Playing human

While Indian cinema has a rich tradition of ‘creature features‘, these films have traditionally drawn from Indigenous myth and folklore, rather than engaging with the environmentalist themes that are a staple in Western creature features. S. Shankar’s 2.0 (2018) marked an important moment in Indian cinema as the first true example of a mainstream Indian film that is unequivocally categorisable as ecohorror. However, the emergence of such a film text is not devoid of a historical context, nor is the near-absence of environmentalism in previous Indian ‘creature features’ devoid of reason. This essay is an attempt to trace how a film like 2.0 emerges within the Indian cultural context, how it assimilates prefigured Indigenous ideas as well as culturally translocated and subsequently Indianised ideas, and what new meaning is created in the process. My discussion primarily revolves around the theme of anthromorphism, which is commonly used in the visual and narrative portrayal of monsters in ‘creature features’. My arguments, while inter-linked, are divisible into four broad parts. Firstly, I locate the differences in Indian and Western ‘creature features’ in the differing cultural perceptions of anthropomorphism and anthropomorphised beings. For this, I draw on Paul Ricoeur’s theory of threefold mimesis, which links narratives to particular cultural repositories, and James Clifford’s notion of ‘traveling cultures’, which describes the modification of those repositories through cultural exchange. I locate the Indian economic liberalisation in the 1990s as an important historical juncture for the modification of the cultural repository. To make my case, I refer to existing criticism of Indian sf, marking the shifts from the post-colonial era through the post-1990s era. Secondly, I engage with the visual form of 2.0’s monster, focusing on the incorporation of both nature and technology in its design, and how it is significant. I draw from Western posthumanist theory, especially Donna Haraway’s concept of the ‘humanimal‘, and compare it with the Indigenous ecocentric imagination of the world where humans and nonhumans are kindred figures. Thirdly, I argue that the film, both at the narrative and visual level, constructs a vision of the Anthropocene that is not anthropocentric. It accomplishes this by consciously de-centring human characters, shifting the focus to everything that is of humans. Fourthly, I consolidate the previous argument by analysing how the film makes use of humour, especially dark humour, in order to accentuate its decentring of humans by the anthropomorphised, or human-like. Looking ahead, I propose the likelihood of 2.0 being the first of many Indian ‘creature features’ that mark a cultural shift from the mythological paradigm to the environmentalist paradigm. As such, a close analysis of the film as text and its corresponding context, focused on how it draws from and modifies its cultural repository, is significant in terms of laying the groundwork for future discussion.

In defence of newborns: a response to Kingma

Recently, I argued that subjects inside of artificial wombs—termed ‘gestatelings’ by Romanis—share the same legal and moral status as newborns (neonates). Gestatelings, on my view, are persons in both a legal and moral sense. Kingma challenges these claims. Specifically, Kingma argues that my previous argument is invalid, as it equivocates on the term ‘newborn’. Kingma concludes that questions about the legal and moral status of gestatelings remain ‘unanswered’. I am grateful to Kingma for raising potential concerns with the view I have presented. In this essay, however, I argue that (most) of Kingma’s objections are unpersuasive. First, my original argument does not equivocate on terms like ‘newborn’ or ‘neonate’. The terms denote human beings that have been born recently; that is what matters to the argument. Charges of equivocation, I suspect, rest on a confusion between the denotation and connotations of ‘newborn’ (or ‘neonate’). Next, I show that, contra Kingma, it is clear that—under current law in the USA and UK—gestatelings would count as legal persons. Moral personhood is more difficult. On that subject, Kingma’s criticisms have merit. In response, however, I show that my original claim—that gestatelings should count as moral persons—remains true on several (common) philosophical accounts of personhood. Regarding those accounts that imply gestatelings are not moral persons, I argue that advocates face a troubling dilemma. I conclude that regardless of which view of moral personhood one adopts, questions about the moral status of gestatelings are not ‘unanswered’.

