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The Dancing Between Two Worlds Project: Background, Methodology And Learning To Approach Community In Place, Anindita Banerjee, Shaun Mcleod, Gretel Taylor, Patrick L. West

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

This article recounts the history to date of the Dancing Between Two Worlds (DBTW) project, which was initiated by a team of artist-scholars at Deakin University in 2018. DBTW’s brief was to engage the Indian community living in the western fringes of Melbourne in a project on civic belonging, cross-cultural artistic identity, and the performance of outer-suburban Indian diaspora. Working with the creative and community energies that are activated at the intersection of the creative arts and demographically inflected place, the Deakin researchers collaborated with local artists with an Indian background on a major performance in late 2019: …

The Case Of Kashmir: Ethnic Mobilization And Insurgency, Kayla Hofmann

Politics Honors Papers

This paper analyzes ethnic identity and potential reasons for conflict through a constructivist lens. Using the case study of Kashmir, I explore the past and present events in the state and the salience of ethnicity, specifically Kashmiri Muslims and Indian Hindus.

Tracing Biometric Assemblages In India’S Surveillance State: Reproducing Colonial Logics, Reifying Caste Purity, And Quelling Dissent Through Aadhaar, Priya Prabhakar

Scripps Senior Theses

Tracing Biometric Assemblages in India’s Surveillance State seeks to understand the historical conditions that rendered the nation-state of India as having the world’s largest biometric surveillance system: Aadhaar. Surveillance practices used by the British Raj mirrors the current social order of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), as they use surveillance to similar ends in today’s political economy, through the intersecting forces of neoliberalism and ethnonationalism. This thesis is an exploration into how India’s current surveillance regimes cultivate biometric surveillant assemblages through Aadhaar. Contrary to claims that Aadhaar was created to empower the poor, I argue that these surveillance regimes …

“Daughter” As A Positionality And The Gendered Politics Of Taking Parents Into The Field, Menusha De Silva, Kanchan Gandhi

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Research on gendered politics of the field has delved into the practices of accompaniment and its implications on research and knowledge production, particularly through the case of researchers’ children and partners. In comparison, the tendency to seek assistance from parents is neglected within the scholarship. Drawing on the PhD fieldwork experiences of two researchers in their “native” country, specifically a Sri Lankan researcher conducting fieldwork in Sri Lanka and a North Indian scholar researching in South India, the paper reveals parents’ contribution to the research process, in terms of enhancing researcher credibility, facilitating contact‐making and access, and providing emotional and …

Does Household Capital Mediate The Uptake Of Agricultural Land, Crop, And Livestock Adaptations? Evidence From The Indo-Gangetic Plains (India), Sameer H. Shah, Courtney Hammond Wagner, Udita Sanga, Hogeun Park, Lia Helena Monteiro De Lima Demange, Carolina Gueiros, Meredith T. Niles

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

Farmers in the Indo-Gangetic Plains produce much of the wheat and rice grown in India. However, food production and millions of farm-based livelihoods in this region will continue to be adversely affected by hydro-climatic change and variation, reduced land productivity, and declining groundwater levels. Thus, agricultural adaptations are essential for protecting and improving upon intersecting goals of food security, poverty alleviation, and wellbeing. Household “capital” (e.g., natural, human, financial, physical, and social) is commonly cited as an indicator of livelihood adaptability and innovation. We develop a series of mediated structural equation models to empirically evaluate the validity of capital as …

Listening To Earth Stories: An Interview With Swarnalatha Rangarajan, Sufina K, Bhuvaneswari R

The Goose

In this interview with Dr. Swarnalatha Rangarajan, a well known Indian ecocritic and a pioneer of Indian ecocriticism, discusses ecocriticism, her novel The Final Instructions, and a wide range of Indian environmental writing.

