scholarly journals An Examination of India's Pharmaceutical Industry Through the Lens of Dependency Theory

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bashar AbuAlghanam

Dependency theory portrays certain countries as core countries and others as periphery countries. It portrays the relationship between the core and the periphery as a parasitic, and controlling, one. This paper examines global pharmaceuticals through the lens of dependency theory, which would predict that core countries try to exert control over the pharmaceutical industry in periphery countries through patents, licensing, capital controls or other means. They also extend their activities to conducting pharmaceutical testing of dangerous drugs in Third World (or periphery) countries. Evidence suggest that there is a history of major multinational pharmaceutical companies, which are headquartered in developed countries, monopolizing life-saving drugs and marketing unnecessary medical consumer products in periphery third world countries. The case of India, however, took a different discourse that cannot be fully explained within the framework of dependency theory; the Indian pharmaceutical industry has witnessed an impressive growth over the past several decades.

2017 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 29-39
Author(s):  
ITAI KABONGA

This article is a theoretical interrogation and appreciation of the relationship that hitherto exists between the dependency theory and donor aid. A number of scholars have heaped aspersions on the relevance of the dependency theory. This article argues that dependency theory is still relevant and has flared in this current epoch. Donor aid has emerged as a symbol of dependency, supporting the argument on the relevance of dependency theory. Donor aid has emerged as a nuanced form of dependency on western countries. Dependency theory, which originated in the 1950s, has Singer and Prebisch as the progenitors— and emerged as a result of the growing dissatisfaction with modernity theories that had propounded that economic growth in developed countries was similarly going to lead to unabated growth and development in poorer countries. The theory is premised on resources being extracted from poorer countries to enrich wealthy nations. The continuation of this scenario has resulted in a situation where poverty has been exacerbated among the poorer nations, while the wealthy nations are becoming richer. . Donor aid has, in a plethora of ways, enriched the rich countries while dialectically impoverishing poor countries. It is not an exaggeration that donor money that is being extended to Third World countries, has created more employment, demand for goods and services in richer countries than in poorer countries, thus perpetuating underdevelopment in the latter. Donor aid has undoubtedly, been used as a rod to whip Third World countries at variance, with self-serving interests.  On the other hand, the insatiable desire for aid has forced the poorer countries to submit to the dictates of the richer countries.


Author(s):  
Will Kynes

This chapter introduces the volume by arguing that the study of biblical wisdom is in the midst of a potential paradigm shift, as interpreters are beginning to reconsider the relationship between the concept of wisdom in the Bible and the category Wisdom Literature. This offers an opportunity to explore how the two have been related in the past, in the history of Jewish and Christian interpretation, how they are connected in the present, as three competing primary approaches to Wisdom study have developed, and how they could be treated in the future, as new possibilities for understanding wisdom with insight from before and beyond the development of the Wisdom Literature category are emerging.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bárbara Moguel ◽  
Liseth Pérez ◽  
Luis David Alcaraz ◽  
Socorro Lozano-García ◽  
Luis Herrera-Estrella ◽  
...  

<p>For decades, paleoecological studies in lake sediments have focused on reconstructing the environments of the past and explaining phenomena linked to climatic variations. Recent advances in high-throughput DNA sequencing have allowed access to environmental DNA (eDNA) and ancient sedimentary DNA (sedaDNA) as a new and efficient proxy for past and present biodiversity. The basin of Mexico (BM) is located in the central part of the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt at 2,200 m a.s.l.; with the southern portion harboring the Chalco sub-basin. Lake Chalco is one of the last remaining natural aquatic ecosystems within the ever-expanding urban area surrounding Mexico City. The paleoenvironmental history of this lake has been previously characterized using sedimentological and geochemical proxies, as well as preserved microfossils (diatoms, pollen) with a temporal framework based on multiple radiocarbon dates. However, information for the remaining taxonomic groups and metabolic pathways remained unexplored. Here, we present the first metagenomics-based study for the Holocene in a high-altitude lake in Central Mexico –Lake Chalco. We explored the relationship between the lake’s paleoenvironmental condition and estimations of taxonomic and metabolic profiles across the sedimentary sequence (2.5 meters long). Multiple biological and abiotic variables revealed three main environmental phases: 1) a cool freshwater lake (FW1: 11,500-11,000 cal years BP), 2) a warm hyposaline lake (HS2: 11,000-6,000 cal years BP), and 3) a temperate, subsaline lake (SS3, <6,000 cal years BP). We describe the structure of the microbiota community and taxonomy richness turnover in the three Holocene paleoenvironmental phases. During the past 12 000 years BP the most abundant domains in Lake Chalco sediments were Bacteria, followed by Archaea, and Eukarya (36,722 genera). The analysis of functional proteins showed high biodiversity with a total of 27,636,243 proteins identified, but it was only possible to annotate 3,227,398 of them. Also, we identified several genes associated with some relevant pathways, such as methanogenesis. Altogether, this study allowed us to reconstruct the natural history of lake Chalco and its surroundings.</p>


