Extant literature romanticizes frugality as a lifestyle trait that helps in the spiritual evolution of consumers, which in turn enables them in overcoming the negative consequences of materialism and over-consumption. Extant studies have not paid attention to cultural contexts, such as caste and gender, which could outline the non-volitional enactment of frugality in societies such as India. We draw from the work of the political philosopher Alain Badiou to argue that frugality embodies non-volitional subjectivities and is linked to processes of (...) responsibilization and de-politicization. We engage with layered narratives from three story-sites and conceptualize frugality as a socio-political subjectivity that disenfranchises consumers and normalizes inequality. Our study provides evidence of how consumers are made to adopt frugality to conform to political conservatism and unequal orders of caste and gender. (shrink)

Extant literature romanticizes frugality as a lifestyle trait that helps in the spiritual evolution of consumers, which in turn enables them in overcoming the negative consequences of materialism and over-consumption. Extant studies have not paid attention to cultural contexts, such as caste and gender, which could outline the non-volitional enactment of frugality in societies such as India. We draw from the work of the political philosopher Alain Badiou to argue that frugality embodies non-volitional subjectivities and is linked to processes of (...) responsibilization and de-politicization. We engage with layered narratives from three story-sites and conceptualize frugality as a socio-political subjectivity that disenfranchises consumers and normalizes inequality. Our study provides evidence of how consumers are made to adopt frugality to conform to political conservatism and unequal orders of caste and gender. (shrink)

Governments and majoritarian political formations often present police violence as nationalist media spectacles, which marginalize the rights of the accused and normalize the discourse of majoritarian nationalism. In this study, we explore the public discourse of how the State and political actors repeatedly labeled a college-going student Ishrat Jahan, who died in a stage-managed police killing in India in 2004, as a terrorist. We draw from Derrida’s ethics of unconditional hospitality to show that while police violence is aimed at constructing (...) safety for the cultural majority, in reality, it reveals discourses of anxiety and precariousness. The unethicality of police violence lies in the enlargement of recognition in vicariously blaming the person who has been killed for being involved in several terror attacks. We show that police violence is premised on the temporal structure of majoritarian nationalism, the prevalence of gender inequity, and the call to breach the secular framework of law. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:In this qualitative study we examine the role of caste, class, and Dalit janitorial labor in the aftermath of floods in Chennai, India, in 2015. Drawing from a variety of sources including interviews, social media, and news coverage, we studied how Dalit janitors were treated during the performance of janitorial labor for cleaning the city. Our study focuses on two theoretical premises: caste-based social relations reproduce inequalities by devaluing Dalit labor as ‘dirty work’; and Dalit subjectivities, labor, and sufferings including (...) occupational hazards become invisible and ungrievable forcing Dalits to provide a counter narrative to preserve the memory of their trauma and dignity injuries. We find that the discursive construction of janitorial labor as dirty work forced Dalit janitors to work in appalling and unsafe working conditions. Janitors suffered several dignity injuries in terms of social exclusion and a lack of recognition for their efforts and accomplishments. Specifically, we examine various ways through which caste, dirty work, and dignity intersected in the narrative accounts of Dalit janitors. We also explore memory and how processes of remembering and forgetting affected the dignity claims of Dalit janitors. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI)-based virtual influencers are now frequently used by brands in various categories to engage customers. However, little is known about who the followers of these AI-based virtual influencers are and more importantly, what drives the followers to use AI-based virtual influencers. The results from a survey support the notion that compensatory mechanisms and the need to belong play important roles in affecting usage intentions of AI-based virtual influencers. Specifically, the study finds that usage intentions are mediated and moderated (...) by compensatory mechanisms that arise from the perception of AI-based virtual influencers’ functional benefits and existential threats to human identity. Furthermore, the need for belonging moderates the effects of the following status (following versus non-following) on perceived personalization benefits of AI-based virtual influencers and behavioral intentions to use AI-based virtual influencers. This study provides important implications for academia delving into the social, cultural, and philosophical implications of AI-based virtual influencers for human societies as well as for brands that plan to use AI-based virtual influencers and gain a better understanding of their customers in AI-driven digital marketing. (shrink)

Formal charge and oxidation state are two means of estimating the charge of an atom in a molecule. Though these concepts have very different origins—formal charge is derived from the ball-and-hook model of bonding and oxidation state is based on the ionic approximation of molecules—they are used to predict reactivity and other molecular properties through their properties as charges. In this submission, it is shown that formal charge and oxidation state are two extreme descriptions of bonding: formal charge represents zero (...) charge transfer between atoms while oxidation state represents complete charge transfer in each bond. These ‘localised electron approximations’ form an incomplete picture of atomic charge. Electronegativity measures the extent of polarity in real bonds; this concept can be introduced to polarise bonds relative to the ‘equal sharing model’. It is shown that the various electronegativity models are fundamentally related. We chose two models to demonstrate numerically that polar bonds yield charges intermediate between the localised electron approximations: Pauling and Mulliken. It is shown that probabilistic interpretation of the Pauling scale (‘scaled Pauling’ method) and use of asymmetric chemical potential (‘modified Mulliken’ method) lead to atomic charges that closely approximate experimental values using simple ‘back of the envelope’ calculations. It is seen that formal charge, oxidation state, and electronegativity-interpolated charge lie on a continuum and are mathematically related. It is therefore concluded that electronegativity introduces (quantum) delocalisation to the localised (classical) picture of electron bonding. (shrink)