Globalization Tumult And Civilizational Greatness, Pradip N. Khandwalla

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

In the kind of tumultuous, strife-torn, and stressful world we are living in, we need to ask the questions: “Is our civilization moving in the right direction? What makes a civilization great?” Greed for power and greed for money, unless offset by a shared conception of civilizational excellence, often degenerate into widespread corruption, fraud, and violence. In developing countries like India, the challenge is to design a civilization that uses the creativity and enterprise of the market economy, the freedom of choice of democracy, and the altruism of the developmental state – to reverse degeneration and foster social, economic, and …

Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale: A Charismatic Authority And His Ideology, John P. Cibotti

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Sikh leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale’s militant and masculinist discourses were embraced by Punjabi Sikhs because of his presence as a charismatic authority, a concept first developed by sociologist Max Weber to understand the conditions surrounding and personal qualities of a figure which attracts followers. The rebellion he led in Punjab resulted from his radical exploitation of issues concerning the Sikh community. Religion was wielded as a tool, legitimizing Sikh violence as commanded by the Gurus. Radical interpretations of Sikh scripture and folklore were initially preached to rural, less educated crowds. While his sermons brought out their frustrations with the government, …

Causes, Consequences, And Policy Responses To The Migration Of Health Workers: Key Findings From India, Margaret Walton-Roberts, Vivien Runnels, S. Irudaya Rajan, Atul Sood, Sreelekha Nair, Philomina Thomas, Corinne Packer, Adrian Mackenzie, Gail Tomblin Murphy, Ronald Labonté, Ivy Bourgeault

Geography and Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

Background: This study sought to better understand the drivers of skilled health professional migration, its consequences, and the various strategies countries have employed to mitigate its negative impacts. The study was conducted in four countries—Jamaica, India, the Philippines, and South Africa—that have historically been “sources” of health workers migrating to other countries. The aim of this paper is to present the findings from the Indian portion of the study.

Methods: Data were collected using surveys of Indian generalist and specialist physicians, nurses, midwives, dentists, pharmacists, dieticians, and other allied health therapists. We also conducted structured interviews with key stakeholders representing …

Improving The Efficacy Of Family Planning Policies In Indian, Chinese, Tanzanian Contexts, And Beyond, Jayce O'Shields

Student Scholarship

In this paper, I will first present the problem of global overpopulation and the solution of decreasing populations to replacement level fertility using effective family planning and contraceptive policies. I will then describe the Indian state of Kerala as a model cultural context in which fertility rates have significantly declined in recent history and explain how Kerala can provide insight into efficient family planning and contraceptive strategies. Next, I will examine extant state and non-governmental organization (NGO) family planning and contraceptive policies in in India, China, and Tanzania, and in comparison to the Kerala mode, make general recommendations on how …

International Migration Of Health Professionals And The Marketization And Privatization Of Health Education In India: From Push-Pull To Global Political Economy, Margaret Walton-Roberts

Geography and Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

Health worker migration theories have tended to focus on labour market conditions as principal push or pull factors. The role of education systems in producing internationally oriented health workers has been less explored. In place of the traditional conceptual approaches to understanding health worker, especially nurse, migration, I advocate global political economy (GPE) as a perspective that can highlight how educational investment and global migration tendencies are increasing interlinked. The Indian case illustrates the globally oriented nature of health care training, and informs a broader understanding of both the process of health worker migration, and how it reflects wider marketization …

Tentative Securities: 26/11, Israel And The Politics Of Mobility, Rhys A. Machold

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This dissertation examines the global mobility of security knowhow in relation to the management of terrorism in megacities. Specifically, it offers three insights. First, it shows how historical events are performed as sites in need of transnational policy intervention. Second, it enables an understanding of how and why the sourcing of policy ‘models’ actually takes place. Third, it sheds light on how mobile policy schemes travel geographically and are put to work in particular contexts. In doing so, it elaborates on the conditions under which policies move geographically but also addresses the kinds of constraints and contradictions they face.

The …

Subsistence And Biodiversity Conservation In The Sundarban Biosphere Reserve, West Bengal, India, Priyanka Ghosh

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

My dissertation research investigates the impacts of biodiversity conservation on the local population living in the Sundarban Biosphere Reserve (SBR). More specifically, the research examines the impacts of conservation on local fishing communities living on the edge of the Sundarban Reserve Forest. In addition, it examines the causes and characteristics of conflicts between the biosphere reserve managers and the local fishing communities over the resource use of the biosphere reserve. The research project also explores the impacts of ecotourism on the local population that lives on the edge of the Sundarban Tiger Reserve (STR). STR is one of the important …

Why Are There Delays In Seeking Treatment For Childhood Diarrhoea In India?, Nisha Malhotra

Nisha Malhotra

Abstract Aim To examine the barriers and facilitating factors for seeking treatment for childhood diarrhoea and to determine the main causes for delay in seeking treatment.

