scholarly journals Revisiting Health in Colonial Bengal: A Literary Overview (1880 -1930)

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (11) ◽  
pp. 374-377
Author(s):  
Tinni Goswami Bhattacharya

The essential theme of this paper is to highlight the condition of health and hygiene in the British Bengal from the perspective of official documents and vernacular writings, with special emphasis on the journals and periodicals. The fatal effects of the epidemics like malaria and cholera, the insanitary condition of the rural Bengal and the cultivated indifference of the British Raj made the lives of the poor natives miserable and ailing. The authorities had a tendency to blame the colonized for their illiteracy and callousness, which became instrumental for the outbreak of the epidemics. On the other, in the late 19 th and the beginning of the 20th, the vernacular literature played the role of a catalyst in awakening health awareness, highlighting the issues related with ill health, insanitation and malnourishment. More importantly, it became an active link between the society and culture on the one hand, and health and people on the other. The present researcher wants to highlight these opposite trajectories of mentalities with a different connotation. The ideologies of the Raj and the native political aspirations often reflected in the colonial writings, where the year 1880 was considered as a landmark in the field of public health policies. On the other, the dichotomy between the masters and the colonized took a prominent shape during 1930s. Within these fifty years; the health of the natives witnessed many upheavals grounded on the social, economic and cultural tensions.

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-30
Author(s):  
Nenad Miscevic ◽  

What is the role of toleration in the present-day crisis, marked by the inflow of refugees and increase in populism? The seriousness of the crises demands efforts of active toleration, acceptance, and integration of refugees and the like. Active toleration brings with itself a series of very demanding duties, divided into immediate ones involving immediate Samaritan aid to people at our doors and the long-term ones involving their acculturation and possibilities of decent life for them. A cosmopolitan attitude can contribute a lot. In the context of a refugee crisis, cosmopolitanism is not disappearing but showing its non-traditional, more Samaritan face turned not to distant strangers, as the classical one, but towards strangers at our doors.We have conjectured that this work of active toleration can diminish the need for the passive one: the well-integrated immigrant is no longer seen as a strange, exotic person with an incomprehensible and unacceptable attitude, but as one of us so that her attitudes become less irritating and provocative. The social-psychological approach that sees integration as involving both the preservation of central aspects of the original identity and the copy-pasting of the new one over it offers an interesting rationale for the conjecture: once integrated, the former newcomer is perceived as one of ‘us’ and her views stop being exotic, incomprehensible and a priori unacceptable. Given the amount of need for toleration, and difficulties and paradoxes connected with its passive variety, the conjecture, if true, might be a piece of good news.Finally, we have briefly touched the question of deeper causes of the crisis. Once one turns to this question, the traditional cosmopolitan issues come back to the forefront: the deep poverty and unjust distribution on the one hand, and conflicts and wars on the other. Cosmopolitans have a duty to face these issues, and this is where active global toleration leads in our times.


2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 271-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suren Basov ◽  
M. Ishaq Bhatti

AbstractMost research in contract theory concentrated on the role of incentives in shaping individual behavior. Recent research suggests that social norms also play an important role. From a point of view of a mechanism designer (a principal, a government, and a bank), responsiveness of an agent to the social norms is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it provides the designer with extra instruments, while on the other it puts restrictions on how these new and the more conventional instruments can be used. The main objective of this paper is to investigate this trade-off and study how it shapes different contracts observed in the real world. We consider a model in which agent’s cost of cheating is triggered by the principal’s show of trust. We call such behavior a norm of honesty and trust and show that it drives incentives to be either low powerful or high powerful, eliminating contracts with medium powerful incentives.


2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 927-960 ◽  
Author(s):  
RICHARD WESTERMAN

For European literati of the early twentieth century, Fyodor Dostoevsky represented a mythically Russian spirituality in contrast to a soulless, rationalized West. One such enthusiast was Georg Lukács, who in 1915 began a never-completed book about Dostoevsky's work, a model of spiritual community that could redeem a fallen world. Though framing his analysis in the language and themes of broader Dostoevsky reception, Lukács used this idiom innovatively to go beyond the reactionary implications this model might connote. Highlighting similarities with Max Weber's account of political ethics, I argue that Lukács developed an ethic derived from his reading of Dostoevsky, which focused on the idea of a hero defined by an ability to resolve the specific ethical dilemma of adherence to duty and moral law on the one hand, and, on the other, the need to restore spontaneous human community at a time when the social institutions embodying such laws had fallen into decay. Crucially, he deployed the same framework after his conversion to Marxism to justify revolutionary terror. However different his position from Dostoevsky's, it was through engagement with these novels that Lukács not only clarified his thought but also came to identify Lenin as a Dostoevskyan hero figure.


