An Indian Bengali by birth, Amitav Ghosh has established himself as a major voice in what is often called world literature, addressing issues such as the post-colonial and neo-colonial predicaments, the plight of the subalterns, the origin of globalisation and capitalism, and lately ecology and migration. The volume is therefore divided according to the four domains that lie at the heart of Ghosh's writing practice: anthropology, epistemology, ethics and space. In this volume, a number of scholars from all (...) over the world have come together to shed new light on the works and poetics of Amitav Ghosh according to the epistemic frameworks that form the bedrock of his fiction. Contributors: Safoora Arbab, Carlotta Beretta, Lucio De Capitani, Asis De, Lenka Filipova, Letizia Garofalo, Swapna Gopinath, Evelyne Hanquart-Turner, Sabine Lauret-Taft, Carol Leon, Kuldeep Mathur, Fiona Moolla, Sambit Panigrahi, Madhsumita Pati, Murari Prasad, Luca Raimondi, Pabitra Kumar Rana, Ilaria Rigoli, Sneharika Roy, John Thieme, Alessandro Vescovi. (shrink)

This article shows that William E. Connolly’s work holds resources for projects of racial justice but must be revised to fully meet the challenge of racial inequality. There are two interrelated problems in Connolly’s theory: first, the drive to destabilize identity, for which he argues, rejects the need for collective identity, which is necessary in democratic politics. Furthermore, because domination renders identity unstable, the call to destabilize identity places too great a burden on already marginalized groups. The problem of destabilizing (...) identity is underwritten by a second problem: the white working class and its grievances occupy too important a position in Connolly’s analysis. This article uses insights provided by James Baldwin to amend Connolly’s contributions. The article argues that there is a need to destabilize the ‘we’ of American politics that allows white, male identity to occupy the ‘heart’ of liberal democracy. Baldwin’s insights help solve the problem of the ‘black hole’ at the center of liberal democracy which, Connolly argues, sustains fundamentalism and racial injustice. This article’s contribution is to amend Connolly’s work to meet the challenge of racial injustice, offer a novel reading of the place of political imagination in Baldwin’s work, and show how political imagination adds depth to conversations about democracy, racial justice, and pluralism. (shrink)

Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad offers illuminating new perspectives on contemporary phenomenological theories of body and subjectivity, based on studies of diverse classical Indian texts. He argues for a 'phenomenological ecology' of bodily subjectivity in health, gender, contemplation, and lovemaking.

In this technology-driven Digital Age, Management Education is primarily engaged in development of skills and techno-economic competence of students with dominant thrust on sharpening their rational faculties and quantitative ability. Deeper questions and nobler qualittative issues like Spirituality, Corporate Social Responsibility and Ethics are naturally assigned low priority in the rush for money, career, fame, power and position both at the individual and organizational levels. The present paper engages in a Qualitative Research by conducting Focus group Interviews among Participants at (...) the Undergraduate level who had taken up Management Education. After content analysis of the responses the authors highlight their observations on the existing gaps in prevailing management education leading to failure of the present system in charging the students with a deeper Meaning of Work and a higher Purpose of Life. The paper then delves into exploration in pertinent tenets of Classical Indian Wisdom to enrich the spectrum of Management education with insights on Humanistic Philosophy, Holistic Learning, Enlightened CSR and Ethics, and Inspirational Leadership towards creating a better and more humane future for modern organizations. (shrink)

This paper examines the extent to which dispute resolvers in customary law systems provide widely understandable justifications for their decisions. The paper first examines the liberal-democratic reasons for the importance of publicity, understood to be wide accessibility of legal justification, by reviewing the uses of publicity in Habermas’ and Rawls’ accounts of the rule of law. Taking examples from Sierra Leone, the paper then argues that customary law systems would benefit from making local dispute resolution practices, such as “begging” from (...) elders, witchcraft, and customary law judgments, more widely accessible. The paper concludes that while legal pluralism is usually taken to be an analytical concept, it may have a normative thrust as well, and that publicity standards would also apply to formal courts in developing countries, which are also typically “defective” along this dimension. (shrink)

The present paper deals with the idea of understanding Vedic ethics as a code of righteous living, in the light of Mīmāṁsā philosophy. The paper also intends to reflect upon the possibility of such methods as a means of attaining liberation. In other words, the Vedas provide us with prescriptive codes of right and wrong actions. It commands us about duties and non-duties, through the performance of rituals, in order to lead a good life. We know that human endeavours are (...) primarily based on attaining the desired, and to prevent the unwanted ends. Hence, the entire effort of human actions lies in the fact that we want to attain the cessation of sufferings. This paves the way for studies in Soteriology, and the question arises that, could the Vedas be considered as a literature on Soteriology. The paper consists of a number of sections. The initial ones involve the linguistic analysis of the Vedic statements based on Sanskrit grammar and semantics. These are aimed at depicting the manner in which Vedic sentences act as prescriptive ethical codes. The latter ones deal with the questions raised by the opposing schools, namely Sāṁkhya-Yoga, against the idea of considering Vedas as a supreme sanction of means, leading beings to their salvation from empirical sufferings, and their plausible responses. Keywords: duties, ends, sacrifices, knowledge, liberation. (shrink)

On Indic philosophy in the light of Buddhism; transcript of author's lectures; includes bibliography of the author.

