bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Autonomy and 'inner distance'
Authors: Owen David
Published: March 2007

The problem I raise here is not what ought to succeed mankind in the sequence of species (- the human being is an end -): but what type of human being one ought to breed, ought to will, as more valuable, more worthy of life, more certain of the future. (Friedrich Nietzsche1)

The question which leads us beyond the grave of our own generation is not 'how will human beings feel in the future', but 'how will they be' ... We do not want to train up feelings of well-being in people, but those characteristics we think constitute the greatness and nobility of our human nature. (Max Weber2)
The other voice: ethics and expression in Emmanuel Levinas
Authors: Hand Seán
Published: March 2007

Emmanuel Levinas's Totality and Infinity (1961) is explicitly con cerned with the suppression of the voice of the Other by the synoptic totalizations of the voice of western philosophy. Levinas contests this emergence of Being and the systems of totality it indicates with the irruption of the face of the other, which signifies through contact and sensibility the presence of infinity within the human situation. Derrida's reading of this fundamental testing of western ontology rests on the accusation that western philosophy already has a term for this: empiricism. That is, Derrida exposes an alien voice within Levinas's exposure of the voice alienated from ontological formulations. In the later Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence (1974) Levinas implic itly recognizes the truth of Derrida's demonstration of a residual con ceptualism, and shifts from the thematization of infinite exteriority given by the Other, alterity and the face-to-face relation, to the search for a signifyingness that will breach the noema's identificational closure, that is, to the direct and exposed gesture of saying. Both the limit terms of Totality and Infinity and the response they produced in Derrida have become the starting-point of Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence: the testimony that is irreducible to a thematizing knowledge. What saves this saying from becoming in its turn another theme is that, in addition to its acting in the text, it acts upon and as HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES Vol. 10 No. 3 © 1997 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi) [0952-6951(199708)10:3] the text. The vocabulary, form of composition and mode of address of Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence strain against their inherited limits. And the work this obliges the reader to undergo is, of course, an ethical necessity, given the work's message.
The proletarian as stranger
Authors: Pels Dick
Published: March 2007

This paper argues that the Marxist theory of the proletariat in many ways projects a romanticized self-description or 'false shadow' of its revolutionary spokesmen, and hence more proximately describes the missionary complex and Bohemian life-style of marginalized political intellectuals than a 'really existing' working class. This 'mistaken iden tity play' between spokespersons and their favourite sociological con stituency, which is already alluded to in various historical left-wing and right-wing 'farewells to the proletariat', is more systematically criti cized in recent reassessments by, for example, Bahro, Gouldner, Gorz, or Bauman. Next to its psychological and sociological infrastructure, classical proletarian standpoint theory has also attracted critical atten tion because of its suggestive epistemological linkage between the con dition of estrangement and claims for scientific objectivity. This connection is reasserted by recent feminist and postcolonial standpoint epistemologies - which, however, also tend to repeat the logic of classi cal Marxism's metonymic 'identity play'. The paper concludes with a defence\of the idea of 'situated knowledges', which wishes to preserve the classical liaison between objectivity, distanciation and marginality, while simultaneously rendering it more reflexive in critical confron tation with the ubiquitous 'spokesperson problem'.
Environmental information for and from children
Authors: Lee-Smith Diana , Chaudhry Taranum
Published: March 2007

Environmental information for and from children describes how a series of illustrated learning packages on environmental issues developed for schools also sought to stimulate responses from the children. Annual competitions invited children to answer questions and to submit essays and drawings. Children's responses have proved not only a valuable source of information on their perceptions of environmental issues but also a valuable source of information on traditional knowledge and actions in their communities.
Waste picking as a survival strategy for women in Indian cities
Authors: Huysman Marijk
Published: March 2007

This paper draws on interviews with women waste pickers in Bangalore (India) to describe their work, the returns they receive and the difficulties they face. This includes the extent to which other family members (including husbands, for those who are married) contribute to household income. It also includes a detailed account of a day in the life of a woman waste picker. Despite the low returns and the health risks, waste picking offers one of the few ways in which women from lower castes can earn an income and also meet their household and child-rearing responsibilities. The paper also includes a description of the Garbage Recycling and Segregation Programme (GRASP) in Pune and some conclusions and recommendations for governments and NGOs
History of psychiatry in Lubeck: the nineteenth century
Authors: Reger Karl-Heinz , Dilling Horst
Published: March 2007

The history of Lübeck psychiatry in the nineteenth century is presented and delineated with the State Asylum in Wakenitz Street as its centre. It is based on handwritten and printed files in the archives of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck and its Psychiatric Clinic of the Medical University. A concise presentation of the role of psychiatry in the City-State before the nineteenth century is given. Following a description of the history of the Asylum's construction and its finances the composition of the staff and patients is dealt with.

