A major contradiction of globalisation lies in the universalisation of the imperatives of international finance-capital. The ascendancy of international finance has kept inter-imperialist rivalry under check since the past few decades, and imperialist nation-states under its imperatives have displayed greater unity under the leadership of the US. But the dominance of speculative finance and the deflationary impact it generates, threatens to precipitate worldwide recession. The US is trying to pre-empt any potential competition in this milieu, by pursuing an aggressive and (...) unilateralist military policy of endless war. However, the capacity of the US to sustain such high levels of military expenditure and debt-induced consumer spending is circumscribed by the fragility of the dollar hegemony in the backdrop of the growing indebtedness of the US vis-à-vis the rest of the world. Re-appearance of recessionary conditions in the US would be set the stage for inter-imperialist contradictions as well as the contradiction between imperialism and the Third World to play themselves out and create possible ruptures in the present world order. (shrink)

The idea of human freedom is essentially rooted in the concept of human development, according to Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen's 'Development as Freedom' thesis. And the idea of human progress is a construct that is designed around the axis offreedom. What is freedom? Is it only lack ofsocietal constraint, withdrawal of discipline and punish, willing suspension of the panoptic super ego that they address as the 'mainstream'? Or is freedom a concept much more fundamental, to be read into the texts (...) of Rabindranath Tagore, Romain Rolland or Walden? Sociologists claim that civilization is what we are and culture is merely an arrangement of artifacts that we happen to use during the course of our politics of everyday life. Civilization, however, is also a system of values that is handed down generations as a movement of socialization that laymen identify as 'progress'. (shrink)

The temporality of historical flows can be understood through the paradigm of oceanic circulations of water. Historical processes are not linear and tunneled but circulatory and global, like oceanic currents. The argument of distributed agency deriving from the ‘ontological turn’ dovetails with the oceanic paradigm of circulatory histories. The latter allows us to grasp modes of both natural and historical inter-temporal communication through the medium of the natural and built environment. Yet the inclination in these new studies to deny any (...) particular privilege to human will or design risks neglecting the changing role of human agency. Analytically I distinguish historiographical time from historical time. Historiographical time may be seen as the purposive capture of historical processes for various goals whereas historical time is more continuous with natural flows. More than origins and causes, the paradigm emphasizes the ramifying con-sequences of purposive actions. The gap in our understanding of the two temporalities has had a devastating impact on the planet. (shrink)

While there is much writing on the nation as the subject of linear history, considerably less attention has been paid to the dimension of the nation as the always identifiable, unchanging subject of history. This unchanging subject is necessitated by the ascendancy of the conception of linear time in capitalism in which change is viewed not only as accelerating, but can no longer be framed by an ultimate source of meaning such as God. Ostensibly, linear history is the falling of (...) events into the "river of time," but national history also posits a continuous subject to gather these changes. Such a subject is recognizable only by the spiritual qualities of authenticity, purity, and sacrality. The nation-state and nationalists stake their claim to sovereign authority, in part, as custodians of this authenticity.A range of figures, human and non-human, come to symbolize a regime of authenticity manipulable to some extent by nationalists and state-builders. This essay focuses on the instance of women in early twentieth-century China. Nationalists and cultural essentialists tended to depict women as embodying the eternal Chinese civilizational virtues of self-sacrifice and loyalty and to elevate them as national exemplars. The essay also examines cases of how women themselves may have perceived this role as exemplars and concludes that while there was considerable subversion in their enunciation of this role , there was sufficient reference to the prescriptive code of authenticity in their self-formation to sustain the regime of authenticity. The essay ends with some thoughts about the changing relationship between authenticity and intensifying globalization in the contemporary world. (shrink)