The concern of this paper is to critique the political conception of nationalism as a theory of the nation-state. The basic point of the critique is that when the interests of the nation and the principles of the state coincide there emerges a fierce sense of national identity which endangers moral indifference to outsiders, the people within and outside the national boundary, without remorse. Here the attempt to uphold national identity is something more than nationhood. Besides involving territorial identity, common (...) language, custom and culture essential to the idea of a “nation,” it also upholds the consciousness of these as determining separate rights and allegiances, the idea of attachment to a nation and its interests. Such a consciousness can emerge only on the adoption of certain populist ideas such as racism, ethnicity and even such popular elusive myths as the “greatness” of a nation, the urge for the maintenance of “national character,” etc. Such “nationalist xenophobia” leads to the intensification of the distinction between the “own” and the “other,” “national” and the “alien,” the “citizen” and the “migrant” leading to “ethnic disharmony,” “colour bias,” hatred and suspicion of persons with whom one has lived closely as neighbours for decades. The most popular is the economic discourse of the “migrants” putting the “nationals” out of work. All this has its toll on multi-culturalism and humanitarian concerns. Many affluent nations have become cold to human misery, suffering and deaths from wars, terrorism, acute poverty, political persecution, environmental degradation, etc. This has created an “existential” crisis for millions of people on earth. (shrink)

Contemporary consciousness studies, where it is not explicitly religious, is mostly physicalist. Theories of self and consciousness in classical Hindu thought can easily be seen to contribute to religious issues in consciousness studies. But it is also the case that there is much in that that can be useful within broadly physicalist parameters of study as well. The Mīmāṃsā and Nyāya schools, while having (nonphysicalist) soteriological goals for the metaphysical self, nonetheless provide theories of its relationship with consciousness that allow (...) for interpretative strategies that can make their theories relevant to a broadly physicalist study of consciousness. Advaita Vedānta cannot be so interpreted, but its inquiry into the nature of consciousness can provide material for a fundamental critique of the project of objectifying consciousness. (shrink)

In this study, 191 subjects, 93 male and 98 female undergraduate business students, were asked to respond to a 51 item questionnaire to examine their perception of what constituted a "just society". The subjects agreed on 16 characteristics which a just society would have. Out of 51 there were only 10 statements whereon average responses showed significant differences based on gender.

Classical Indian debates about ātman—self—concern a minimal or core entity rather than richer notions of personal identity. These debates recognise that there is phenomenal unity across time; but is a core self required to explain it? Contemporary phenomenologists foreground the importance of a phenomenally unitary self, and Udayana's position is interpreted in this context as a classical Indian approach to this issue. Udayana seems to dismiss the body as the candidate for phenomenal identity in a way similar to some Western (...) philosophers. He also provides some inkling of how alternative ways of defending phenomenal unity without self fail. A criticism of some Western phenomenological theories of self is that they do not explain how unity is provided by the ‘mineness’ of cognition. Udayana's suggestion that a sort of agency provides such an explanation can be developed as an original argument for a phenomenally unitary self. (shrink)

This article analyzes how the medical gaze made possible by MRI operates in radiological laboratories. It argues that although computer-assisted medical imaging technologies such as MRI shift radiological analysis to the realm of cyborg visuality, radiological analysis continues to depend on visualization produced by other technologies and diagnostic inputs. In the radiological laboratory, MRI is used to produce diverse sets of images of the internal parts of the body to zero in and visually extract the pathology. Visual extraction of pathology (...) becomes possible, however, because of the visual training of the radiologists in understanding and interpreting anatomic details of the whole body. These two levels of viewing constitute the bifocal vision of the radiologists. To make these levels of viewing work complementarily, the body, as it is presented in the body atlases, is made notational. (shrink)

The literature on the democratic legitimacy of judicial review and also on institutionalizing deliberative democracy neglects the possibility of employing juries rather than judges to determine bill-of-rights matters. This neglect is unfortunate, for there are findings emerging especially from deliberative polling that support the feasibility of such juries. Such feasibility would raise a new countermajoritarian concern with judicial review. The argument supporting this new concern also casts fresh light on the traditional countermajoritarian concern.