In three separate time-scales the schemes of diagnosis that were used as well as the general and specific psychiatric treatments that were applied are successively delineated as they underwent important changes in the course of time. Special emphasis is laid on a clear presentation of how the mentally ill were dealt with in everyday life. None of the physicians and psychiatrists practising in the Lübeck State Lunatic Asylum belonged to any one definite school of thought in a strict and one-sided manner. It is, nevertheless, possible to locate their approximate position within contemporary psychiatric trends and to give a characterization of their personalities and medico-scientific work.
Language, Gender and Floor Apportionment in Political Debates
Authors: SHAW SYLVIA
Published: March 2007

Political debates are speech events which foreground issues of power and the `floor', and allow the opportunity of assessing the ways in which the gender of participants affects their construction as more or less powerful participants in debates. Debates in the British House of Commons are adversarial in style, making it appropriate to view the floor as `the site of a contest where there is a winner and a loser'. Previous research into political debates has found that male participants violate the formal rules in debates more than their female counterparts, in order to gain the floor. Although the canonical form and rules of debates exist to `permit the equalization of turns', rule violations are common, and inequalities between participants exist. In this article legal and illegal interventions are evaluated in five debates in order to establish the extent to which the gender of participants is related to the control that an individual has over the debate floor.
The Sounds of Silence: How Men Silence Women in Marital Relations
Authors: DeFrancisco Victoria Leto
Published: March 2007

In this study seven white heterosexual married couples ran audio recorders in the central living areas of their homes for an average of 10 days to capture ongoing interactions. Afterwards, I conducted private interviews with each partner, asking her or him to identify likes and dislikes (communication preferences) in a variety of taped episodes. The participants' perspectives and contextual information were incorporated in my analyses of conversational development. I found an intricate pattern of interactions whereby the women did more of the conversational work, yet were more likely to be silenced by the men.
Discourse and Text: Linguistic and Intertextual Analysis within Discourse Analysis
Authors: Fairclough Norman
Published: March 2007

This paper is an argument for systematic textual analysis as a part of discourse analysis, and an attempt to stimulate debate on this issue between different approaches to discourse analysis. Two types of textual analysis are distinguished: linguistic analysis and intertextual analysis. On the basis of a reanalysis of data samples in papers published in the first four issues of Discourse & Society, the paper argues that diverse approaches to discourse analysis can be enhanced through systematic use of these two forms of analysis, even those which claim a concern with the content rather than the form of texts. It is suggested that textual analysis needs to be based upon a multifunctional theory of language such as systematic-functional linguistics. Finally, the paper suggests theoretical, methodological, historical and political reasons why textual analysis ought to be more widely recognized as a method in social research.
`Quality of Life' Talk: The Liberal Paradox of Psychological Testing
Authors: Antaki Charles , Rapley Mark
Published: March 2007

The new discourse of `quality of life' is highly consequential for those whose lives are regulated by medical and psychological services, but at the heart of it there is a paradox. On the one hand, psychologists are committed to assessing the wellbeing of their clients; on the other hand, their theorization of `quality of life' and their diagnostic interview procedures cordon off its official definition from ordinary usages. This paper explores how interviewers try to solve the paradox by `naturalizing' their questioning, in spite of interviewees' orientation to the clinical test that motivates it. We pay close attention to the actual practice of assessment interviews and show how troubles arise due to mismatches between the `natural' and the official in two crucial aspects: the motivation for asking about someone's quality of life and how to deal with the `irrelevant' material and troubles talk that the client might provide as an answer. We show how interviewers use cover identifications, pro-verbs and prodescriptions to solve the paradox they face. We conclude that whatever such interviews achieve, it is not so much a record of the respondent's quality of life but of the interviewer and interviewee's joint management of a paradoxical encounter.
Bodies, Beaches and Burn-Times: `Environmentalism' and its Discursive Competitors
Authors: Coupland Nikolas , Coupland Justine
Published: March 2007