Cleaning the floor, stripping the bed, arranging a bouquet of flowers—such tasks are essential to keeping a hospital room clean and creating a pleasant atmosphere. They usually fall under the purview of female* nurses, cleaning staff and housekeepers. In everyday hospital life, the demands for hygienic cleanliness commingle with the imperatives of economization, marketing logic, and attention to the affective and emotional needs of the actors in these rooms. Although the standards of clinical hygiene are based on medical knowledge, the (...) division of labor and the demands for cleanliness at various hierarchical levels also reveal gendered and partly racialized ideas that point beyond the clinical context. This blending of imperatives in the hospital environment invites deeper consideration of the history of bacteriology: The logic and language of defense against infection in science and everyday life is also interwoven with social markers of difference.Drawing on the findings of an ethnography on cleanliness and cleaning work in hospitals, as well as a history of knowledge approach, the article links the question of (feminized) care for the environment with the question of the atmosphere of clinical rooms. In what ways, and to what effect, does scientific knowledge about medical hygiene also carry with it cultural and aesthetic perceptions of beautiful and pleasant cleanliness that reveal feminine connotations rooted in the nineteenth century? (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDen Boden putzen, das Bett abziehen, einen Blumenstrauß arrangieren – Bemühungen um Sauberkeit sowie eine angenehme Raumatmosphäre obliegen im Krankenhaus meist weiblichen* Pflegerinnen, Reinigungskräften und Hauswirtschafterinnen. Im Klinikalltag vermischen sich Anforderungen an hygienische Sauberkeit unter Prozessen der Ökonomisierung mit Logiken des Marketings sowie mit affektiv-emotionalen Bedürfnissen der Akteur_innen dieser Räume. Obwohl die Maßstäbe klinischer Hygiene auf medizinischem Wissen basieren, sind die Arbeitsteilung sowie Ansprüche an Sauberkeit auf verschiedenen Hierarchieebenen zugleich von vergeschlechtlichten und teils rassifizierten Vorstellungen durchdrungen, die über den klinischen (...) Kontext hinausweisen. Dies legt schon eine Beschäftigung mit der Geschichte der Bakteriologie nahe: Die Logik und Sprache der Infektionsabwehr ist in Wissenschaft und Alltag auch verwoben mit sozialen Differenzmarkierungen.Unter Rückgriff auf die Ergebnisse einer Ethnografie zu Sauberkeit und Reinigungsarbeiten im Krankenhaus, die wissensgeschichtlich fundiert werden, wird in dem Beitrag die Frage nach der (feminisierten) Sorge für die Umwelt mit der Frage nach der Atmosphäre klinischer Räume verknüpft. Auf welche Weise und mit welchen Effekten verschränken sich wissenschaftlich-medizinisches Hygienewissen mit einem alltäglichen, jedoch historisierbaren Wissen über schöne und angenehme Sauberkeit, das immer noch weiblich konnotiert ist? (shrink)

This study examines the impact of the Chief Executive Officer ’s interlocking, created through serving on other companies’ audit committees and/or boards, on corporate social responsibility performance of the focal company and that of its linked companies. We find that CEO interlocking positively affects CSR performance of both the focal company and its linked companies. Further analysis shows that interlocks created by the CEO enhance CSR performance and in turn the financial performance of both the focal company and its linked (...) companies. Our findings are robust to a battery of analyses, including Heckman’s selection bias correction, propensity score matching, alternative measures of CSR performance, and CEO interlocks. These findings are important to regulators, company management teams, and other stakeholders with an interest in how the social ties of CEOs influence companies’ CSR performance and in the CSR–financial performance nexus. (shrink)

This article elucidates the meaning of Indian nationalism and its connection to religious universalism as a problem of ethics. It engages in that exercise of elucidation by interpreting a few of the key texts by Aurobindo Ghose on the relationship between ethics and politics in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Both secularist and subalternist histories have contributed to misunderstandings of Aurobindo's political thought and shown an inability to comprehend its ethical moorings. The specific failures in fathoming the (...) depths of Aurobindo's thought are related to more general infirmities afflicting the history of political and economic ideas in colonial India. In exploring how best to achieve Indian unity, Aurobindo had shown that Indian nationalism was not condemned to pirating from the gallery of models of states crafted by the West. By reconceptualizing the link between religion and politics, this essay suggests a new way forward in Indian intellectual history. (shrink)

The main purpose of this article is to broaden U.S. scholars' awareness of the similarities and differences of gender literature in another part of the world. In providing this partial review of gender scholarship in India, the authors hope to foster critical reflection on the inequities of global knowledge production and consumption and the role of U.S. academic institutions and scholars in this project. The article is written not by scholars who are based in India but by those who are (...) based in U.S. academies. Given their location, linguistic and cultural competencies, and scholarly expertise, the review, at best, can be described as a glimpse of gender scholarship in India. The four sections of this article feature theoretical and methodological issues, the women's movement, and violence against women in India. (shrink)

This article tries to explore the shifts in contemporary urban Bengali cinema and map and historicize the main trends in relation to changes in the political fortunes of the city. In this context, the article tentatively wishes to accomplish two things: one, to show the main trends in urban Bengali film-making, post-1990s; and two, to read closely two recent Bengali films, in a search for ways of mapping this newness. The article first identifies three new possibilities in Bengali cinema: first, (...) the inward-looking, often apolitical sketches that celebrate liberal development and psychosomatic indulgences, second, the sentimental, community-based films that sometimes take political changes on board as well, and attempt to bridge the rural-urban divide; third, cult-ish films of a newer pedigree that show impatience with old Left and progressive values, and are also technically experimental and avant-garde. The second objective of the article is to discuss specifically two contemporary filmmakers – Moinak Biswas and Suman Mukhopadhay – and place their films within this ferment. (shrink)

I suggest that the representation of cities in Indian cinema — the effects and affects of modernities as well as of ambiguous, multiplicitous sexualities — mark significant change in engagement with modernity ever since independence in 1947. The city in the Indian imaginary has occupied an ambivalent, confrontational as well as contemplative space that signifies ‘modernity’ and its concurrent promise as well as ills. Non-normative sexualities have always occupied a liminal space in socio-political configurations, a site both of empowerment through (...) transgression and containment through regulation. The urban space — newly freed up and as yet un-proscribed — assumes the metonymic equivalence of available sexual freedom (particularly for women), its powers and its dangers. The cinema as a text is especially well-suited to play with the dynamics of this fraught space: often, a film’s contexts and narratives identify the film text itself as a signifier of the liminal spaces that it proposes to explore, enacting both their limitations and their possibilities. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Frühmittelalterliche Studien Jahrgang: 46 Heft: 1 Seiten: 373-390.

