are the exception rather than the rule.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. e001988
Author(s):  
K M Venkat Narayan ◽  
Dimple Kondal ◽  
Sayuko Kobes ◽  
Lisa R Staimez ◽  
Deepa Mohan ◽  
...  

IntroductionSouth Asians (SA) and Pima Indians have high prevalence of diabetes but differ markedly in body size. We hypothesize that young SA will have higher diabetes incidence than Pima Indians at comparable body mass index (BMI) levels.Research design and methodsWe used prospective cohort data to estimate age-specific, sex, and BMI-specific diabetes incidence in SA aged 20–44 years living in India and Pakistan from the Center for Cardiometabolic Risk Reduction in South Asia Study (n=6676), and compared with Pima Indians, from Pima Indian Study (n=1852).ResultsAt baseline, SA were considerably less obese than Pima Indians (BMI (kg/m2): 24.4 vs 33.8; waist circumference (cm): 82.5 vs 107.0). Age-standardized diabetes incidence (cases/1000 person-years, 95% CI) was lower in SA than in Pima Indians (men: 14.2, 12.2–16.2 vs 37.3, 31.8–42.8; women: 14.8, 13.0–16.5 vs 46.1, 41.2–51.1). Risk of incident diabetes among 20–24-year-old Pima men and women was six times (relative risk (RR), 95% CI: 6.04, 3.30 to 12.0) and seven times (RR, 95% CI: 7.64, 3.73 to 18.2) higher as compared with SA men and women, respectively. In those with BMI <25 kg/m2, however, the risk of diabetes was over five times in SA men than in Pima Indian men. Among those with BMI ≥30 kg/m2, diabetes incidence in SA men was nearly as high as in Pima men. SA and Pima Indians had similar magnitude of association between age, sex, BMI, and insulin secretion with diabetes. The effect of family history was larger in SA, whereas that of insulin resistance was larger in Pima IndiansConclusionsIn the background of relatively low insulin resistance, higher diabetes incidence in SA is driven by poor insulin secretion in SA men. The findings call for research to improve insulin secretion in early natural history of diabetes.


1991 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 365-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul G. Schurman

Explores the creative roles men might play in a human liberation movement in which their privileged position will need to be modified. Sees pastoral counselors as “hope agents” who may faciliate the transition of men to new and different roles in which patriarchy will play less and less of a role in society. Details specific ways in which the loss of patriarchy can lead to a fresh and creative equality in which both men and women will experience new freedoms.


2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-93
Author(s):  
Anna Romanowicz ◽  

Arranged marriages are the most common (and perceived as traditional) form of formalized heterosexual relationships in India. However, interest in relationships based on romantic love – especially among urban middle class –is increasing. The goal of the article is to present various practices related to romantic love, which cannot be inscribed in a rigid division for arranged and love marriages; to present everyday strategies and tactics, as they are being practiced by my research participants in context of sociocultural changes. The article is based on information gathered in ethnographic fieldwork (with a technique of participant observation) in Delhi.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 87-110
Author(s):  
Dr. Aishwarya M

The novel Second Thoughts deals with the story of a young middle class Bengali girl who marries a Bombay based foreign returned Bengali Boy. The story depicts the disillusionment of a married woman and an explosive tale of love and betrayal that exposes the hollowness of human relationship especially within arranged marriages. This chapter deals with the concept of Micro-Politics which is a significant dogma of postfeminism. Micro-Politics believes that there has been drastic change in the position of women in basic social relationships, within the families, workplace and other public spheres. Postfeministic notion of micro-politics is intended to provide insight into the complicated nexus of relationship and also to rethink this same concept in terms of postfeminism.


Appetite ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 338-344 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Kuriyan ◽  
Tony Raj ◽  
S.K. Srinivas ◽  
Mario Vaz ◽  
R. Rajendran ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-131
Author(s):  
Leah Richards

Although the tale of Sweeney Todd is one with significant cultural resonance, little has been written about the text itself, The String of Pearls. This article argues that the text engages with anxieties about class conflict through a narrative that enacts exaggerated versions of various interactions. In the nineteenth century, critics objected to the cheap fiction pejoratively known as penny dreadfuls, asserting that the genre’s exciting tales of bloodshed, villainy, and mayhem would seduce readers to lives of debauchery and crime, but I argue that this concern about cheap fiction was not for the preservation of the souls of the poor and working classes but rather for the preservation of the middle classes' own corporeal bodies and the system that privileged and protected them. While there is no question that the narrative enacts extreme manifestations of problems facing the urban poor—among them, contaminated or even poisonous foodstuffs and the perils of urban anonymity—it also features an intractable and rapacious lower class and a subversion of the master-servant dynamic on which the comforts of the middle class were constructed, and so, in addition to adventure, detection, and young love, The String of Pearls offers a dark revenge fantasy of class-based violence that the middle-class critics of the penny dreadful were perhaps justified in fearing. tl;dr: Eat the Rich!


BMJ ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 339 (jul09 2) ◽  
pp. b2775-b2775
Author(s):  
H. Mooney

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