This paper suggests a competing discourses formulation for ecolinguistics. In relation to the issue of ozone depletion and consequent acknowledged health hazards, more general environmental concerns are opposed by traditional, recreational discourses which assert that sun-use is `fun'. A more contemporary discourse which legitimizes, commodifies and technologizes sun-use is another opposition force. We trace these discourse formations in a sample of UK print media. The analyses support Gidden's contention that social responses to environmental phenomena are no longer anchored in individual experience. The issue of ozone depletion is systematically attenuated and reformulated in media texts as a set of options relating to hedonistic summer leisure or ascetic body culture.
The Ideological Remapping of Semantic Roles in Totalitarian Discourse, or, How to Paint White Roses Red
Authors: Ilie Cornelia
Published: March 2007

This article proposes a pragmatic analysis in terms of semantic roles of the ideologically based linguistic manipulation underlying the rhetoric of totalitarian discourse with special reference to dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu's speeches in communist România. The analysis focuses on the linguistic violations that consist in demoting the Agent role, normally associated with humans, to the status of Instrument or Patient semantic role, while promoting the Instrument and Patient roles to the status of institutional Agent roles. Three such instances are discussed in detail: deagentivized active constructions, agentless passive constructions and agentless reflexive passive constructions. A major claim made in this article is that the distorted image of social reality which is encoded in recurring institutional linguistic structures produces deliberate meaning violations, which in turn contribute to gradually reshaping social reality through social norm violations.
The Pragmatics of Operationism
Authors: Grace Randolph C.
Published: March 2007

Experimental psychologists in the 1930s erred badly in interpreting Bridgman (1927/1960) to mean that a theoretical construct was scientifically valid given a single set of operations. This mistake was corrected in the 1950s with the adoption of a multiple or convergent operationism, which stimulated the development of cognitive psychology and remains widely used to this day. The major criticisms made by Bickhard, Green, Leahey and Rogers (all 2001) attempt to rebut my (Grace, 2001) supposed claim that converging operationism solved the philosophical difficulties inherent in operationism as a thoroughgoing account of scientific meaning. But I made no such claim. Instead, I argue that it is legitimate to assess operationism pragmatically, in a research context. On this view, reasons for the tenacity of operationism in psychology are clear: the use of operational definitions facilitates clarity of communication and helps scientists to formulate empirical tests of theories.
Friendship and Play: An Evolutionary-Developmental View
Authors: Mos Leendert P. , Boodt Casey P.
Published: March 2007

Kazimier Dabrowski's evolutionary-developmental theory of positive disintegration is used as a pretext for discussing the relationship between play and friendship. Within the context of multilevelness of emotional and instinctive functions, it is proposed that the immutability of gamesmanship is transformed through the fidelity of friendship into play whose function is nothing less than to understand the totality of meaning.
Social Constructionism and the Pragmatic Standard
Authors: Osbeck Lisa M.
Published: March 2007

It has become increasingly evident that traditional positivistic explanations are not adequate for the explanation of human behavior. Alternative explanations have arisen in recent years in response to dissatisfaction with traditional models. Social constructionism is one prominent alternative. The appropriateness of constructionism as a model for psychology has yet to be sufficiently evaluated. The objective of this paper is to propose one criterion by which explanation models in psychology might be meaningfully evaluated. This criterion is the pragmatic standard, by which a model is evaluated in terms of its potential to allow psychology to be useful to society at large. It is argued that one component of usefulness may be entailed in the model's capacity for generativity in psychology. The concept of generativity is explored and social constructionism is evaluated according to this criterion.
Information and Time
Authors: Slife Brent D.
Published: March 2007

The conceptual roots of the modern notion of information are traced. One of the most prominent of these roots stems from an unlikely source-western views of time. This root is perhaps the main reason for the wide appeal and explanatory power of our current conception of information, particularly in cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence. Unfortunately, however, this appeal and power have led many theorists and researchers to overlook problems with this conception. Psychology's dominant assumption of time not only underlies these problems but also prevents their solution. An alternative assumption of time-hermeneutic temporality-is thus described. This alternative is shown to avoid the more problematic aspects of the dominant view and offer a more promising basis for conceptualizing information.
Sacks and Psychology
Authors: Edwards Derek
Published: March 2007

Sacks's lectures are the historical foundation of conversation analysis (CA), the empirical study of talk as social activity. Sacks developed the implications of his analyses mostly for social science. This review highlights various implications for psychology, and especially for studies of language, cognition and social interaction. Sacks's `social action' rather than `communication' approach to talk, including his notion of `subversion', contradicts common assumptions that CA is inherently consensualist. His legacy provides a challenge to psychological theories of discourse and cultural knowledge, and a rigorous empirical methodology for developing it.
Postmodern Pluralism and Our Selves
Authors: Craig Anita P.
Published: March 2007