2022 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Torkil Lauesen

Abstract This article tells the story of an organization based in Copenhagen, Denmark, which supported the Liberation struggle in the Third World from 1969 until April 1989. It focus on the support to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (pflp). The story is told in a historical and global context. The text explains the strategy and tactic behind the support-work. It explains how the different forms of solidarity work developed over two decades (for a more detailed account of the history of the group, see Kuhn, 2014). Finally, the article offers an evaluation of the past and a perspective on the future struggle for a socialist Palestine.


2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 45-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janina Witkowska

The aim of this paper is to discuss the common features and specificity of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practices of innovative transnational corporations (TNCs) acting in the pharmaceutical industry. The innovativeness of pharmaceutical firms is understood here as their ability to make a breakthrough in the treatment of rare, incurable diseases. The examination of the issue leads to the conclusion that the specificity of CSR in this industry is related to the contradiction between the economic and social/ethical aspects of innovation processes in this field. A key issue of CSR in the innovative pharmaceutical industry seems to be the pricing of drugs, especially orphan and ultra‑orphan drugs, resulting in patients from less developed countries having limited access to life‑saving medicines or those that improve the quality of life. Corporations use their monopolistic position to set extremely high prices. However, without the market/marketing exclusivity offered to pharmaceutical firms by the law, orphan drugs would probably not be developed, produced and commercialized. Traditional CSR practices (corporate philanthropy, community and neighborhood programs, volunteerism etc.) cannot be treated as sufficient ‘compensation’ for the high prices of medicines. Real, true CSR in the innovative pharmaceutical industry requires either abandoning or reducing extreme monopolistic privileges and offering medicines for rare diseases at lower prices.


Author(s):  
Timothy Cooper

This article explores embodied encounters with the Sea Empress oil spill of 1996 and their representation in oral narratives. Through a close reading of the personal testimonies collected in the Sea Empress Project archive, I examine the relationship between intense sensory experiences of environmental change and everyday interpretations of the disaster and its legacy. The art­icle first outlines the ways in which this collection of voices reveals sensory memories, embodied affects and narrative choices to be deeply entwined in oral representations of the spill, disclosing a ‘sensory event’ that created a powerful awareness of both environmental surroundings and their relationship to everyday social processes. Then, reading these narratives against-the-grain, I argue that narrators’ accounts tell a paradoxical story of a disaster that most now wish to forget, and reveal an ambivalent legacy of environmental change that is similarly consigned to the past. Finally, I relate this social forgetting of the Sea Empress to the wider history of environmental consciousness in modern Britain.


Lateral ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Jayne Kimmel

This assembled interview centers both Elaine Mokhtefi and Le premier festival culturel panafricain d’Alger 1969 (PANAF), a festival which she organized and attended as a part of the Algerian Ministry of Information, noting it as an exemplary instance of the power of performance at the nexus of political ideology, activist history, and the subsequent nostalgia for that era of liberation. It is equally an attempt to overcome a distant relationship to each, reflecting on the potential of oral histories to open up new pathways through the past. This history—of entangled international relations negotiated under the guise of a festive performance, a complicated trajectory of global politics which culminated in a remarkable event of celebration and solidarity—remains understudied, a footnote to more “political” concerns of Third World agendas, decolonial reorderings, and capitalist critiques. Yet through Mokhtefi’s testimony, interwoven with searching tendrils of archival detail, we can see that this festival was not a superficial exaltation in extravagance, but a pivotal moment in foreign affairs. More importantly, through her personal history, we can trace the central role that women played in these politics, if often unacknowledged. Edited in 2020, it also counters the pejorative label of non-essential labor applied to most cultural activities during the contemporary pandemic response to COVID-19.