Rituals of Containment: Many Pandemics, Body Politics, and Social Dramas During COVID-19 in Pakistan

Infecting millions of people, causing around two million deaths, and affecting billions of people worldwide during January 2021, the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is not merely one pandemic but many. These many pandemics, which I identify herein, have revealed the overt and subtle entanglements among religion, science, and politics around COVID-19. Building on my current ethnographic research on COVID-19 using purposive sampling and interview guide in Pakistan, and borrowing from various anthropological concepts such as “social drama,” proposed by Victor Turner, and ritual, I have developed a concept that I call rituals of containment. With this concept, I extend my previous argument regarding “symbolic ownership” to show a visible “body politics” by demonstrating how religion, science, and politics around COVID-19 are entangled at individual and government levels. This has become observable through the rituals of the Pakistani government of containment to deal with COVID-19. Such entanglements are visible in the case of strategies to tackle infected “viral bodies,” as the government has enacted its authority: (1) to bury what I am terming the dead viral body without its beloved ones present; (2) to return or not to return this body to family members in a coffin; (3) or to provide the grieving family with a symbolic empty coffin. These Covidian politics have led to the question: Who in actuality owns the body? In conclusion, I argue that the problem lies in the discriminatory and contradictory rituals of containment of the government, not in using scientific evidence and guidelines.

Male–Female Missionary Pairings among Jesus’ Disciples

This chapter expands on aspects of Joan Taylor’s previous argument that the designation ‘two by two’, δύο δύο‎, in Mark 1:7 suggests that the twelve male apostles appointed by Jesus in Galilee were not paired off internally as masculine teams but were paired with unnamed and obscured female companions as they went to heal and preach in Galilee. It is argued that the use of δύο δύο‎ in Mark, found without a preposition, needs to be distinguished from the usage in Luke 10:1 in regard to the seventy (or seventy-two) apostles sent out ἀνὰ δύο δύο‎, since the Gospel of Peter [9].35 indicates this latter expression means ‘two after two’: namely, pairs going off in sequence, successively. The expression δύο δύο‎, without any preposition, is not idiomatic Koinē but rather is an expression reliant on the Semitic pattern of distributive repetition, and in Sirach 33:14–15 it is used precisely in regard to pairs of opposites, or contraries, created by God, which would normatively include the binary pair of male and female, in accordance with Aristotelian archetypes.

Information Flow in Logics in the Vicinity of BB

Situation theory, and channel theory in particular, have been used to provide motivational accounts of the ternary relation semantics of relevant, substructural, and various non-classical logics. Among the constraints imposed by channel-theory, we must posit a certain existence criterion for situations which result from the composites of multiple channels (this is used in modeling information flow). In associative non-classical logics, it is relatively easy to show that a certain such condition is met, but the problem is trickier in non-associative logics. Following Tedder (2017), where it was shown that the conjunction-conditional fragment of the logic B admits the existence of composite channels, I present a generalised ver- sion of the previous argument, appropriate to logics with disjunction, in the neighbourhood ternary relation semantic framework. I close by suggesting that the logic BB+(^I), which falls between Lavers' system BB+ and B+ , satisfies the conditions for the general argument to go through (and prove that it satisfies all but one of those conditions).

Ein interpoliertes Textstück im neunten Kapitel der Aristotelischen Hermeneutik

The section 18b16–⁠25 of the famous chapter 9 of Aristotle’s De interpretatione presents two objections against the assumption that both members of a contradictory pair of future singular statements might be false. This section is unlikely to be genuine, because (1) the first objection is either directly begging the question or misusing a previous argument in a question-begging way, (2) the second objection includes irrelevant observations, and (3) the rebuttal of the said assumption interrupts the intimate connection between the immediately preceding and following sections.

OJREK BARENG: Memperdebatkan Argumen Apati dalam Penyelesaian Masalah Publik (Studi Kasus Bank Sampah Malang)