In this paper I examine postmodern thinking about `the inner', that is, about `mind' and related notions. This is part of an ongoing project aimed at retelling the story about who we are and how we cope. Retelling this story seems to be a perennial concern, but one which is always more urgent `now'. In this, the last few years of the century, how to think and talk about ourselves is, at best, uncertain and obscure. In this paper I offer one direction to pursue in getting us out of the trouble we are in: rethinking the importance of our selves, that is, that core of (perhaps ever-changing) commitments and identifications which allow us to act and come forward as moral and legal agents.
Contesting Representations
Authors: Zuss Mark
Published: March 2007

Autobiographical and `life-writing' genres provide textual sites for representing aspects of experience and the articulation of relational selves. This paper investigates contemporary, postmodern feminist assays of identity that both question and challenge the limits of modernist representations of subjectivity. In life-writings by Helene Cixous, Michelle Cliff, Audre Lorde and Maya Angelou contestations over representation, agency and resistance. to fixed identity categories are made explicit. Postmodern textual and interpretative practices, including autobiographical `metissage' and non-synchronous analyses of raced, gendered and classed subject positions, replace essentialist representations of subjects in a politics of hybridity and difference. These texts offer pedagogic expressions of resistance to the enduring legacy of modernist authorship as an act deriving from a coherent self-present writing self. The practice of metissage and the disruption of temporality in these contemporary writings is regarded as an alternative representational poetics and politics founded on a non-foundational feminist and materialist ontology.
Through a Glass Darkly
Authors: Larner Glenn
Published: March 2007

The paper explores issues of fate, chance, time, agency and destiny in therapy. The theoretical perspective is literary and deconstructive. It is suggested that therapy, like literature, is a setting for the unfolding of narrative destiny. In a therapeutic narrative the past breaks through into the future, opening fate to chance and enhancing personal agency. The future is seen in terms of the past as `through a glass darkly'. Change is not a mere product of a therapeutic technology butfalls from life as other, in a person's own narrative time. The discussion is illustrated by examples from therapy and considers implications for the social construction of personal agency.
An Agentic Psychology Model Based on the Paradigmatic Repositioning of the Theory of Planned Behaviour
Authors: Smith John L.
Published: March 2007

Despite the existence of strong empirical support for the theories of reasoned action and planned behaviour (TRAJTPB), an analysis of the concept of intention and its operational definition indicates the need for a paradigmatic adjustment. An Agentic Psychology Model (APM) has been developed which incorporates the essence of the TRA equation whilst reconstruing it as a rule governing the intelligibility of clusters of accounts or statements that might be made about a particular intention or action. Aternative methods based on account cluster test-frames and semantic mapping techniques are presented, together with results from previous research, to indicate how the APM might be deployed in empirical investigations operating at the interstices of the positivist and critical paradigms in social psychology.
Decentralization and Legitimacy in Employee Representation: A Franco-German Comparison
Authors: Hege Adelheid , Dufour Christian
Published: March 2007

France and Germany differ considerably in terms of the legal rights assigned to workplace systems of employee representation, and of the strength and structure of their trade unions. Nevertheless there are important similarities in the actual practice of workplace industrial relations, the authors argue on the basis of their comparative case-study research. Elected representatives can act effectively only when they are able to develop a strategic approach and thus distance themselves from the day-to-day concerns of individual groups of their constituents. They can gain the legitimacy to do so only when they maintain close links with the external trade union.
Industrial Relations in an Unstable Environment: The Case of Central and Eastern Europe
Authors: Mason Bob
Published: March 2007

This article examines the evolution of industrial relations in the states of central and eastern Europe, and in particular in Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic. The main contention is that these countries will be unable to sustain stable and coherent national systems of industrial relations. The reasons are, first, the disaggregation of employer and employee organizations in this region; and, second, the decentralization of economic management from the state to the enterprise. It is argued that these developments are undermining attempts by a number of CEE countries to develop tripartite for a in order to regulate their respective employment systems.
Times of the Sign
Authors: Hopper Paul J.
Published: March 2007

Linguistics, a discipline that aims to grasp essential features of language, has adopted methods and assumptions that require a suppression of the temporality of speech and exclusive attention to its atemporal dimension. In doing so, it has lost sight of a crucial aspect of the notion of structure in language; that it is distributed over time and across persons. In this paper some of the consequences of this suppression for the theory and practice of linguistics are noted, and some alternatives indicated. These alternatives bring linguistics closer to the epistemes of poststructuralism and postmodernism.
The Arresting Eye: Discourse, Surveillance and Disciplinary Administration in Early English Police Thinking
Authors: McMullan John L.
Published: March 2007

