R. K. Narayan, the Novelist of the Commoners and His Ironic Sense of Humour

2021 ◽  
Vol 05 (02) ◽  
pp. 11-12
Author(s):  
Ashok Kumar Priydarshi ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Human Situation ◽  
Comprehensive Knowledge ◽  
Usual Pattern

Narayan’s humour is direct course of his intellectual analysis of the contradictions in human experience tragically or comically. Irony can be tragic also, but in Narayan our concern is only the irony, that works as a base for Narayan’s humour the instances of which are found at every step in his novels. The keynote of Narayan’s interest is his very minute observation and subtle ironic harmonious way of telling his story. There is, in his novels, scarcely audible laughter shot through all the novels. His comic vision is ironical. His all embracing irony, which includes the particular social context in his men and women, who have their various transactions and the existential reality based on their particular experiences. The clash between the tradition and modernity in which Narayan’s characters are sandwiched has ironical implications. Narayan’s comprehensive knowledge of the perception of inherent irony in human life makes him a master of comedy, who is nor unware of the tragedy of human situation and tragi-comedies of mischance and misdirection. The basic comic situation in Narayan’s novels is one of the derivation from the normal and in the plots of his novels, he follows the usual pattern of irony order, disorder, order. His irony is free from the satiric spirit of condemnation and censure. His ironic vision is closer in spirit to Chaucer, Shakespear and Dickens. His closeness to Chekhov is striking the same objectivity, the same freedom from comment, the same intricate alliance of humour with tragedy the comic irony with, as Greene puts it and the same seeming indirection even with which the characters, on the last page, appear to vanish into life.

Re-Thinking the Pastoral Ministry

1950 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 288-297
Author(s):  
J. W. Stevenson
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Pastoral Ministry ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Monday Morning ◽  
Human Judgment ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Road ◽  
Tuesday Morning ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Village

“When I see you setting off down the road on Monday morning,” the village schoolmaster once said to me, “I sometimes wonder if you are regarding human life as radically as you did when you were preaching in the kirk the day before. You seem, somehow, easier-minded about it. You come into the school. What, honestly, do you see there? A fine bunch of children, going on their pleasant way to become decent men and women—or are they really heading for a life which is rooted in the world's evil, a life out of which you'll tell them in a few years they must be saved by the grace of God?“And then on the Tuesday morning,” he went on, “you're off to the Presbytery. Now, tell me honestly, don't you meet together pretty much as any other body of people would do—to transact your business, to express your opinions, and to come to the judgment which your own experience has led you to hold? And yet your distinctive characteristic is supposed to be that you believe that human experience and human judgment are shot through with a deadly evil. You say that you distrust yourselves, that ‘of yourselves you can do nothing aright”—but I can't say that you look or sound particularly like people who are distrusting themselves. You say in your opening prayer that you want to be over-ruled and corrected—but you'll forgive me for saying that you don't seem very often to go through the process during the meeting that follows.

Negotiating Boundaries Between Gender and Social Identities in the Principality of Samos: The Case of Divorces (1902–1911)

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 90
Author(s):  
Vasilios Gialamas ◽  
Sofia Iliadou Tachou ◽  
Alexia Orfanou
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Gender Identity ◽  
Social Roles ◽  
Cultural Construction ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Gender Ratio ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Government ◽  
Qualitative Characteristics

This study focuses on divorces in the Principality of Samos, which existed from 1834 to 1912. The process of divorce is described according to the laws of the rincipality, and divorces are examined among those published in the Newspaper of the Government of the Principality of Samos from the last decade of the Principality from 1902 to 1911. Issues linked to divorce are investigated, like the differences between husbands and wives regarding the initiation and reasons for requesting a divorce. These differences are integrated in the specific social context of the Principality, and the qualitative characteristics are determined in regard to the gender ratio of women and men that is articulated by the invocation of divorce. The aim is to determine the boundaries of social identities of gender with focus on the prevailing perceptions of the social roles of men and women. Gender is used as a social and cultural construction. It is argued that the social gender identity is formed through a process of “performativity”, that is, through adaptation to the dominant social ideals.

scholarly journals Mujeres y hombres. Desigualdades de género en el contexto mexicanoWomen and men. Gender inequalities in the Mexican context

2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (44) ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco José Zamudio Sánchez ◽  
María Del Rosario Ayala Carrillo ◽  
Roxana Ivette Arana Ovalle
Keyword(s):  
Policy Change ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Human Life ◽  
National Level ◽  
Living Conditions ◽  
Harmonic Mean ◽  
Gender Inequalities ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Las Mujeres ◽  
Cultural Constructions