This manuscript explores the orthogonality constraints on configurations and orbitals subject to the property that states are mutually orthogonal. The orthogonality constraints lead to properties that affect the description of chemical systems. When states are described as linear combinations of configurations, the coefficient matrix diagonalises S−1H. Therefore, single-configuration states are only possible in one-electron systems: non-orthogonal configurations yield single-configuration states only if S−1H is diagonal, but this would violate the orthonormalisation constraint. Further, the coefficient matrix is not constrained to be (...) square. Similarly, the orbitals used to construct configurations may also be orthogonal or non-orthogonal; orbitals are only required to be mutually orthogonal at the one-electron limit. Orthogonal orbitals are generally preferred due to their mathematical and conceptual simplicity, leading to fictitious unoccupied orbitals. Since the Fock operator is orthogonality agnostic, non-orthogonal orbitals can be generated by solving the Fock equation independently for each electron; the virtual orbitals produced by this conception are true excitation orbitals as they are eigensolutions of the Fock operator. Additionally, we show that the number of molecular orbitals generated is not restricted to the number of atomic orbitals employed in the computation. This manuscript explores the mathematical relationships that need to be satisfied under the various orthogonality regimes. We also present mathematical relationships that provide results that are independent of the orthogonality approximation within a particular computational method. (shrink)

A bottom-up approach grounded in micro-level understanding of the thinking, feeling, behavioral, and social aspects of living with low income and associated low literacy can lead to greater understanding and improvement of interactions in the health arena. This paper draws on what we have learned about marketplace interactions in subsistence economies to inform innovations in medical education, design and delivery of healthcare for lowincome patients, outreach education, and future micro-level research at the human-healthcare interface.

Philosophical Investigations, Volume 45, Issue 3, Page 297-319, July 2022.

Papers presented at the 4th BRICS Academic Forum held in New Delhi on March 5-6, 2012.

Slater’s method is an integral part of the undergraduate experience. In actuality, Slater’s method is part of an atomic model and not simply a set of rules. Slater’s rules are a simple means for computing the effective nuclear charge experienced by an orbital. These rules are based on the shell-like structure of the Slater atom in which outer shell electrons are incapable of shielding inner electrons. Slater’s model provides a qualitative description of the valence electrons in multi-electron atoms with tremendous (...) ease. The model is useful for explaining atomic properties such as ionisation energy, electron affinity and atomic radius qualitatively. Slater’s rules also correctly reproduce the Madelung rule of filling and the ionisation sequence (4s before 3d); however, these rules are not able to reproduce the anomalous configurations of atoms such as Cr and Cu. It is found that the atomic properties that Slater’s model reproduces are all related to the exponential decay factor of the Slater orbital. We find—from estimating the polarity of a diatomic molecule using a simple model—that molecular polarity is related to the difference in the exponential decay factors of the valence orbitals of the two atoms, implying that the decay factor acts as the electronegativity of the atom. (shrink)

This research examined the role of thought suppression in the formation of mental blocks. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to generate a series of creative associates for two target words after initially suppressing a word that was semantically related to one of the two target words. Participants produced fewer responses, and experienced a greater sensation of being mentally blocked, when attempting to produce associates for the target word that was semantically related to the suppressed word. In Experiment 2, participants (...) either thought about or suppressed a series of words prior to completing a word fragment completion task. Each word either corresponded exactly to one of the word fragment solutions or resembled one of the solutions but was slightly different in its orthographic properties . Participants performed most poorly on the items for which they had initially suppressed negative primes. (shrink)

The most pressing issues of the twenty-first century—climate change and persistent hunger in a world of food surpluses, to name only two—are not problems that can be solved from within individual disciplines, nation-states, or cultural perspectives. They are predicaments that can only be resolved by generating sustained and globally robust coordination across value systems. The scale of the problems and necessity for coordinated global solutions signal a world historical transit as momentous as the Industrial Revolution: a transition from the predominance (...) of technical knowledge to that of ethical deliberation. This volume brings together leading thinkers from around the world to deliberate on how best to correlate worth (value) with what is worthwhile (values), pairing human prosperity with personal, environmental, and spiritual flourishing in a world of differing visions of what constitutes a moral life. Especially in the aftermath of what is now being called the Great Recession, awareness has mounted of the imperative to question the modern divorce of economics from ethics. While the domains of economics and ethics were from antiquity through at least the eighteenth century understood in many cultures to be coterminous and mutually entailing, the modern assumption has been that the goal of maximizing human prosperity and the aim of justly enhancing our lives as persons and as communities were functionally and practically distinct. Working from a wide array of perspectives, the contributors to this volume offer a set of challenges to the assumed independence of the quantitative and qualitative dimensions of human and planetary well-being. Reflecting on the complex interrelationship among economics, justice, and equity, the book resists "one size fits all" approaches and struggles to revitalize the marriage of economics and ethics by activating cultural differences as the basis of mutual contribution to shared human flourishing. The publication of this important collection will stimulate or extend critical debates among scholars and students working in a number of disciplines in the social sciences and humanities, including philosophy, history, environmental studies, economics, and law. Contributors: Roger T. Ames, James Behuniak Jr., Steve Bein, Nalini Bhushan, Purushottama Bilimoria, Steven Burik, Amita Chatterjee, Baoyan Cheng, Gordon Davis, Jay L. Garfield, Steven F. Geisz, Peter D. Hershock, Larry A. Hickman, Kathleen M. Higgins, Heidi M. Hurd, Thomas P. Kasulis, Workineh Kelbessa, Lori Keleher, Oliver Leaman, James McRae, Jin Y. Park, James Peterman, Naoko Saito, May Sim, Robert Smid, Paul Standish, Kenneth W. Stikkers, Karsten J. Struhl, Meera Sushila Viswanathan, Wu Shiu- Ching, Xu Di, T. Yamauchi, Yang Liuxin. (shrink)