The ‘Scotch Metaphysics’ in 19th Century Benares

2006 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-157
Author(s):  
Richard Fox Young
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
John Muir ◽  
Cultural Encounter ◽  
Sanskrit College

That India once had a sustained ‘dialogue’ with Scottish Philosophy is not gener- ally known, or that the exchange occurred in the medium of Sanskrit, not English. The essay explores an important cross-cultural encounter in the colonial context of mid 19th-century Benares where two Scots, John Muir and James Ballantyne, served as principals of a Sanskrit college established by the East India Company. Educated toward the end of the Scottish Enlightenment, they endeavoured to translate such distinctive concepts of ‘Scotch Metaphysics’ as Externalism into Indian philosophical categories. The ensuing ‘dialogue’ with Brahmin interlocutors shows that the prob- lems they faced were less terminological than conceptual, having to do with contras- tive ways of understanding ‘mind’ and ‘man’. Between the two Scots, there were also signifi cant differences, although both had gone to India as Scottish Calvinists. While Muir remained largely impervious to Indian infl uence, Ballantyne was profoundly changed, becoming, in effect, a ‘Vedantic Calvinist’.

scholarly journals Women and Orientalism: 19th century Representations of the Harem by European female travellers and Ottoman women

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 10
Author(s):  
Thisaranie Herath
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
The West ◽  
Cultural Exchanges ◽  
Private Spaces ◽  
The Way

The inaccessibility of the Ottoman harems to European males helped perpetuate the image of the harem as purely sexual in nature and contributed to imperialistic discourse that positioned the East as inferior to the West. It was only with the emergence of female travellers and artists that Europe was afforded a brief glimpse into the source of their fantasies; however, whether these accounts catered to or challenged the normative imperialist discourse of the day remains controversial. Emerging scholarship also highlights the way in which harem women themselves were able to control the depiction of their private spaces to suit their own needs, serving to highlight how nineteenth century depictions of the harem were a series of cross-cultural exchanges and negotiations between male Orientalists, female European travellers, and shrewd Ottoman women. 

scholarly journals TAXATION POLICY AND LAND REFORMS IN COLONIAL MALAYA

2020 ◽  
pp. 56-62
Author(s):  
AVAZBEK GANIYEV
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Palm Oil ◽  
Crop Production ◽  
Mining Industry ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Land Reforms ◽  
Taxation Policy ◽  
Agricultural Produce ◽  
Land Relations ◽  
The 19Th Century

During the 18th-19th centuries, British influence started to change the situation of the economy and the society of Malaya as a whole. Steps towards the further expansion of the tin mining industry was a turning point, which affected the whole society. The British Straits Settlements of Penang, Malacca, and Singapore were established between 1786 and 1825 and were governed by the East India Company. The tin trade was thrown open to private individuals. Further developments required more labor and funds involvement and as a result, the Chinese came to the central scene and started to invest hugely in Sungei Ujong and Negeri Sembilan’s tin mining industry. This article discusses the colonial time reforms regarding Malaya’s taxation and land matters. Using library-based research, this study investigated colonial taxation and land issues. Reforms, which occurred in the last two decades of the 19th century in land relations, helped to reshape existed in pre-colonial period subsistent agriculture to the more advanced and systematized export-based income generator to the British. In the last quarter of the 19th century, there was a huge increase in exportable crop production. The rubber depression, which occurred in the 1920s, gave chance for palm oil to become successful agricultural produce. Kennedy states that many of the plantation areas were large ones; by 1933, there were 32 estates with 64,000-planted acres, and this acreage had increased to 79,000 by 1941. Authorities, in order to encourage the production of palm oil and diversify the economy, granted lands on favorable terms. This research fnds that at the end of the colonial rule the British started to use the benefcial terms for the landowners to boost production.

Evaluating the Aboriginal child’s mind: assimilation and cross-cultural psychology in Australia

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-349
Author(s):  
David Robertson
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Psychology ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Psychological Interventions ◽  
Intellectual Performance ◽  
Australian Aboriginal ◽  
Cultural Encounter ◽  
Cultural Deprivation ◽  
Research Outcomes ◽  
Psychological Instruments ◽  
Aboriginal Children

This article examines two psychological interventions with Australian Aboriginal children in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The first involved evaluating the cognitive maturation of Aboriginal adolescents using a series of Piagetian interviews. The second, a more extensive educational intervention, used a variety of quantitative tests to measure and intervene in the intellectual performance of Aboriginal preschoolers. In both of these interventions the viability of the psychological instruments in the cross-cultural encounter created ongoing ambiguity as to the value of the research outcomes. Ultimately, the resolution of this ambiguity in favour of notions of Aboriginal ‘cultural deprivation’ reflected the broader political context of debates over Aboriginal self-governance during this period.