As business environments become more complex and reliant on information systems, the decisions made by managers affect a growing number of stakeholders. This paper proposes a framework based on the application of normative theories in business ethics to facilitate the evaluation of IS related ethical dilemmas and arrive at fair and consistent decisions. The framework is applied in the context of an information privacy dilemma to demonstrate the decision making process. The ethical dilemma is analyzed using each one of the (...) three normative theories—the stockholder theory, stakeholder theory, and social contract theory. The challenges associated with the application of these theories are also discussed. (shrink)

This article draws on data from various sources for 190 developed and developing nations and uses them to examine gender regimes, or forms of patriarchal structures, at the regional level. I argue for multiple, rather than single, measures of gender inequality and illustrate that using many inequality measures exposes a wider range of outcomes within the Global South than the North, also suggesting the inefficacy of this geographic dichotomy. Then I re-examine the outcomes with nations grouped into seven regions, showing (...) that each region has different variables that define their gender inequalities. Finally, I link gendered social institutions and implicitly gendered political-economic structures to gender-inequitable outcomes in six regions to reveal three different gender regimes across the regions. (shrink)

This article argues that the condition of women in Third World societies cannot be separated from the colonial experience since the power relationships that were established during the colonial era between Europe and its territories, and between women and men, have not varied significantly and are still recreated through contemporary mechanisms. For example, development projects promoted by Western countries to modernize the Third World have, in the long run, better served their own interests than those of their intended beneficiaries. As (...) a result and contrary to expectations, growth and prosperity still elude the Third World. We also show that during the current international economic crisis, women's unpaid or underpaid labor has become the basis of new development programs and policies and is crucial to the recent phase of capitalist development. We discuss how the structural position and status of women and colonies closely resemble each other and have served as the foundations of the capital accumulation process and the development of industrial nations. The concept of women as a last colony thus becomes a compelling metaphor of liberation and leads us to stress the need for a worldwide process of gender decolonization, entailing the reformulation of power relations between women and men. (shrink)

For decades, policy-makers in government, development banks and foundations, NGOs, researchers and students have struggled with the problem of how to protect people who are displaced from their homes and livelihoods by development projects. This book addresses these concerns and explores how debates often become deadlocked between 'managerial' and 'movementist' perspectives. Using development ethics to determine the rights and responsibilities of various stakeholders, the authors find that displaced people must be empowered so as to share equitably in benefits rather than (...) being victimized. They propose a governance model for development projects that would transform conflict over displacement into a more manageable collective bargaining process and would empower displaced people to achieve equitable results. Their book will be valuable for readers in a wide range of fields including ethics, development studies, politics and international relations as well as policy making, project management and community development. (shrink)

This study aims to overview the existing literature, knowledge framework, and intellectual structure mapping in the field of corporate environmental performance (CEP) and corporate financial performance (CFP) by employing a bibliometric analysis approach to selected 311 papers sourced from the Scopus database between 1994 and 2022. It presents the publication growth, influential sources, productive authors, and collaboration index of countries using Biblioshiny software. Stringent regulatory regime and stakeholders' pressure followed by a growing trend of publication motivated us to comprehend the (...) evolving facets of the relationship using co‐citation analysis followed by a systematic literature review using coupling analysis which identified five research themes as CEP–CFP relationships—facets, strategies and dimensions, and methodological choices during the initial phase of 1994–2014; and green innovation and corporate sustainability practices, environmental disclosure and environmental responsibility, and green development behavior and practices during 2015–2022. From the insights congregated from research themes, the study discusses prominent developments and provides future research directions to further enrich the field of CEP and CFP. Our findings provide various global regulatory frameworks, government, policymakers, and firm managers the need to explore the dynamic factors while formulating the strategic environmental policy and how it contributes to the financial performance of the firms. (shrink)

In this study, we consider the ways different degrees of dissent are established in interaction, especially in interactions among children. One important aspect in the development of the ability to argue is the framing of interactions as rather cooperative or agonistic. Different framings seem to allow for different forms of argumentative activity. The focus in this paper is on the mediation of degrees of dissensus in argumentation in child-child communication. It is established, we argue, through verbal as well as non-verbal (...) means, and the agonistic and cooperativity can be indicators for the space argumentation has in child-child interaction. (shrink)