Author(s):  
Vlatko Jadrešić

The duality of contemporary tourism is reflected in the stable distribution o f, on the one hand, positive and, on the other, negative and unfavourable social and economic functions. The paper investigates the causes and the manifestations of a specific and more and more significant (regarding its immanent dangers) field of tourism which speaks of the so-called “other”, dark, negative, unfavourable, conflictual, even pathological in certain elements side of this contemporary and prestigious-important social-economic phenomenon. The investigation is a segment of the author’s scientific project which has been accepted by the Croatian Ministry of Science and Technology entitled “Social and Economic Contradictions of Croatian Tourism” and whichwill investigate the social and sociocultural negative phenomena in tourism both in Croatia and elsewhere. The aim and purpose of die project is to diagnose the problems, to systematise them, to establish the ways and measures to relativise, alleviate or uproot a part or the totality of these phenomena all with the purpose to affirm and advance its positive social and economic functions and activities in order to achieve more permanent and lucrative social and economic effects. Various examples of visible and hidden consequences from world tourism culled from the relevant sources warn and make suggestions to Croatian toursim how to “actualize” this question for the benefit of tourism in Croatia.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Moses Njenga

While vital for the social and economic development of Kenya and Africa as whole, Vocational Education remains hampered by a negative parity of esteem. Individuals and households continue to view vocational education as a second option. This is in contrast with the views held by both pre-colonial and post colonial governments. Each successive government has attempted to provide vocational education and made policies to effect widespread provision. This article reviews the history of these policies and identifies the source of negative views towards vocational education on the one hand to discriminatory approaches by colonial governments and on the other hand to the burdening of technical education with the task of employment creation.


2021 ◽  
pp. 342-368
Author(s):  
Anne Storch

This chapter explores the dialectics of walking and resting, and of mobility and waiting, with regards to creativity in language. It thereby focuses on the interruption and unintended break as an opportunity for interactions and encounters across linguistic epistemes, boundaries and norms. Walking as a methodology and epistemic approach has been discussed in anthropology, the social sciences and literary critique, but met very little interest in linguistics. This chapter on the one hand consequently attempts to address walking as a substantial approach to the study of multilingualism and improvisation, but on the other aims at highlighting disruption and stillness as creating the very liminal space and practice through which language creativity can emerge and be realized. It touches upon various practices that are crucial: being stuck, passing time, getting lost. Points of special interests interest include the role of language in the love songs and other genres, especially in the context of the Mediterranean, disruptions associated with migrations and peoples’ movements, the context of tourism, and the linguistic effects of spirit possession.


Organization ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 416-432 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl Cederström ◽  
Michael Marinetto

This article explores the ‘liberal communist’, a conceptual and satirical figure originally elaborated in the work of Slavoj Žižek (2008). The liberal communist claims (1) that there is no opposition between capitalism and the social good; (2) that all problems are of a practical nature, and hence best solved by corporate engagement and (3) that hierarchies, authority and centralized bureaucracies should be replaced by dynamic structures, a nomadic lifestyle and a flexible spirit. This analysis of the liberal communist has at least two implications for research on CSR. First, it examines the ideological role of CSR by moving beyond a propaganda view, instead offering an ideological reading that focuses on the ways in which CSR seeks to obliterate any existing contradictions between ‘philanthropic actions’ on the one hand and ‘profit-seeking business activities’ on the other hand. Second, it demonstrates how critique is not necessarily what corporations seek to avoid, but something that they actively engage in.


2020 ◽  
pp. 204361062096701
Author(s):  
Lidia Marôpo ◽  
Raiana de Carvalho ◽  
Ana Jorge

This article looks at the social and cultural contexts of children’s experiences of illness, through a particular focus on the context of the Global South and the role of the social media platform YouTube in children’s culture. It takes a socio-constructivist approach to discuss the case of CarecaTV (BaldTV), a Brazilian YouTube channel with more than one million followers created by Lorena Reginato at the age of 12 when she was recovering from brain cancer. In CarecaTV, cancer subjectivity co-exists with and is expressed through digital commercialization. On the one hand, through this process, Lorena Reginato gains agency as she offers an inspirational and credible first-person testimony about cancer during childhood and becomes an emerging cancer activist. On the other, she uses entrepreneurship strategies associated with the digital influencer model of YouTube to promote herself as a (cancer) micro-celebrity, taking the lead in a youthful and playful culture.