Ossianic History and Bluestocking Feminism

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
JoEllen DeLucia
Keyword(s):  
Human Development ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Historical Consciousness ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
James Macpherson ◽  
Civilizing Process ◽  
Women's Role

This chapter examines the Bluestockings’ role in the development of the Scottish Enlightenment’s cross-cultural theories of human development and in the popularization of their literary equivalent, Macpherson’s Ossian poems. In addition to recovering the epistolary record of Elizabeth Montagu’s influence on major figures of the Scottish Enlightenment as well as the popular Ossianic feasts she incorporated into her London salons, it discusses the Ossianic imitations of Catherine Talbot, Montagu’s friend and contemporary. Montagu’s Ossian-themed feasts—attended by James Macpherson, other Scottish literati, and her Bluestocking circle—enacted the equivalent social relationships and produced the refined social sentiments conjectured in Macpherson’s poems and theorized in the Scottish Enlightenment. Montagu’s correspondence documents the Bluestockings’ responses to the work of their Scottish contemporaries and their contribution to the new maps of historical development generated by the Scots at mid-century. The final portion of this chapter argues that Catherine Talbot tested this emergent historical consciousness in her Ossianic imitations, which reflect on the Seven Years War and women’s role in the civilizing process.

scholarly journals Guarding the Sons of Empire: Military–State–Society Relations in Water, Sanitation and Health Programs of mid-19th-Century India

Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 429 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah J. Halvorson ◽  
James L. Wescoat Jr.
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Strong Association ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Health Programs ◽  
Public Health Programs ◽  
Late 18Th Century ◽  
Medical Reports ◽  
Sanitation Systems

Drinking water supply and sanitation have had a strong association with military institutions in South Asia from the colonial period to the present. This paper shows how military-state-society relationships created spaces of differential water access and sanitation burdens in mid-19th-century cantonments in ways that involved complex gender relations. In comparison with previous research, we argue that privileged military enclaves were segregated but never fully separated from larger urban water and sanitation systems. We use historical geographic methods to review the evolving role of military sanitation regulations in cantonments from late-18th-century policies of the East India Company (EIC) through mid-19th-century rule by the British Crown, during which time military cantonments, regulations, and formal monitoring reports were established. Close reading of the British Army Medical Department’s Statistical, Sanitary, and Medical Reports (Sanitary Reports) in the 1860s then shows how military-state-society relations diverged from civilian public health programs in ways that persist to some extent to the present day. Health advisors, some of them women, pursued an ideology and tactics to “guard the sons of empire”, from what they perceived to be a disease-filled landscape of “lurking evils”, “choleric attacks”, and “native offensives”. We conclude with a discussion of both continuities and change in the relationships between military and civilian public health reforms beyond the barracks.

Hybrid Selves

2019 ◽  
pp. 49-62
Author(s):  
Banu Özkazanç-Pan
Keyword(s):  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Management ◽  
Business People ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
Cultural Transformations ◽  
Cultural Encounter ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Cross Cultural Management ◽  
The Moment

This chapter focuses on hybrid selves, a new kind of self that arises as a result of the distinct context, experiences and set of social and material practices that a person engages in to understand themselves and those around them. While there are many different ways to define hybrid, its use here examines those novel socio-cultural transformations, combinations and “mixings” that take shape at the moment of cultural encounter. Hybrid selves form differently even if facing the same set of circumstances and conditions such studying the everyday lives of business people can elucidate the repertoires of actions that they embody and eschew. By outlining the main tenets of hybrid selves, this chapter challenges conceptualizations of ‘self’ that are based on static notions of identity which limit how we can understand people. It provides examples and comparative illustrations of hybrid selves and contrasts them with research that aims to study similar people in diversity and cross-cultural management. The chapter points out main differences between hybrid selves and bi-cultural or multicultural notions of identity that generally offer hyphenation as a solution to the complex ways people may understand themselves.

From Personal Threat to Cross-Cultural Learning: an Eidetic Investigation

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Eugene M. DeRobertis ◽  
Andrew M. Bland
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Expression ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cultural Learning ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Genetic Phenomenology ◽  
Cultural Encounter ◽  
New Meanings ◽  
Personal Threat

Abstract This study was an eidetic, phenomenological investigation of cross-cultural learning that involves overcoming an experience of personal threat. The study and its findings were placed within the context of Husserl’s genetic phenomenology and the extant humanistic literature on cross-cultural encounter. This appeared especially appropriate given phenomenology’s history “within the movement of the so-called ‘Third Force’ psychology” (Giorgi, 1970, p. xi). The eidetic reduction revealed the phenomenon to be rooted in an essential unfamiliarity with the other compounded by presumptions of the other as representing a substandard foreignness harboring danger. For the phenomenon to unfold required the learner to witness spontaneous emotional expression and empathically discover that the other struggles and suffers “like any other human being.” Openness to the other progressively builds and new meanings emerge from the interpersonal exchange as compartmentalized, intellectualized understandings of the other are outmoded.

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