Tales from the Concrete Cave

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kajri Jain
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
New Delhi ◽  
Theme Park ◽  
Theme Parks ◽  
The Social ◽  
Moral Economies ◽  
Colonial Economy ◽  
Artificial Nature

Explicitly artificial “nature” (animals, trees, mountains, the colour green) proliferates intensely in contemporary India, notably in peri-urban theme parks. While this could be seen as post-liberalization “Disneyfication” or as a symptom of modernity more broadly, this chapter argues that there are other aesthetico-moral economies at work alongside such universalizing formulations of a hegemonic capitalist modernity and its “nature-culture.” It does so through a focus on the Lakshminarayan Temple or Birla Mandir, built in the 1930s as a “native” addendum to colonial New Delhi. The temple’s innovative architecture, and particularly its theme park-like garden, inaugurated a new, inclusive public (sarvajanik) religious space at the nexus of colonial planning, momentous debates on caste, religious patronage in the late colonial economy, and resignifications of nature and the sacred through new visual forms. This genealogy of the post-reform theme park illuminates the nature of “nature” on an uneven postcolonial terrain that both discursively negotiates and performatively refutes the separation of culture, religion and the social from “nature” and from political economy.

scholarly journals The Myths and Moral Economies of Digital ID and Mobile Money in India and Myanmar

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 215
Author(s):  
Janaki Srinivasan ◽  
Elisa Oreglia
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Moral Economy ◽  
Identification System ◽  
Mobile Money ◽  
End Of History ◽  
The Social ◽  
Moral Economies ◽  
The End Of History

The diffusion of major new technologies in society is often accompanied by a set of myths that tell us how these technologies will change, clearly for the better, the social and economic fabric of a community. Digital technologies are associated with myths such as the death of distance and of mediators, the end of history and of politics (Brown and Duguid 2000; Mosco 2004). We build on Mosco’s idea of myth as a force shaping discourses around the introduction of new technologies in the context of the deployment of digital artifacts such as digital ID systems and mobile money platforms in the Global South (Mosco 2004). Using the examples of the Unique Identification system (Aadhaar) in India and mobile money in Myanmar, we show how these myths persist long after technologies are in common use. We also examine how, in practice, the use of these technologies seldom aligns with the mythology surrounding them, and it is, instead the moral economy of the communities where they are deployed that mediates their use (Thompson 1971). We argue that local histories of state-making and the larger political economy of technology design can help explain the persistence of the mythology around digital technologies despite the disconnect between myths and reality.

scholarly journals Hymen interrupted: Negotiating body, markets, and consumerist modernity in India

2021 ◽  
pp. 01-07
Author(s):  
Tannistha Samanta
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Sexual Experience ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
New Delhi ◽  
Health Politics ◽  
Cosmetic Industry ◽  
The Social ◽  
Moral Economies ◽  
Legal Frameworks

Abstract In this commentary, I contend that in a context marked by a slow but steady rise in sexual liberalism around the ideals of female sexuality and desire, the pressure to remain virginal is manifested through a potent nexus of markets and moral economies associated with gender and intimacy. Drawing on qualitative interviews with surgeons specialising in female genital aesthetic surgeries, particularly hymenoplasty, in New Delhi, Ahmedabad, and Bangalore, I show how restorative cosmetic surgeries on healthy bodies are proffered through the language of duty, autonomous choice, and the (neoliberal) market. Further, building on the sociological concepts of “moral consumption” and “progress through pleasure”, I show how consumerism-led modernity makes pleasure a ‘biopolitical burden’, and the cosmetic industry, a regulatory vehicle, disciplining female sexuality to conform with male honour codes. I question what this holds for the sexual and reproductive health politics of young people in India, in a context marked by pervasive asymmetries of socialisation, gender relations, and sexual experience. I conclude with a call to unsettle the social–moral ideals around female sexuality and to rethink the medical–legal frameworks around the cosmetic industry so that young people are not unwittingly co-opted into its production of ideal, patriarchal subjects.

Lord Dacre and the Politics of the Scottish Enlightenment

2005 ◽  
Vol 84 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Kidd
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Economic Transformation ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
North East ◽  
The Social ◽  
Romantic Movement ◽  
Scottish History

Hugh Trevor-Roper (Lord Dacre) made several iconoclastic interventions in the field of Scottish history. These earned him a notoriety in Scottish circles which, while not undeserved, has led to the reductive dismissal of Trevor-Roper's ideas, particularly his controversial interpretation of the Scottish Enlightenment, as the product of Scotophobia. In their indignation Scottish historians have missed the wider issues which prompted Trevor-Roper's investigation of the Scottish Enlightenment as a fascinating case study in European cultural history. Notably, Trevor-Roper used the example of Scotland to challenge Weberian-inspired notions of Puritan progressivism, arguing instead that the Arminian culture of north-east Scotland had played a disproportionate role in the rise of the Scottish Enlightenment. Indeed, working on the assumption that the essence of Enlightenment was its assault on clerical bigotry, Trevor-Roper sought the roots of the Scottish Enlightenment in Jacobitism, the counter-cultural alternative to post-1690 Scotland's Calvinist Kirk establishment. Though easily misconstrued as a dogmatic conservative, Trevor-Roper flirted with Marxisant sociology, not least in his account of the social underpinnings of the Scottish Enlightenment. Trevor-Roper argued that it was the rapidity of eighteenth-century Scotland's social and economic transformation which had produced in one generation a remarkable body of political economy conceptualising social change, and in the next a romantic movement whose powers of nostalgic enchantment were felt across the breadth of Europe.