This article examines the tactics and concepts formulated and exercised in the name of police in Britain and their gradual evolution between 1750 and 1840. It concen trates on the writings of Fielding, Coloquhoun and Chadwick and locates their contri butions as part of a new grammar of policing power concerned to map and administer English society and to comprehend it panoptically. My argument is that their theories, proposals and plans added enormously to the development of an institutional, formal, and practical conception of police, while simultaneously buttressing moral govern ment and developing the administrative underside of English law.
Terrorism, Individual Security, and the Role of the Military: a Reply to Liotta
Authors: SMITH-WINDSOR BROOKE A.
Published: March 2007

P. H. Liotta employs a boomerang analogy in an attempt to demonstrate the danger that may result if policymaking post-9/11 does not acknowledge a convergence of security concerns and carefully balance regard for the protection of the state with renewed attention to the security of individual human beings. Despite the attraction of the boomerang analogy as a policymaking aid, inconsistencies in the author's treatment of terrorism as a security concern, some undeveloped or unsubstantiated contentions and concepts, and a general underestimation of the utility of military forces in addressing dangers to the individual in addition to dangers to the state unfortunately diminish the amount of sound policy advice to be garnered from the article.
Regional Differences in Labour Market Participation of Young People in the European Union
Authors: Green Anne E. , Owen David , Wilson Rob
Published: March 2007

The passage from education to employment is one of a number of ‘transitions’ experienced by young people. There was a tendency in the 1980s and 1990s for youth transitions to lengthen and become more diverse. It is now the norm for young people to undergo further education/training after the end of compulsory education. As a result, labour market entry has often been delayed, and has become more protracted and complex. Labour market participation is moulded by a number of interrelated factors, including: the demographic and economic context, the organization and structure of the labour market and of education and training systems, the role of the state in shaping labour supply and the organization of the family economy. Using the economic activity rate, together with other measures constructed from the European Labour Force Survey for 1993-7, this paper is concerned with describing, exploring and tentatively explaining labour market participation rates of young people in NUTS 2 regions across the European Union. A range of exploratory data analysis and multivariate regression analysis techniques are employed, and the implications of the findings for understanding current and future regional variations in labour market activity are addressed.
Economic Change and Social Polarization in Poland
Authors: Weltrowska Justyna
Published: March 2007

The transformation of Poland’s political-economic system in the early 1990s fundamentally changed the ownership structure of the means of production in all domains of the economy. It also set in train economic and social processes that have provided a new basis for the Polish economy, and brought about changes in standards of living, and access to goods and services. Social polarization has been one of the basic expressions of these spatial-temporal variations. The author considers the factors responsible for the divergence in living standards, identifies the main tendencies inherent in polarization, and provides a synthesis of the mechanisms of increasing social differences in an economy undergoing transformation.
Inward Investment, Regional Transformations and Uneven Development in Eastern and Central Europe
Authors: Smith Adrian , Ferenčíková Soňa
Published: March 2007

Inward investment has been accorded a central place in the 'transition' programmes of East and Central European economies. This article seeks to examine the uneven regional development impacts of inward investment in Slovakia through a series of enterpriselevel and regional case-studies. The article contests the claims of the proponents of the role of inward investment in transition which suggest that a positive set of impacts will arise out of new corporate structures resulting from foreign investment. Through examining the locally specific impacts of inward manufacturing investment in relation to different corporate strategies, technology transfer and modernization, labour-market transformation and local supplier subcontracting, the article argues that reliance upon inward investment may not be the 'godsend' that many suggest it will be and that there is enormous diversity in the local impacts of new investment. The article concludes with a consideration of the role of inward investment in Europe's eastern periphery.
Perception of Economic and Environmental Stressors by Urban Slum Dwellers
Authors: Siddiqui Roomana N. , Pandey Janak
Published: March 2007

Economic and environmental problems are acute stressors for the lower socio-economic class residing in the urban Indian slums. This article endeavours to explore the way in which slum dwellers subjectively perceive these stressors daily confronted by them. Data was collected on 280 slum respondents of Delhi and Allahabad Results showed that at the perceptual level both the economic and environmental stressors were not correlated Further, results indicated that respondents reported acute poverty but they failed to perceive the deteriorating environmental conditions.
Women, Gender and Development: The Evolution of Theories and Practice
Authors: Singhal Rekha
Published: March 2007