Las construcciones socioculturales sobre género permean todas las esferas de la vida humana generando diversas inequidades. Es necesario medirlas y proponer alternativas de solución o modificación de políticas que las atiendan. Usando una media harmónica sobre las condiciones en las que viven mujeres y hombres, se midieron atributos de once factores sociales disponibles a escala nacional. Los atributos fueron jerarquizados para cuantificar el diferencial en el cual estos factores se encuentran. No únicamente las mujeres están en condiciones de inequidad, aunque son más frecuentes y graves. Políticas públicas en seis factores deben atender, prioritariamente, a las mujeres y en cinco a los hombres. En cada factor identificamos los atributos más inequitativos para hacer posible la instrumentación de acciones pertinentes. Así, el diseño de las políticas, desde la planeación, cuenta con posibilidades de actuar en congruencia con las necesidades. Abstract Cultural constructions of gender permeate all areas of human life, generating diverse inequities. This requires knowledge of the situations in which men and women are in a particular one and, accordingly, propose solutions or policy change that pay attention to such inequities. Using a harmonic mean on the living conditions in which women and men are, attributes of eleven social factors were measured, available at national level. Such attributes were analytically nested to quantify the differential in which these factors are. Not only women are in inequity conditions, although they are more frequent and severe. Public policies in six factors should attend, mainly, to women and in five to men. We identified, inside each factor, the attributes with more inequity to make possible the implementation of appropriate actions. The corresponding design of policies has, from planning, possibilities of acting in line with the needs.

scholarly journals Perlawanan Visual Perempuan dalam Poster

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 147
Author(s):  
Misbah Zulfa Elizabeth
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Text Interpretation ◽  
Religious Text ◽  
The Social ◽  
Visual Expression ◽  
And Gender

<p>Visual expression is something un-denayable in social life because the viasuality is the expression of the social life. This article has the purpose to explore how visual expression of women resistance toward gender inequality. Applying qualitative research with the method of documentation study this article in detail analyses the interpretation of religious text as the source of inequality and gender reality in social context. It is revealed that visual expression of the poster suggesting to treat men and women respectfully is the resistance toward religious text interpretation which is inequally treat men and women.</p>

scholarly journals Universální život a život lidský. K ontologii přírody u Jana Patočky a Maurice Merleau-Pontyho

REFLEXE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (60) ◽  
pp. 29-63
Author(s):  
Martin Rabas
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Descriptive Analysis ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
The Other ◽  
Philosophical Approach ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Inorganic Matter ◽  
The World ◽  
The One

The present article has two objectives. One is to elucidate the philosophical approach presented in the so-called Strahov Systematic Manuscripts of Jan Patočka in terms of consciousness and nature. The other is to compare this philosophical approach with Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s theses on nature, as elaborated in 1956–1961, and to point out some advantages and limitations of both approaches. In our opinion, Patočka’s philosophical approach consists, on the one hand, in a descriptive analysis of human experience, which he understands as a pre-reflective self-relationship pointing towards the consciousness of the world. On the other hand, on the basis of this descriptive analysis Patočka consequently explicates all non-human life, inorganic matter, and finally the whole of nature as life in its own right, the essence of which is also a certain self-relation with a tendency towards consciousness. The article then briefly presents Merleau-Ponty’s theses on nature, and finally compares them with Patočka’s overall theses on nature. The advantage of Patočka’s notion of nature as against Merleau-Ponty’s is that, in Patočka’s view, nature encompasses both the principle of unity and individuality. On the other hand, the advantage of Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of nature as against Patočka’s lies in the consistent interconnectedness of the infinite life of nature and the finite life of individual beings.

Jaspers in his time

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federico Leoni
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Philosophical Anthropology ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Traditional Philosophy ◽  
Xix Century ◽  
Ground Structures

The chapter describes Jaspers’ debt towards XIX century philosophies - in particular Nietzsche’s Lebensphilosophie, Weber’s sociological thinking, Dilthey’s philosophy of Geisteswissenschaften, Husserl’s phenomenology. Husserl offered Jaspers an access to the ground structures of human experience, beyond abstractions and intelletual reconstructions of traditional philosophy and psychology. Dilthey provided him a neat epistemological differentiation between the methods of explication (natural sciences) and comprehension (human sciences). Weber’s sociology elaborated a precious notion of “Idealtypus”, central to Jaspers phenomenological psychopatology. Nietzsche’s meditation on the Uebermensch offered Jaspers, paradoxically enough, an insight about the nature of illness on weakness, which Jaspers philosophical anthropology assumed since the Allgemeine Psychopatologie as a constitutive dimension of human life as such.

scholarly journals Sexual Differentiation in Tibetan Medical and Buddhist Perspectives

2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 421-432 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mingji Cuomu ◽  
Katia Holmes
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Differentiation ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Buddhist Philosophy ◽  
Tibetan Medicine ◽  
Natural Phenomenon ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Mutual Dependence ◽  
State Of Mind ◽  
Medical Book ◽  
Interpretive Frame