Prophets and Profits of Racial Science

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruha Benjamin
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Precision Medicine ◽  
Group Differences ◽  
Racial Science ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Racial Ethnic

In this response to Terence Keel and John Hartigan’s debate over the social construction of race, I aim to push the discussion beyond the terrain of epistemology and ideology to examine the contested value of racial science in a broader political economy. I build upon Keel’s concern that even science motivated by progressive aims may reproduce racist thinking and Hartigan’s proposition that a critique of racial science cannot rest on the beliefs and intentions of scientists. In examining the value of racial-ethnic classifications in pharmacogenomics and precision medicine, I propose that analysts should attend to the relationship between prophets of racial science (those who produce forecasts about inherent group differences) and profits of racial science (the material-semiotic benefits of such forecasts). Throughout, I draw upon the idiom of speculation—as a narrative, predictive, and financial practice—to explain how the fiction of race is made factual, again and again. 

Satu Kahkonen and Anthony Lanyi. Institutions, Incentives, and Economic Reforms in India. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2000. 516 pages. Hardback. Price Indian Rs 595.00.

2001 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-74
Author(s):  
Attiya Y. Javed
Keyword(s):  
Reform Process ◽  
New Delhi ◽  
Social Rules ◽  
Reform Agenda ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Rural Governance ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Economic Landscape ◽  
Number Of Authors

The economic reform process began in India in 1991. However, the reform agenda is still far from its goals as is evident from low per capita income. Thus, this reform effort has not produced the desired outcome of a faster rate of economic and social development in a meaningful way. It is the premise of this volume that to transform the social and economic landscape, the proposed reforms should be broadbased and multi-pronged which take into account incentives for the stockholders in both the private and public sectors. The institutions are the rules that govern economy and include the fundamental legal, political, and social rules that establish the basis for production, exchange, and distribution. The two editors of this volume have received contributions from a number of authors and the wide range of papers are grouped under five main headings: political economy of reforms, reforming public goods delivery, reform issues in agriculture and rural governance, and reforming the district and financial sector.

Different Resources, Different Conflicts? The Subnational Political Economy of Armed Conflict and Crime in Colombia

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Conflict Behavior ◽  
Drug Trade ◽  
Academic Literature ◽  
Economic Context ◽  
Sustainable Peace ◽  
The Social ◽  
Scholarly Attention

This book explores some of the risks associated with sustainable peace in Colombia. The book intentionally steers away from the emphasis on the drug trade as the main resource fueling Colombian conflicts and violence, a topic that has dominated scholarly attention. Instead, it focuses on the links that have been configured over decades of armed conflict between legal resources (such as bananas, coffee, coal, flowers, gold, ferronickel, emeralds, and oil), conflict dynamics, and crime in several regions of Colombia. The book thus contributes to a growing trend in the academic literature focusing on the subnational level of armed conflict behavior. It also illustrates how the social and economic context of these resources can operate as deterrents or as drivers of violence. The book thus provides important lessons for policymakers and scholars alike: Just as resources have been linked to outbreaks and transformations of violence, peacebuilding too needs to take into account their impacts, legacies, and potential

The Political Economy of Work and Welfare

2021 ◽  
pp. 422-444
Author(s):  
Micheál L. Collins ◽  
Mary P. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
Full Employment ◽  
The Political ◽  
Welfare Regime ◽  
The Social ◽  
Sectoral Composition ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Institutional Architecture

The political economy of Irish work and welfare has dramatically changed over recent decades. Since the 1980s, Ireland has experienced two periods of high unemployment followed by two periods of full employment. Alongside this, we see considerable shifts in both the sectoral composition of the workforce and in the institutional architecture underpinning the labour market. Focusing on the last decade, this chapter contextualizes the Irish labour market in the Irish growth model, highlighting issues including occupational upgrading, low pay, gender composition, and migration. The chapter then explores links between this employment structure and Ireland’s changing welfare regime. It considers recent institutional changes, as the welfare regime shifted to a work-first form of activation, and the long-term sustainability of the social protection system. The chapter concludes by highlighting what we see as the core challenges for the political economy of work and welfare in Ireland.

Politics, Economics, and Political Economy

1973 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 263-279
Author(s):  
Trevor Smith
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Thomas Kuhn ◽  
Widespread Adoption ◽  
The Social ◽  
Small Measure ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Critical Literature

DISSATISFACTION WITH ESTABLISHED MODES OF SCHOLARSHIP IS A contemporary manifestation common to all the social sciences in varying degrees. In the terminology of Thomas Kuhn, which in its widespread adoption seems in no small measure to have contribted to the new waves of methodological consciousness, the prevailing ‘paradigms’, which were largely consolidated in the 1950s, are being explicitly and often vehemently challenged. A burgeoning critical literature is readily apparent throughout the social sciences and, for that matter, beyond.

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