Strengthening people's capacity to determine their own priorities and to act on them is the basis of gender-equity based development. International and national policy concerns regarding the im portant role women play in development has not necessarily been translated into practice. This article seeks to address this gap by examining various approaches of women and development, fol lowed by the gender-based approach in development. Finally, the article identifies issues and concerns to be addressed in developmental programmes from the gender perspective.
The Role of Psychology in the An alysis of Poverty: Some Suggestions
Authors: Harper David
Published: March 2007

The aim of this article is to draw together research findings in social and organisational psychology literature to illustrate that psychology has a role in helping eliminate poverty. Following an analysis of poverty similar to that of Mehryar (1984) which asserts that the cause and solution of poverty both are politico-economic, it is argued that certain psychological findings (relating to perceptions of poverty and the nature of institutional decision-making systems) may well aid such a struggle.
Indigenisation of Psychological Measuremen t: Parameters and Opera tionalisa tion
Authors: Sahoo Fakir M.
Published: March 2007

The indigenisation of psychological measurement constitutes a major challenge in the context of indigenising social science research, especially in developing countries of the world. The paper considers the task of developing and validating indigenous tests as an important scientific enterprise while recognising the merits of several other viable strategies. It is asserted that indigenous tests are cultural apparatuses, sensitive to socio-cultural realities of a given system. Indigenous tests are developed when culture is treated not as a target, but as a source. Several parameters of test indigenisation are delineated: these include concept, language, items and materials, ecological setting, population parameters, format and validation procedures. An empirical scale of asses sing test indigenisation is described with a view to measuring indigenisation across time and studies. The limitations of this approach are also indicated.
A Semiotic View of Socialisation, Lifespan Development and Cultural Psychology: With Vignettes from the Moral Culture of Traditional Hindu Households
Authors: Much Nancy C.
Published: March 2007

Defining socialisation as the process of cultural communication whereby cul tural symbols interface with psychological experience, it is postulated that de velopmental psychology is a "cultural psychology". A semiotic view of social and human development is presented. This view of socialisation is different from the traditional theories of socialisation in that it emphasises that knowing and feeling, personal and cultural meaning are experientially and psycho logically fused in the person, early in life. Using a culture-centred view of human development the concepts of culture and socialisation are re-examined. Focusing on three variables for socialisation processes: the person, the social system, and culture, the paper focuses on microcommunicative processes by which cultural meanings are transformed into personal meanings. Using ex amples from Oriya Brahmin households, the general microcommunicative technique of instantiation is showcased and some of the specific techniques (such as narrative, dramatisation, and arguments) are illustrated.
Conceptualising "Childbood" in Developing Countries
Authors: Liddell Christine
Published: March 2007

Children in the developing world live in diverse and varied settings; the diversity of synergistic effects that impinge on childhood is often ignored by social scien tists. Citing human indicators data from six Southern African countries, the dif ficulties in establishing a meaningful prototype for conceptualising childhood in developing countries is highlighted. The paper focuses on two aspects of childhood in the developing world: the first year of schooling and the experience of urbani sation. Failure in the first year is a common feature of schooling in the developing world and is a phenomenon subjected to varying explanations. Gross regional dif ferences in early school failure rates are presented and discussed. Migration to urban areas for employment has diverse consequences for children, the outcome being determined by who migrates and the nature of the relocation. Studies are cited which highlight the importance of detailed analyses of childhood across var ied contexts in the developing world.
Articulation of an Integrated Women's Health Policy Using the Life Cycle Approach
Authors: Datta Anindita
Published: March 2007

Gender disparities in the sphere of health are the direct consequence of gender dis crimination in other spheres of social well-being. Thus, any policy targeting women's health must recognise that women's health outcomes are invariably linked to other aspects of their lives and to their unequal social positions. However, current 'utero centric' policies fail to recognise that women's health, including reproductive health, is inextricably linked to gender inequality. Considering women's health in isolation leads to an improper understanding of the issue, and, therefore to clumsy and in effective policy planning. This paper recommends a comprehensive women's health policy based on a life-cycle approach to significantly improve the health status of girls and women.
Women's Livelihood in Fisheries in Coastal Karnataka, India
Authors: Bhatta Ramachandra , Rao K. Aruna
Published: March 2007