Author(s):  
Mary Ziegler

This article illuminates potential obstacles facing the reproductive justice movement and the way those obstacles might be overcome. Since 2010, reproductive justice—an agenda that fuses access to reproductive health services and demands for social justice—has energized feminist scholars and activists and captured broader public attention. Abortion rights advocates in the past dismissed reproductive justice claims as risky and unlikely to appeal to a broad enough audience. These obstacles are not as daunting as they first appear. Reframing the abortion right as a matter of women’s equality may eliminate some of the constitutional hurdles facing a reproductive justice approach. The political obstacles may be just as surmountable. Understanding the history of the constitutional discourse concerning reproductive justice and reproductive rights may allow us to move beyond the impasse that has defined the relationship between the two for too long.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Suze Wilson

<p>We have come to live in an age where leadership is the solution, regardless of the problem. Today, managers are called on to provide leadership which is ‘visionary’, ‘charismatic’, ‘transformational’ and ‘authentic’ in nature. This is what ‘followers’ are said to need to perform to their potential. The efforts of the academy in promoting these ideas means they are typically understood as modern, enlightened and grounded in scientific research. Taking a critical step back, this study examines why we have come to understand leadership in this way.  Adopting a Foucauldian methodology, the study comprises three case studies which examine Classical Greek, 16th century European and modern scholarly discourses on leadership. The analysis foregrounds change and continuity in leadership thought and examines the underpinning assumptions, problematizations and processes of formation which gave rise to these truth claims. The relationship and subjectivity effects produced by these discourses along with their wider social function are also considered.  What the study reveals is that our current understanding of leadership is not grounded in an approach more enlightened and truthful than anything that has come before. Rather, just as at other times in the past, it is contemporary problematizations, politically-informed processes of formation and the epistemological and methodological preferences of our age which profoundly shape what is understood to constitute the truth about leadership.  Through showing how leadership has been thought of at different points in time, this thesis argues that far from being a stable enduring fact of human nature now revealed to us by modern science, as is typically assumed, leadership is most usefully understood as an unstable social invention, morphing in form, function and effect in response to changing norms, values and circumstances. Consistent with this understanding, a new approach to theory-building for organizational leadership studies is offered. This study shows, then, why we ought to think differently about leadership and offers a means by which this can occur.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Suze Wilson

<p>We have come to live in an age where leadership is the solution, regardless of the problem. Today, managers are called on to provide leadership which is ‘visionary’, ‘charismatic’, ‘transformational’ and ‘authentic’ in nature. This is what ‘followers’ are said to need to perform to their potential. The efforts of the academy in promoting these ideas means they are typically understood as modern, enlightened and grounded in scientific research. Taking a critical step back, this study examines why we have come to understand leadership in this way.  Adopting a Foucauldian methodology, the study comprises three case studies which examine Classical Greek, 16th century European and modern scholarly discourses on leadership. The analysis foregrounds change and continuity in leadership thought and examines the underpinning assumptions, problematizations and processes of formation which gave rise to these truth claims. The relationship and subjectivity effects produced by these discourses along with their wider social function are also considered.  What the study reveals is that our current understanding of leadership is not grounded in an approach more enlightened and truthful than anything that has come before. Rather, just as at other times in the past, it is contemporary problematizations, politically-informed processes of formation and the epistemological and methodological preferences of our age which profoundly shape what is understood to constitute the truth about leadership.  Through showing how leadership has been thought of at different points in time, this thesis argues that far from being a stable enduring fact of human nature now revealed to us by modern science, as is typically assumed, leadership is most usefully understood as an unstable social invention, morphing in form, function and effect in response to changing norms, values and circumstances. Consistent with this understanding, a new approach to theory-building for organizational leadership studies is offered. This study shows, then, why we ought to think differently about leadership and offers a means by which this can occur.</p>


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