Methods Data from Indian Demographic and Health survey 2005–06 (NFHS-III) was used. Mothers were asked if their children (<5-years) had suffered from diarrhoea during the two weeks preceding the survey. Data were collected on the time of seeking treatment after start of the illness, and days waited to seek treatment after the diarrhoea started. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was performed to find the determinants of seeking treatment at the health facility and the factors responsible for the “delay” in seeking advice/treatment.

Results Out of a sample of 41,287 children, 3890 (9.4%) reportedly had diarrhoea. Sixty percent of children with diarrhoea were taken to a health facility. Mother's education till higher secondary and above (OR 1.65; 95% CI, 1.08 – 2.54), richest (OR 1.76; 95% CI, 1.24 – 2.48) wealth index, mother's lack of knowledge of oral …

Contextualizing The Global Nursing Care Chain: International Migration And The Status Of Nursing In Kerala, India, Margaret Walton-Roberts

Geography and Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

In this article I explore the issue of nursing status in Kerala, India and how over time a colonial discourse of caste‐based pollution has given way to a discourse of sexual pollution under expanding migratory opportunities. Based on survey and qualitative research findings, I caution that the improving occupational status of nursing in India is not directly mapped onto social status, and this is particularly evident in the matrimonial market. In the light of these findings I argue that global nursing care chain (GNCC) analysis must assess more than just workplace contexts in order to conceptualize how global care chains …

Pollution Knowledge And Urban Water Politics In The Ganges River Basin (India), Sya Buryn Kedzior

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

Millions of people rely upon the Ganges River as a source of water provision and a site of disposal for sewage, solid waste, agricultural runoff and industrial effluent. The river is also a goddess in the Hindu pantheon who is worshipped for her purificatory powers, despite water quality levels that fall far short of standards for use in bathing, washing, and drinking. In recent years, a number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have formed to oppose both pollution of the river and the failure of state-run pollution abatement programs. They are joined by an increasingly frequent number of seemingly spontaneous protests …

Human–Wildlife Conflict And Gender In Protected Area Borderlands: A Case Study Of Costs, Perceptions, And Vulnerabilities From Uttarakhand (Uttaranchal), India, Monica V. Ogra

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

Human–wildlife conflict (HWC) is a growing problem for communities located at the borders of protected areas. Such conflicts commonly take place as crop-raiding events and as attack by wild animals, among other forms. This paper uses a feminist political ecology approach to examine these two problems in an agricultural village located at the border of Rajaji National Park in Uttarakhand (formerly Uttaranchal), India. Specifically, it investigates the following three questions: What are the “visible” and “hidden” costs of such conflict with wildlife? To what extent are these costs differentially borne by men and women? How do villagers perceive any such …

Negotiating Housing Recovery In Post-Earthquake Urban Kutch, India, Anuradha Mukherji

Anuradha Mukherji

The 2001 Kutch earthquake, in Gujarat state in western India, destroyed 230,000 houses and damaged another 1 million. In Bhuj and Bachhau, urban centers close to the epicenter of the earthquake, single-family houses, squatter settlements, and high-rise apartments were destroyed, and public and private housing reconstruction programs were introduced to help communities rebuild their houses. However, five years after the disaster, in spite of interventions by local and global, public and private entities, many communities in both towns continued to struggle towards housing recovery. This dissertation examines why some communities were able to rebuild and improve their overall housing conditions …

A Political Ecology Of The Chipko Movement, Sya Kedzior

University of Kentucky Master's Theses

The Indian Chipko movement is analyzed as a case study employing a geographically-informed political ecology approach. Political ecology as a framework for the study of environmental movements provides insight into the complex issues surrounding the structure of Indian society, with particular attention to its ecological and political dimensions. This framework, with its focus on social structure and ecology, is distinct from the more traditional approaches to the study of social movements, which tend to essentialize their purpose and membership, often by focusing on a single dimension of the movement and its context. Using Chipko as a case-study, the author demonstrates …