This paper reports on the results of survey among fisherwomen in Coastal Karnataka. Data was collected on the nature of their work, earnings and role in decision making by giving different weightage to individual activities. The study suggests that only 16 per cent of the women are fully involved in decision making, although their contribution to the family income and household work is substantial. There is a social stigma attached to fish marketing activities and the younger generation is not willing to enter the business. Government support in terms of subsidy does not help in improving social status. Employment generation by providing modern marketing facilities is required for improving the status of fisherwomen.
Quality of Worklife: A Human Values Approach
Authors: Datta Tanmoy
Published: March 2007

In a deeper sense, quality of worklife (QWL) refers to the quality of life (QL) of individuals in their working organizations—commercial, educational, cultural, religious, philanthropic or whatever they are. Modern society is organizational society. Individuals spend much of their lives in organizations. Hence, the impor tance of QWL is unquestionable. It has an ideological core comprising the perceptual gap across individu als about the real connotation of QL as well as QWL. In addition to this ideological problem, the study of QWL presents serious methodological problems too. A positivist attitude is always sceptical about the deeper meaning of life, maybe out of honest lack of knowledge, or maybe with some ulterior motives. The present paper therefore is an attempt to touch upon three aspects of QWL: (a) QWL from a human values approach; (b) some viewpoints for subjective observation of QWL; and (c) some ameliorative measures towards im proving QWL.
Strengthening Technological Capability for Industrial Competitiveness in Bangladesh
Authors: Islam M. Nazrul
Published: March 2007

In the present era of deregulation, privatisation and increasing global market competition, the importance of technology can not be overemphasised. Considering the role of technol ogy, developing countries are paying increasing attention to technological capability build ing, and Bangladesh is no exception. Technological capability building requires govemment interventions at various levels appropriate policy instruments to promote innovation cli mate in both public and private sectors. In addition, the development of institutions related to national science and technology capability building requires special attention. This article investigates the policy regimes, the status of S&T-related institutions vis-à-vis the industrial technology base of Bangladesh, and suggests some measures for strengthen ing technological capability for industrial competitiveness in Bangladesh.
Scientific Research in Algeria Institutionalisation versus Professionalisation
Authors: Khelfaoui Hocine
Published: March 2007

In the first twenty years after independence, scientific research in Algeria was largely displaced in favour of teaching and training. From the beginning, there arose a conflict between scientific research and political independence that was tied to the tensions generated by two sets of forces: professionalisation autonomy on the one hand, and institutionalisation control on the other. The process of professionalisation leads to greater independence for researchers, which comes into conflict with the exercise of government control over the process of institutionalisation. It drifted down to an incessant political and administrative impediment to the aspirations of scientific researchers for professional autonomy. This situation influenced the conditions under which the scientific community emerges and consolidates itself in its relationship with the state in Algeria. The relationship between the scientific and political worlds comprises the nolitical backdrop of the problems that this paper will attempt to unfold.
Judas' Death: Some Remarks Concerning the Iconography of Suicide in the Middle Ages
Authors: Schnitzler Norbert
Published: March 2007

This essay analyses some medieval images representing the Biblical story of Judas'suicide. From a historian's point of view, those images must be seen in the context of a scholastic discourse on mortal sins and human responsibility. Miniatures and sculptures of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries mark a high point in the developement of pictorial representations of that theme. They render Judas in the shape of an anti-image: with deformed physiognomic characteristics, vile gestures and the attributes of vices. A central aspect of my argument will focus on the hanging-tree. A number of pictures indicate a significant transformation of this motif The former tree is replaced by a representation of gallows. I will argue that this development reflects a corres ponding revaluation of Judas' death within the scholastic discourse. Since in early-medieval literature, death at the hanging-tree is recognised as a refer ence to a denigrating death, without mourning and the presence of relatives, that is, the absence of memoria, the motif of the hanging Judas at the gallows now underscored that hanging itself, the most shameful of acts, and was a sort of penance for Judas' betrayal. During the later Middle Ages, perhaps as a result of the canonisation of the iconography of the passion, the motif of suicide appeared to lose its popularity without the wide application of this rhetoric of denigration.
Space, Body, Action: The Significance of Perceptions in the Study of the Environmental History of Early Medieval Europe
Authors: Kleinschmidt Harald
Published: March 2007

The study of ecological history tends to centre on long-term changes in the physical environment and in the patterns of interconnections between the environment and humans. Little work has been done on the history of perceptions of the environment and the attitudes that may result from them. In this essay, I argue that these perceptions are culture specific and change con comitantly with its transformations. I use early medieval European attitudes towards the physical environment as a case study which I pursue in three directions: changing conceptions of space; modes of behaviour as attitudes towards the human body; and categories of action. Together, the three form a pattern which has determined attitudes towards the physical environment.
The Family of Mallappa Nayaka: Transferability of vijayanagar Nayakas in Tamil Nadu
Authors: Karashima Noburu
Published: March 2007

