This volume constitutes a lucid introduction to methodology in social research. It will enable social science researchers trained in a particular field to look beyond and relate to other methodological domains.

As I organize a pile of ethics consult chart notes in New York City in mid‐April 2020, I look at the ten cases that I have co‐consulted on recently. Nine of the patients were found to be Covid positive. The reasons for the consults are mostly familiar—surrogate decision‐making, informed refusal of treatment, goals of care, defining futility. But the context is unfamiliar and unsettling. Bioethicists are in pandemic mode, dusting off and revising triage plans. Patients and potential patients are fearful—of (...) the disease itself and of the amplification of health disparities and inequities. There is much to contemplate, but as I go through my cases, I worry about disability, about biases and racist stereotypes. In this pandemic, historically marginalized communities are at risk of further disenfranchisement. (shrink)

The paper outlines an indigenous approach to managerial transformation for TQM primarily based on the classical wisdom literature of India. It lays emphasis on the transformation of the subjective domain of the individual as a prior requirement for ensuring quality in other dimensions of the organization. An indepth exploration of a model of the human being, purpose of life and meaning of work have been attempted with specific methodological implications for the individual and the organization. Finally, it provides directions for (...) a transformational HRD endeavour covering issues like personality development, leadership, teamwork and communication for TQM effectiveness. (shrink)

This book deals with one of the most unique and challenging themes that the mind of man has ever faced: The Evolutionary Destiny of the Human Body. Though apparently a marvellous product of biological evolution man's physical body – with its proneness to disease, its constant subjection to fatigue and inertia, its decaying process and final disappearance at death – is full of limitations. But are these limitations something permanent and insuperable? In this book we have a treatment both metaphysical (...) and scientific based on the profound vision of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on this most unusual subject. (shrink)

Debates in the philosophy of science typically take place around issues such as realism and theory change. Recently, the debate has been reformulated to bring in the role of experiments in the context of theory change. As regards realism, Ian Hacking’s contribution has been to introduce ‘intervention’ as the basis of realism. He also proposed, following Imre Lakatos, to replace the issue of truth with progress and rationality. In this context we examine the case of the vitalism — reductionism debate (...) in biology inspired by the works of Indian physicist-turned-biologist Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858–1937), in the early twentieth century. Both camps had their characteristic hardcores. Vitalists led by John S. Burdon-Sanderson and Augustus D. Waller accepted religious metaphysics to support their research programme, which ultimately degenerated. Bose worked more with the ideals of science such as Occam’s razor, large-scale systematization of phenomena and novel prediction. I argue that his religious metaphysics, instead of acting as a protective shield, helped him to consolidate his position and allowed further problem shift resulting in a research programme that involved consciousness too. His research programme remains relevant even today. (shrink)

In this paper the sameness and difference between two distinguished Indian authors, Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880–1932) and Mahasweta Devi (b. 1926), representing two generations almost a century apart, will be under analysis in order to trace the generational transformation in women’s writing in India, especially Bengal. Situated in the colonial and postcolonial frames of history, Hossain and Mahasweta Devi may be contextualized differently. At the same time their subjects are also differently categorized; the former is not particularly concerned with subalterns (...) whereas the latter specifically focuses on the effect of race and class on gender. The quest for the ‘self’ and ‘subjectivity’ is more pertinent in the latter and consequently the appeal for agency is based on a crude power struggle. Hossain, a philanthropist who championed the woman question, believed that striving for equality should be a collective process which could be achieved by spreading awareness among fellow-inmates inhabiting the prison of patriarchy. Like Euro-American first-wave feminists, Rokeya advocated the necessity of education among women in order for them to be able to comprehend their plight and ‘awake’ for the cause. She addresses fundamental issues of feminism like education and the systematized claustrophobia within the domestic space. Whereas Mahasweta Devi, has been an activist writer who is regarded as the brand ambassador for the support of the marginalized, deprived and denotified tribes of India. It is her mission to provide succour to the marginalized sections, especially tribes from the Purulia district of West Bengal, like the Kherias and Shabars. As an activist writer she explores tribal life and allied socio-political issues which reflect their agony. (shrink)

Spirit connotes the life-breath that enlivens both individuals and organizations. The role of a leader is to unleash in followers this primal creative energy and guide it towards enlightened governance. Although learning organizations grow and evolve in knowledge, conflicts also arise between material knowledge and spiritual wisdom. Using insight from classical Indian wisdom, a more harmonious pursuit of both personal fulfilment and organizational enrichment will be addressed. This article will highlight the importance of exploring non-conventional methods of learning beyond cognition (...) that may improve leadership clarity, decision making and relationship management. Discovering deeper levels of consciousness via meditation also strengthens personal mastery and purpose as well as system thinking and a sense of interconnectedness. The spirit of entrepreneurship draws deeply from such inner inspiration, finding expression in sustained commitment and high-energy performance. Such leaders must ignite a fire within themselves and their followers. Hence, the article begins with asking deep, uneasy questions for wisdom to emerge in leadership consciousness, charting a road map for future enlightenment in learning organizations, and concludes with examples of wisdom leadership from modern India. (shrink)