Abstract Classical Tibetan medicine is closely related to Buddhist philosophy. This article describes how the study and meaning of sexual differentiation in Tibetan medicine is deeply rooted in Buddhist texts and philosophy. The article pays particular attention to the Buddhist theory of mutual dependence of birth and death and on the medical ways of explaining the determining of sex. While Tibetan medicine approaches sexual differentiation by examining its various determinant factors, thus aiming to improve understanding of the human body and diseases, which manifest differently in men and women, in Buddhist philosophy sexual differentiation is perceived as a fundamental, natural phenomenon of human life that forms a key in Tantric practices to comprehend the nature of mind and thence attaining the highest state of mind. The article consists of a translation of the first chapter of a Tibetan medical book on obstetrics, including a newly written introduction to the Buddhist interpretive frame employed in the chapter.

Wicked Interactions

2015 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-49
Author(s):  
Heather Wiltse ◽  
Erik Stolterman ◽  
Johan Redström ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Technology ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Wicked Problems ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Social Infrastructure ◽  
Fully Integrated ◽  
The Past ◽  
Classic Theory ◽  
Technology And Design

The digital computational technologies that over the past decades have come to be fully integrated into nearly all aspects of human life have varying forms, scales, interactive mechanisms, functions, configurations, and interconnections. Much of this complexity and associated implications for human experience are, however, hidden by prevalent notions of ‘the computer’ as an object. In this paper, we consider how everyday digital technologies collectively mediate human experience, arguing that these technologies are better understood as fluid assemblages that have as many similarities with the infra-structural as they have properties typical for objects. We characterize these aspects in terms of ‘wicked interactions,’ drawing on and adapting the classic theory of wicked problems in design discourse that has similarly considered the complexity of interactions with and within other types of social infrastructure. In doing this we emphasize the need and the potential for building up connections between philosophy of technology and design discourse, with the hope that this might further the shared goals of understanding digital technologies and their consequences and determining how to act in relation to them and their design.

Endocrinology

2019 ◽  
pp. 612-672
Author(s):  
Richard G. Bribiescas
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Life History Evolution ◽  
Sexually Dimorphic ◽  
Human Variation ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Metabolic Hormones ◽  
Gene Environment ◽  
Key Aspects

This chapter on endocrinology aims to shed light on the biology of hormones within the context of human life history evolution. An evolutionary perspective contributes to not only our understanding of human evolution, but also to the contemporary and emerging health challenges across the spectrum of ecologies and environments. Evolutionary endocrinology extends our understanding of human biology and health through the engagement of gene–environment interactions, social dynamics, human variation, and how hormones regulate life history traits such as growth, immune function, metabolism, and ageing. This chapter describes key aspects of endocrinology that are specific to men and women, while also being mindful of the importance of human variation. For example, men and women exhibit reproductive states that deploy specific functions. In women, these are menstruation, gestation, and lactation. These processes are governed largely by the hypothalamic–pituitary–ovarian axis and how it responds to environmental challenges such as nutritional demands, activity, and social stresses. Men also exhibit reproductive states, although they are mostly in the form of investment in sexually dimorphic tissue and behavioural variation. These states are governed by hormones which allocate resources between tissues that are indicative of different forms of reproductive effort. These include sexually dimorphic muscle tissue and adiposity. Spermatogenesis is obviously key but has differential effects on fertility compared to gametogenesis in women. Additional aspects of human evolutionary endocrinology include stress homoeostasis and metabolism, which involve the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis as well as the thyroid and other metabolic hormones.

To See or Not to See: The Debate over Pornography and its Relationship to Sexual Aggression

1994 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 600-606 ◽  
Author(s):  
Atsumi Fukui ◽  
Bruce Westmore
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Sexual Aggression ◽  
Detrimental Effect ◽  
Human Behaviour ◽  
Psychological Development ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Recent Debate ◽  
Significant Detrimental Effect

The role played by pornography in the generation of thoughts, feelings, impulses and behaviours in its viewers has long been a topic of debate and controversy. The uncertainty about its potential effects on human behaviour, especially its relationship to sexual aggression, has stimulated the recent debate with the possibility of tighter censorship laws being implemented throughout this country. A review of the topic from a number of different perspectives fails to establish that pornography in its purely erotic form has any significant detrimental effect on human behaviour. More difficult to determine are its effects on psychological development. If behavioural disturbances do occur following exposure to such material, they occur in the context of an individual who shows more global disturbances of personality. The current debate regarding pornography provides an opportunity to address in a broader social context issues perhaps more significant for our society: the relationships between men and women, and the roles and recognition provided to each of the sexes.

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