Artifex Novus ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 4-19
Author(s):  
Jerzy Kochanowski

Abstrakt: W konkluzji partyjnej komisji wysłanej w 1972 r. do Zakopanego stwierdzano, że „państwo w Zakopanem zostało postawione w sytuacji gorszej niż w kapitalizmie, bowiem zostało zepchnięte na pozycje nawet nie nocnego stróża, ale bezpłatnego dróżnika i zamiatacza ulic”. Na tę swoistą „autonomię Podhala miały wpływ uwarunkowania historyczne, społeczne, kulturowe i geograficzne, typowe dla społeczeństw (wysoko)górskich na całym świecie. Z drugiej strony ważnym aktorem było pod Tatrami również państwo, które od początku lat 50. do końca lat 80. XX w. próbowało objąć ścisłym nadzorem turystykę i sport, sektory decydujące o wizerunku i znaczeniu Zakopanego i regionu tatrzańskiego. Polityka taka napotykała jednak na szczeblu regionalnym na bardzo silne ograniczenia i sprzeciwy. Z jednej strony przyczyną tego stanu rzeczy były specyficzne sieci społeczne łączące sektor prywatny ze strukturami samorządowymi, państwowymi i partyjnymi, a nawet z milicją i wymiarem sprawiedliwości. Z drugiej zaś tylko dzięki przymknięciu oczu na często sprzeczną z obowiązującym prawem aktywność gospodarczą aktorów społecznych, zarówno górali, jak i przyjezdnych, było możliwe – przy niewydolności organizacyjnej państwa – zaspokajanie rosnących błyskawicznie po 1956 r. potrzeb modernizującego się społeczeństwa na usługi rekreacyjne. Dopiero w pierwszej połowie lat 70. socjalistyczne państwo było w stanie, dzięki zwiększonemu finansowaniu, zapewnić w miarę racjonalny rozwój infrastruktury turystycznej (np. Hotel Kasprowy). Jednak już od drugiej połowy lat 70. strukturalny kryzys systemu i w następnej dekadzie jego całkowita dezintegracja doprowadziły do sytuacji, w której instytucje państwowe musiały ustąpić pola aktorom społecznym. Summary: The conclusion of the state commission addressed in 1972 to Zakopane was: “in Zakopane, the state is in a position worse than in capitalism. It has been reduced to the role of not even a night-watchman, but of an unpaid street-sweeper”. The peculiar “autonomy” of Podhale-Region was affected by historical, social, cultural and geographical conditions that are usually mentioned, on the other hand the state was also an important actor and nowise ambiguous. The tendency to take a strict supervision of sectors decisive for the image and the importance of Zakopane and the Tatra region – tourism and sport, existed at the central level since the mid of ‘50s to the ‘80s, but at the regional level, the policy encountered very strong limitations. On the one hand, the reason for that was the emergence of specific social networks linking the private sector with the structures of local government, state and party, or even with the police and judicatory, on the other only thanks to them it was possible – under the organizational inefficiency of the state – to fulfill the modernizing society needs for leisure and related services, that were instantly growing after 1956. Only in the first half of 70s the socialist state was able to provide a relatively rational program, thanks to being an influential factor for modernization mostly thanks to still being in disposal of material resources. However, in the period of disintegration of the system, in the end of ‘70s and in the ‘80s, state’s program was no longer a barrier and alternative for the social actors.


2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Flavia Cangia' ◽  
Déborah Levitan ◽  
Tania Zittoun

Two dominant images of migrant professionals, also known as “expats”, have long been common, in the social sciences: on the one hand, they were described as super-mobile individuals, who easily move between places with no time frame in mind, with the openness to engage with diversity; on the other hand, more recent studies challenged the idea of “expat” cosmopolitanism, and investigated the boundaries constituted by these people in the course of their everyday life. The present paper brings to the fore the complexity of these individuals’ and their families’ experiences of international mobility from a combined socio-cultural psychological and sociological perspective. We draw on qualitative research conducted in Switzerland in order to reflect on the role of family in the way these people make sense of diversity across time and space, make and un-make symbolic boundaries between themselves and others, and understand their own and their familiars' transformation. 


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