There is growing global consensus that inequality is making sustainable development goals unattainable. Social inclusion of the historically marginalized and equality of opportunity is crucial for sustainable development. Inclusive quality education for all is therefore considered as one of the three main targets for sustainable development according to UNESCO’s Incheon declaration in 2015. This paper draws on an institutional ethnography of a globally interconnected old colonial school’s inclusive pedagogic work in postcolonial India. The school’s work has been much celebrated in (...) existing research by academics, global donor agencies and also by the Indian government’s Sarva Shikshya Abhiyan office. This paper analyses how the school conceptualized a distinct inclusive pedagogy to educate the hearts and the minds of children driven by local community needs for social inclusion within a context of extreme inequality. This paper argues that the school’s conception of inclusive education addressing the diverse learning needs of children developed as a syncretic cultural formation drawing on its institutional mission for social justice, as well as indigenous history of educational reform and philosophy of community engagement. In doing so, this paper engages with the ‘philosophy of context’ and draws on the ‘southern theory’ of inclusive education as envisioned by Rabindranath Tagore, indigenous education reformer and Nobel Laureate poet activist during early twentieth-century colonial British India, who challenged both local and global inequality through his creative and educational work. (shrink)

A large part of our daily activities involves judging the psychological value of time. This study tested a previously less explored aspect about whether people are loss averse for time – i.e. do losses of time loom larger than corresponding gains? Using comparative hedonic judgments, the impact of prospective gains versus losses of time was examined for common contexts like waiting and local travel based on suggestions by typical navigation apps. The magnitude of time was varied without an explicit reference (...) point (experiment 1) and with a clear reference without any overt consequence (experiment 2). The contextual nature of outcome along with magnitude was also manipulated (experiment 3). Prospective gains loomed as larger or equal to losses for low magnitudes while there was a trend of losses to loom larger than gains only for high magnitudes of time. These results weaken the empirical evidence for loss aversion and highlight its magnitude-dependent nature thus presenting a nuanced perspective to the affective psychology of time. (shrink)

In this article, we observe the possibility of ‘practicing’ cosmopolitanism in three distinct experiential spaces intrinsic to human existence: knowledge spaces, habitation spaces and marketplaces. Although cosmopolitanism has been overwhelmingly deliberated upon across multiple disciplines, it has been confined to ‘conceptualisms’ in the Western scholarship. On the other hand, we find that some of the works of thinkers, such as, Rabindranath Tagore’s Creative Unity (1922), Aurobindo Ghosh’s The Ideal of Human Unity (1915–1918) and Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World (1984), (...) open the possibilities of experiencing cosmopolitanism in lived human spaces. Cosmopolitanism emerges through knowledge generation and exchanges in the academic vision of Tagore’s ideal Visva-Bharati, in the everydayness of city life through Aurobindo’s Auroville and in the cultural spaces of the Bakhtinian marketplace. Further, we find that cosmopolitanism in these thinkers interweaves the physical place with spaces of the mind. The individual emerges as a core of their cosmopolitan worldview. We argue that these thinkers not only pave the way for recognizing cosmopolitanism in real, lived spaces but also inspire a future vision, practicable in the society through academic institutions, human habitats and regular interactions at marketplaces. (shrink)

In Unseen City: The Psychic Lives of the Urban Poor, Ankhi Mukherjee offers a magisterial work of literary and cultural criticism which examines the relationship between global cities, poverty, and psychoanalysis. Spanning three continents, this hugely ambitious book reads fictional representations of poverty with each city's psychoanalytic and psychiatric culture, particularly as that culture is fostered by state policies toward the welfare needs of impoverished populations. It explores the causal relationship between precarity and mental health through clinical case studies, (...) the product of extensive collaborations and knowledge-sharing with community psychotherapeutic initiatives in six global cities. These are layered with twentieth- and twenty-first-century works of world literature that explore issues of identity, illness, and death at the intersections of class, race, globalisation, and migrancy. In Unseen City, Mukherjee argues that a humanistic and imaginative engagement with the psychic lives of the dispossessed is key to an adapted psychoanalysis for the poor, and that seeking equity of the unconscious is key to poverty alleviation. (shrink)

This book studies the lowly past beginnings of the human species, its present achievements & glorious evolutionary future.