Recent success of Indian engineers, businessmen, as well as other technically qualified professionals has created an obsession with knowledge and creativity. Documents like India as a Knowledge Superpower have proliferated and we continually hear the mantra of investing in and harnessing of human capital. There are, however, several strands of human capital in India and not all of them harness knowledge and creativity. People on whom drugs are being tested represent one such human capital, which, even though it is being (...) energetically mobilized to provide India with a strategic advantage in the world market, also highlights the contradictions within India’s shifting imaginary, economy and politics. Drug trials in India, in the context of neoliberal globalization, not only challenge and complicate, but also operate within a constellation of divisions — labor/capital, west/non-west, colonial/sovereign, national/global and so on. In this article I analyze how the people on whom drug testing is being done in India are being ‘harnessed’ as human capital, which leads to politicization of ‘bare life’ through ‘inclusive-exclusion’. (shrink)

ABSTRACTDecisions that influence health and access to health care are necessarily a matter of ethics. This paper attempts to examine current budgetary allocations and policy shifts in India from the perspective of global ethical values. It also describes how global economic processes may increase health inequity nationally and argues that they should, therefore, be subject to global health ethics. Public health in India is in a state of crisis from a disinvestment in public health care services and persistent neglect, simultaneous (...) to the global push to enhance privatization. National health policies have remained oblivious to the unacceptably high inequity in access to health care on the one hand, and the cautionary analysis of the experience with currently chosen solutions through public-private- partnership and insurance models, which further marginalize the poorest. Global institutions such as the World Trade Organisation also influence national policies to benefit global business interests but often with detrimental effect upon equitable access to health and health care. The paper argues that the application of ethics must become more visible in the determination of national policies that are led by the dominant global paradigms of economic development to ensure that equitable access to health is prioritized. (shrink)

Critical management studies (CMS) has emerged as an influential paradigm for organization and management researchers in the last three decades. While various strands of CMS have been adopted to conceptualize or empirically investigate a myriad of organizational phenomena, researchers in the field have yet to substantively apply this paradigm to the study of business ethics. This is unfortunate inasmuch as CMS potentially offers important analytical tools from which to address a range of germane issues pertaining to business ethics. As such, (...) the aim of this article is to broadly introduce CMS to the business ethics scholarly community, underscoring particularly its central ontological and epistemological commitments. This article further identifies several important CMS-inflected research trajectories that scholars may pursue to explore pressing questions related to business ethics. In sum, the authors underscore the utility of CMS to the study business ethics and call for increased inquiry in this intersectional domain. (shrink)

Global poverty is a huge problem in today's world. This survey article seeks to be a first guide to those who are interested in, but relatively unfamiliar with, the main issues, positions and arguments in the contemporary philosophical discussion of global poverty. The article attempts to give an overview of four distinct and influential normative positions on global poverty. Moreover, it seeks to clarify, and put into perspective, some of the key concepts and issues that take center stage in the (...) philosophical discussion of global poverty. The four positions to be discussed are labeled the Maximalist Position, the Minimalist Position, Intermediate Position I and Intermediate Position II. After an account of these four distinct positions, we turn, in the conclusion, to a discussion of what role empirical sciences such as economics and political science should play in normative considerations about global poverty. (shrink)

This book provides an introduction to Newtonian and relativistic mechanics. Unlike other books on the topic, which generally take a 'top-down' approach, it follows a novel system to show how the concepts of the 'science of motion' evolved through a veritable jungle of intermediate ideas and concepts. Starting with Aristotelian philosophy, the text gradually unravels how the human mind slowly progressed towards the fundamental ideas of inertia physics. The concepts that now appear so obvious to even a high school student (...) took great intellectuals more than a millennium to clarify. The book explores the evolution of these concepts through the history of science. After a comprehensive overview of the discovery of dynamics, it explores fundamental issues of the properties of space and time and their relation with the laws of motion. It also explores the concepts of spatio-temporal locality and fields, and offers a philosophical discussion of relative motion versus absolute motion, as well as the concept of an absolute space. Furthermore, it presents Galilean transformation and the principle of relativity, inadequacy of Galilean relativity and emergence of the spatial theory of relativity with an emphasis on physical understanding, as well as the debate over relative motion versus absolute motion and Mach's principle followed by the principle of equivalence. The natural follow-on to this section is the physical foundations of general theory of relativity. Lastly, the book ends with some new issues and possibilities regarding further modifications of the laws of motion leading to the solution of a number of fundamental issues closely connected with the characteristics of the cosmos. It is a valuable resource for undergraduate students of physics, engineering, mathematics, and related disciplines. It is also suitable for interdisciplinary coursework and introductory reading outside the classroom. (shrink)

This paper studies the relationship between personal stock donation by top executives and board of directors (insiders) of publicly traded corporations and their personal tax, shareholders' returns, and social responsibility. The study finds evidence that the timing of stock donations is driven by personal tax gain. The study further shows, comparing stock gift corporations relative to their non-stock gift cohorts, that personal stock gifts are associated with lower short-term and long-term stock returns to shareholders. This implies that stock donation driven (...) by insiders' personal gain adversely affects shareholder wealth. However, the likelihood and intensity of insiders to make personal stock donation is reduced when firms have strong corporate social responsibility (CSR). Agency theory explains insiders' opportunistic behavior, stakeholder theory is also supported by evidence that stock donation is negatively related to CSR, and stewardship theory offers a different view to explain the rationale behind insiders' stock donation and shareholders' reactions to stock gifts. (shrink)