During the period of the Vijayanagar empire, mainly in the sixteenth century,1 many nayakas were sent by the kings to Tamil Nadu from Karnataka or Andhra Pradesh as military leaders as well as administrators. Though it is vaguely understood by scholars that they were transferred from one place to another by the kings, so far no proof has been presented to substantiate this understanding.2 This transferability of nayakas is a crucial point for understanding the role these nayakas played in the state rule, and therefore, the Vijayanagar state structure. According to Burton Stein, who put forward the so-called 'segmentary state theory', nayakas in Tamil Nadu, except such big ones as the Senji, Thanjavur and Madurai nayakas, were local powers, like the zamindars of the Mughal period, having their power base in the locality where they were supported by communal relations.3 To Stein, therefore, the idea of the transfer of nayakas must have been quite unpleasant, being antagonistic to his own idea. Though I have discussed this point to a certain extent elsewhere,4 the following examination is an effort to resolve this crucial issue.
Commercialisation, Tribute, and the Transition from fate Mughal to Early Colonial in India 1
Authors: Datta Rajat
Published: March 2007

The common view of the transition in eighteenth century India from a medieval to an early-colonial formation as a fundamental rupture overlooks several structural continuities, especially in the fiscal bases of the state. Commercial grouth underpinned the transition; the state's finances in both regimes depended on highly monetised systems of revenue extraction. Both used these resources for military-fiscal pur poses. Contrary to conventional wisdom, there wasn't much increase in the net burden of taxes to mark the early colonial regime. The dif ferences arose in the fiscal inflexibility of the new system, its success in systematising the tribute to build an efficient military apparatus. and its propensity to use politics for commercial purposes in order to transfer the profits through an elaborate global network of public and private remittances.
The Giraffe of Bengal: A Medieval Encounter in Ming China
Authors: Church Sally K.
Published: March 2007

This paper chronicles the development of diplomatic relations between China and Bengal in the early-fifteenth century, culminating in the pre sentation of a giraffe by Bengal to the court of China in 1414. It examines Chinese sources that recorded the visits of envoys from Bengal to China and from China to Bengal during the period of the Chinese maritime ex peditions from 1405 to 1433. Discussion centres on the historical context for these exchanges in the two countries, the relationship between the Chinese maritime expeditions and these diplomatic missions, and the reliability of Chinese sources in recording the events and rulers of Bengal. An effort is made to elucidate the many complexities that surrounded this seemingly straightforward event.
Potential of the Health Insurance Market for the Informal Sector: A Pilot Study
Authors: Sodani P.R.
Published: March 2007

This article investigates the community's preferences on various aspects of health insurance. The data has been collected from a sample of 300 households in Jaipur, Rajasthan. The study reveals a low level of awareness (15 per cent) about health insurance. Quality of care and cost are the two important factors identi fied by the community as the factors affecting their decision to subscribe to any new health insurance plan. An integrated provider and insurer system is preferred irrespective of public- or private-based management. Hospitalisation and mater nity services are preferred among the given choices for benefits to be included under the plan. The results also suggest that there is high level of willingness to join a health insurance plan in future if designed carefully for the informal sector. Some policy implications have been suggested in this study for the setting up of health insurance schemes.
Promoting Gender Equality in the Medical Profession: A Physician's Reflection on Her Experiences as a Medical Student
Authors: Koso Silvia
Published: March 2007

The medical profession is committed to the protection and promotion of health and well-being of all persons, irrespective of their sex, cultural or social background. How ever, in this very profession the reinforcement of gender stereotypes, inequity and gender-based discrimination persist from the time of enrolment in medical school until the end of one's professional carrier. The following groups of factors have been identified as the impediment for women's advancement in medicine: reinforcement of traditional gender roles, sexism and lack of effective mentoring. Suggested strategies for overcoming these obstacles include: creating supportive female networks among students and practitioners, peer mentoring, using gender-sensitive language and de signing favourable working conditions. The importance of training medical students and professionals in gender analysis and gender-sensitive programming is suggested as a strategy towards achieving gender equality in health. Gender analysis contributes to the understanding of differentials in: risk factors and exposures; manifestation, severity and frequency of diseases; and social and cultural responses to diseases.