Catholics and libertarians make strange bedfellows. They sharply disagree on many issues. However, when it comes to intellectual property rights, they are surprisingly congruent, albeit for different reasons. The present paper traces out the agreement on patents between these two very different philosophies.

Death is a constant phenomenon facing man with its grim ruthlessness, arousing in him all sorts of questions about its nature and about fate and rebirth. This book attempts to answer these questions in the light of the occult-spiritual insights provided by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. The author also dwells on the fear of death and ways to conquer it, as well as on what happens at the moment of death, and where the soul goes.

On November 28, 2009, as part of events marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the disaster at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, gas survivors protested the contents of the report prepared by government scientists that mocked their complaints about contamination. The survivors shifted from the scientific document to a mediated lunch invitation performance, purporting to serve the same chemicals as food that the report had categorized as having no toxic effects. I argue that the lunch spread, consisting of soil and (...) water from the pesticide plant, explicitly front-staged and highlighted the survivor’s forced intimate relationship with such chemicals, in order to reshape public perception of risks from toxins. Chemical matter like sevin tar and naphthol tar bound politicians, scientists, corporations, affected communities, and activists together, as these stakeholders debated the potential effects of toxic substances. This gave rise to an issue-based “chemical public.” Borrowing from such theoretical concepts as “ontologically heterogeneous publics” and “agential realism,” I track the existing and emerging publics related to the disaster and the campaigns led by the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal advocacy group. (shrink)

Mrs. Smith's eyes filled with tears as she said, “I feel like I've done something wrong. Are they punishing me because I've been refusing therapy and won't go to a nursing home?” She acknowledged that she hadn't always listened to her doctors but said that she knew better now and wanted to go home and see if she could make it work. Many staff members at our rehabilitation hospital had explained their safety concerns to her, and some had enlisted her (...) adult daughter, with whom she lived, to convince her too. The rehabilitation team had called on the ethics consultation service, of which I am a part, to help figure out whether Mrs. Smith had the capacity to make an informed refusal of discharge recommendations. (shrink)

Dignity of risk is a simple concept that is surprisingly hard to enact, honor, and prioritize in health care. The term was coined 50 years ago by Robert Perske in an article entitled "The Dignity of Risk and the Mentally Retarded". And as I have written in "Discharge Decisions and the Dignity of Risk", "the concept involves respect for persons, self-determination, and attempts to minimize paternalism or parentalism". Most simply, the dignity of risk embraces respecting or honoring an individual's choices (...) or decisions even in the face of potential harms.The central tension between safety/protection and autonomy/self-determination is at the core of the concept, but it also involves appraisals... (shrink)

Utilitarianism has always been a dominant forceful position in ethical philosophy since its inception. However, it is not without its critiques. This paper attempts to answer the question what is it that is lacking in utilitarianism that makes it vulnerable to these critiques and causes it to fail to meaningfully talk about human morality. The paper attempts to answer the question by taking recourse to two concepts not considered in utilitarianism – emotivism and separateness of persons. The paper ultimately tries (...) to show that emotions are an important part in the consideration of ethical or moral judgements or actions. (shrink)

This book explores the phases of Jacques Lacan's career and examines the past, present, and future of psychoanalysis.

The plank of the dependency theory is that unless there is a transition to socialism and a complete break with the metropolitan countries, the peripheral status of the dependent countries would continue. After the Second World War with the emergence of many new nations, as a consequence of decolonization, the question of development assumed paramount importance for these countries. Raul Prebisch (1950) understood the nineteenth century paradigm of free trade as inoperative and disadvantageous to the raw materials exporting countries. The (...) spectacular success of the Newly Industrialized countries‐ Hong Kong,Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan by integrating with the developed nations, have achieved a higher standard of living and negated the basic assumptions of the dependency theory. (shrink)

1. Manipur is a state in the Northeast region of India with a history of ongoing militarized social structure. ‘Northeast’ is a term used to label an entire region by the Indian state, which has a...

This paper is an attempt to explicate Bertrand Russell’s articulation of acquaintance and knowledge by acquaintance. The main aim of this paper is to show how the acquaintance might lead to knowledge of truths, owing to its foundational nature. In talking about acquaintance and it difference from knowledge by acquaintance we realize that acquaintance is foundational in nature and may lead to knowledge of truths owing to the very same nature.

One of the world's premiere cancer researchers reveals an urgent philosophy on the little-known principles that govern medicine--and how understanding these principles can empower everyone.

1. In this article, I will use a case study to explore the broader question of how to assess socioeconomic development from a normative perspective, especially in relation to indigenous peoples.1 T...