This article seeks to consider the policing of anti-fracking protests at Barton Moss, Salford, from November 2013 to April 2014. We argue that women at Barton Moss were considered by the police to be transgressing the socio-geographical boundaries that establish the dominant cultural and social order, and were thus responded to as disruptive and disorderly subjects. The article draws upon recent work on pacification, which views police power as having both destructive and productive dimensions, to consider the impact of police (...) violence on women involved in protest. We seek to explore the ways in which this violence impacts not only on those involved in protest but also those on the peripheries. The article suggests that the threat and use of sexual violence by police towards women aims to enforce compliance within the protest movement and to send a message, specifically to those on the fringes of the movement, that protest is illegitimate and inherently dangerous. As such, sexual violence forms part of the social production and construction of gender and is instrumental in the making and remaking of subjectivities. The case study suggests that police brutality towards women at Barton Moss, therefore, operated as a disciplinary function to regulate acceptable forms of protest and acceptable forms of femininity. (shrink)

In these essays, J.L. Mehta, Indian philosopher in whose life and work East and West met profoundly, reflects on the origins and potency of modern hermeneutics and phenomenology, and applies the principles of interpretation to Hindu traditions. These farseeing essays show a hopeful way for non-Western cultures to gain insight into the basic presuppositions of the Western world, and to reclaim their own origins and ways of thinking, and to participate in an emerging planetary thinking.

The title should read Ever New Flights’ of Creativity: Nāda-yoga and Improvisation.

This inquiry explores the terms yogakshema, sampradaya, and manodharma sangita, as well as theories and practices of improvisation and innovation in music and other fields of Hindu culture. It considers the ways Hindu traditions play out the human contradiction—that life must always combine both old and new; the ways improvising is part of the Hindu frameworks in Vedic chanting, and the performance of ragas and other cultural activities in India. Both set patterns and nuanced interpretations in literary and musical works (...) present processes which suggest models of progress and renewal in various fields of human endeavor. I am unpacking the scholar V. Raghavan’s ideas about how traditions in Indian culture can adapt creatively in time. (shrink)

"Fractal" is a term coined by mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot to denote the geometry of nature, which traces inherent order in chaotic shapes and processes. Fractal concepts are part of our emerging vocabulary and can be useful in identifying patterns of human behavior, culture, and history, while enhancing our understanding of the nature of consciousness. According to William J. Jackson, the more one studies fractals, the more apparent their connections to the humanities become. In the recursive patterns of religious music, in (...) temple architecture in India, in cathedral structures in Europe and America, in the imagery of religious literature depicting infinity and abundance, and in poetic descriptions of the nature of consciousness, fractal-like configurations are pervasive. Recognition of this structure, which is also found in social organizations and ritual symbolism, requires only that one develop "an eye for fractals" by studying the work of researchers and observing nature. One then begins to see that the separation of humanities and science is convenient oversimplification, not an ultimate fact. Includes a DVD of animated fractals. (shrink)

I have gathered and studied these Sanskrit and Telugu writings by South Indian poets, and I’ve thought about them, and researched them for a few years. My highest priority in this piece is not to make the most simple literal word-for-word translation. I am trying not only to be faithful to the original texts, but to find a way in English to tell the detailed century-old stories more naturally, conveying them in a way that gives them a flow and literary (...) charm. I want to make a new attempt to convey these century-old stories which suggest the rich feelings of human life, in refreshing ways. I hope people who are not professional Indologists, but who are humanists, can enjoy the nuances of the topic. So this article based on translations is literary and frankly experimental; it is about natural experiences told in natural language. Often, translations from centuries ago seem stilted, dry and archaic, literally correct and academically adequate, but lacking such touchstones of basic humanity’s life as inner feelings and visceral intuitive sensations. I am exercising a hope of offering a fresh telling, and a chance to provide some imaginative reflections on this topic I have chosen. The theme is sweat—and other natural human responses. Why explore sweat? This is a pertinent question. For one thing, I’ve been struck by how the experience of sweat meant something different centuries ago in India, in comparison with what it means to many people today. As reflected in Sanskrit literature, it had associations with desirable feelings—thrills, soulful exertions, arousal, passionate intensity. It is distinctive, and I seek to know what it might tell us about life, both to Hindus and non-Hindus. It offers a chance to contemplatively play around with beauty, too. It is an aesthetic exploration, an artistic challenge, an alluring human mood, of loving joy. The longer texts I am working with are Tirumalamba’s Sanskrit text Varadambika Parinaya Campu and Pingali Surana’s Telugu text Kalapurnodayam. Shorter texts I refer to include a verse from the Sanskrit Bhagavad Gita, and Jayadeva’s Sanskrit Gita Govinda, and a Telugu song by Annamacharya. (shrink)

This book, originally published in 1876, was written in confutation of the Materialism of its time by arguments derived from Evidences of Intelligence, Design, Contrivance, and Adaptation of Means to Ends, in the Universe, and especially in Man considered in his Moral Nature, his Religious Aptitudes, and his Intellectual Powers; and in all Organic Nature. The observation also to be made and supported in the course of the book that the Will and Wisdom of the Creator may be a sufficient (...) cause for deviations from the established course of nature, and that the Free-will of man, in things within his power and influence, may be a cause of similar deviations. (shrink)