The dominant argument about the work of Everyday Makers states that apathy encourages community involvement in solving public problems. This qualitative case study aims to explore the workings of the Everyday Makers practice in the case of Malang Garbage Bank management. Unlike the previous argument, this study found an enthusiastic attitude that encouraged the community to work together in handling the waste problem in Malang city. The enthusiastic attitude that drives the community to work with the government and the private sector is the philosophy of Ojrek Bareng which is based on Arek Culture. This philosophy was reflected in the expression of the community in dealing with waste problems, namely sengkuyung seduluran (brotherhood spirit), ewuh pakewuh (uneasy feelings) and tanpo pamrih (sincere). This study debates the workings of Everyday Makers, that what drives the work of Everyday Makers in solving public problems is public's apathy towards the government. However, this study found that Ojrek Bareng as acommunity enthusiasm in solving waste problems through the Malang Garbage Bank. The practical implications of this study were the governance of public issue. Keywords: Everyday Makers, Governance, Malang Garbage Bank Abstrak Argumen dominan tentang bekerjanya Everyday Makers menyebutkan bahwa sikap apati mendorong keterlibatan masyarakat dalam menyelesaikan permasalahan publik. Studi kasus kualitatif ini bertujuan mengeksplorasi bekerjanya praktik Everyday Makers dalam kasus pengelolaan Bank Sampah Malang. Berbeda dengan argumen sebelumnya, studi ini menemukan sikap antusias yang mendorong masyarakat untuk bekerjasama dalam penanganan masalah sampah di Kota Malang. Sikap antusias yang mendorong masyarakat untuk bekerjasama dengan pemerintah dan swasta adalah filosofi Ojrek Bareng yang dilandasi oleh Budaya Arek. Filosofi ini tercermin dari ungkapan masyarakat dalam menangani permasalahan sampah yaitu sengkuyung seduluran (semangat persaudaraan), ewuh pakewuh (perasaan tidak enak) dan tanpo pamrih (tanpa pamrih). Studi ini mendebat bekerjanya Everyday Makers, bahwa yang mendorong bekerjanya Everyday Makers dalam menyelesaikan permasalahan publik adalah sikap apati masyarakat terhadap pemerintah. Namun, studi ini menemukan bahwa Ojrek Bareng sebagai bentuk antusiasme masyarakat dalam menyelesaikan masalah sampah lewat Bank Sampah Malang. Implikasi praktis dari studi ini adalah tata kelola masalah publik. Kata kunci: Everyday Makers, Governance, Bank Sampah Malang

PRODUCTIVITY AND EFFECTIVE DEMAND: ASSESSING THE DISAGGREGATE PUBLIC SPENDING

<p>In this paper, we attempt to support the argument regarding the endogeneity of productivity to effective demand. Unlike most of the works on the topic, we focus on the role that both public investment and public consumption have on productivity. We suggest, at the theoretical level, that public investment has unambiguously positive effects on productivity, whereas the effect of public consumption is ambiguous, being not necessarily large or positive. Our econometric results, using data of selected Latin American economies, support the previous argument. The policy recommendation that follows from these results is that an expansionary fiscal policy based on public investment can indeed enhance the productivity evolution and consequently economic growth and development. </p><p> </p><p align="center">PRODUCTIVIDAD Y DEMANDA EFECTIVA: EVALUANDO EL CASO DEL GASTO PÚBLICO DESAGREGADO</p><p align="center"><strong>RESUMEN</strong></p>En este trabajo nos proponemos sustentar el argumento referente a la endogenidad de la productividad respecto a la demanda agregada. A diferencia de la mayoría de los trabajos en el tema, nos enfocamos en el papel que el gasto público tanto en consumo como en inversión tiene sobre la productividad. Sugerimos, a nivel teórico, que el gasto público en inversión tiene sin lugar a dudas efectos positivos en la productividad, mientras que el gasto público en consumo tiene efectos ambiguos, siendo no necesariamente grandes o positivos. Nuestros resultados econométricos, usando datos de una muestra selecta de economías de América Latina, validan el argumento previo. La recomendación de política que sigue a estos resultados es que para incrementar la productividad, así como el crecimiento y el desarrollo económicos, la política fiscal expansiva debe estar basada principalmente en gasto en inversión.

From Possible Causes II

The chapter searches for the logically weakest causal principle that can be found that would establish the existence of a necessary being. First the most general principle of causation is presented and then a series of increasingly weaker versions are proposed. The goal of the chapter is to provide one of the most modest causal principles on which there is at least some causal order. It is then shown how to use such a principle to construct an argument for a necessary being. As usual, various objections and replies are considered, and an advantage is drawn out of this argument with a demonstration of how someone could have reason to accept the very weak causal principle even if they do not accept any causal principle in any previous argument for a necessary being.

Domain theory and method theory revisited: a reply to Lowe, De Loo and Nama

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a response to the commentary of Lowe, De Loo and Nama concerning the authors’ previous article, which was published in Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Volume 27 Number 8. Design/methodology/approach – The authors address the main points of the commentary by Lowe et al. Findings – In addressing each of these issues, the authors point out a few misunderstandings included in the critique as well as make an attempt to further clarify the previous argument. Originality/value – The authors maintain that distinguishing between domain theory and method theory in accounting research will be of help to researchers in several ways.