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Lost-wax casting: the first Buddhist and Hindu images
No full textLes bronzes bouddhiques et hindous les plus anciens d’Asie du Sud-Est remontent au début du viie, voire à la fin du vie siècle de notre ère. Ils sont fondus selon le procédé de la cire perdue et leur hauteur varie de 10 centimètres à plus de 2 mètres. Les seuls bronzes apparentés à la culture khmère se concentrent autour de plusieurs sites aujourd’hui localisés au Cambodge, dans le sud du Vietnam et dans le nord-est de la Thaïlande
The Arrangement of Sūras in the Qurʾān: Continuity and Progression in Language and Themes
Get PDFStudies on the textual coherence of the Qurʾān have focused significantly on the internal structure and connectivity of individual sūra units. At the macro-level, the non-chronological nature of the muṣḥaf sūra sequence has often been viewed by Western readers as a primary obstacle to understanding the Qurʾān. This thesis argues that the arrangement of sūras, as a literary component of the Qurʾānic text, plays a functional role in the construction and communication of its meanings. The study consists of a close reading of four sample sequences of sūras across the Qurʾān, analysing the intratextual connections in language and themes between the sūras, with a specific focus on elements of continuity and progression. The aim is to synthesise a typology of connections and patterns within the sūra sequence that give insight into the workings of the Qurʾān’s macro-structure and how this contributes to the wider construction of meaning in the Qurʾān. The analysis draws on Muslim and Western scholarship on Qurʾānic coherence, with a particular focus on the theory of thematic-structural coherence at the intra-sūra and inter-sūra level as developed by the Indian scholar ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd al-Farāhī (1863-1930). This study challenges the dominant view of the sūra sequence in Western scholarship as simply the product of a redactional process that carries little pragmatic value. It also calls into question traditional approaches that, whilst exalting the text’s miraculous composition, divorce its content from its form through rigid alignments with the extra-scriptural tradition and Meccan/Medinan categorisations. Thus, this study offers an alternative reading of the Qurʾān as we have it today, paying due attention to its literary form
Finding Out Faster: Pre-Survey Scoping for a Study of Deprivation in Majakaneng, North West Province, South Africa
Get PDFWe discuss scoping research carried out over a short period of time in Majakaneng in Bojanala District in the platinum belt in South Africa. The research aims to gather and analyse evidence on the effects of investments in high-value agricultural exports, in this specific case the production of blueberries, on the well-being of poor women. High-value agricultural exports have been identified as offering a particularly promising path to structural transformation, yet there remain fears that capital-intensive agricultural export businesses in low- and middle-income countries may have very few ‘inclusive’ development benefits. We argue that exploratory scoping research, or ‘finding out fast’, can make a major contribution to the effective design of research projects through, for example, improving sampling strategies and refining the selection of relevant consumer goods for survey questionnaires. We show how the scoping exercise could strengthen the larger research project if, for example in the selection and training of enumerators, closer attention can be paid to overcoming the difficulty of translating the informal terms used by different respondents to refer to similar but not identical consumer durables
Constraint-based methodological innovations: Tales of doctoral and early career researchers in a pandemic-ridden world
No full textThis special issue aims to share the lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic with the broader research community. The pandemic exposed deep societal inequalities, particularly affecting junior researchers. Through 12 articles from doctoral and early career researchers in their own words, the collection highlights the paradox of constraints driving innovation. The special issue underscores the importance of flexibility, ethical sensitivity and the critical questioning of established practices in research. Ultimately, it demonstrates that constraints can catalyse new possibilities and that mutual support is essential in navigating turbulent times
Antagonism and Shared Survival of Fish and Fishermen in the Lofoten Islands
Get PDFThis paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork and collected oral histories in 2019 in the Lofoten islands, as well as on archival research. I investigate the complex creation of kinship networks between humans and skrei in the Lofoten islands. I argue that the constant struggle to survive for both fish and fishermen embedded in larger capitalist ecologies of exploitation creates a symbolic shared substance between fish and fishermen, which, despite the often-unequal antagonistic nature of their relationships, allows us to rethink of definitions of kinship between humans and nonhuman others
Review of: Deliberate calm: how to learn and lead in a volatile world
No full textby Jacqueline Brassey, Aaraon De Smet and Michiel Kruyt, New York, Harper Collins/McKinsey and Company Inc., 2022, xviii + 318 pp., RRP £17.00 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-06-330765-
Coordination Rights, Competition Law and Varieties of Capitalism
Get PDFCompetition law is a constitutive institution in capitalist markets, establishing the rules for when interfirm coordination is allowed and where competition is required (Paul, 2020). Yet comparativists have spent decades debating the varieties of capitalism framework—which places the issue of coordination at the center of the distinction between capitalist types—while paying virtually no attention to cross-national variation in antitrust rules. This article develops an original theoretical framework to conceptualize the relationship between competition law and the organization of capitalism. We go beyond the usual binaries (coordinated vs. liberal market economies, “restrictive” vs. “permissive” antitrust regimes) to disentangle two dimensions of the law that fundamentally shape patterns of coordination and competition both across regulatory jurisdictions and over time. Applying our framework to analyze the evolution of American and European competition law, we show how a comparative coordination rights framework can be used to conceptualize key institutional changes within contemporary capitalist systems
Review of: 'Community Economies in the Global South: Case Studies of Rotating Savings and Credit Associations and Economic Cooperation', by Caroline Shenaz Hossein and P. J. Christabell, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022, 288 pp., £81 (hardcover), £81 (ebook), ISBN: 9780198865629 (hardcover), ISBN: 9780192635068 (ebook)
No full textUltra‐Processed Food, Depletion, and Social Reproduction: A Conceptual Intervention
Get PDFWhat we eat and how we think about food and nutrition are undergoing a momentous change, driven by the rise of ultra‐processed food. There is a growing body of evidence linking the consumption of ultra‐processed food to poor health outcomes. However, the health depleting effects of ultra‐processed food go beyond changes in discrete indicators of nutrition and health. Processes of depletion entail social, economic, and political relations. This paper aims to emphasise the importance of a social science research agenda on ultra‐processed food by establishing the conceptual connections between ultra‐processed food and depletion using a social reproduction approach. To do this, it draws on the notion of depletion through social reproduction elaborated by Shirin Rai, Catherine Hoskyns and Dania Thomas, which provided inspiration to unpack the totality of social reproduction and consider specific resources needed for social reproduction. Such an approach reveals that ultra‐processed food is both an input for social reproduction, through consumption, and a form of social reproduction work, when food work and the associated (health) care work are considered. On this basis, the paper identifies four conceptual dimensions to explore whether and to what extent the expansion of ultra‐processed food can cause depletion and the key methodological principles to use this conceptual approach in empirical research
The Neurology of Culture
Get PDFThe lack of anatomical evolution contrasted with an evident behavioral change in humans during their natural history, from about 200,000 to 700,000 years ago, constitutes something of a puzzle. What explains the behavioral change, a change which is commonly understood as cultural? Against the surprisingly widespread but tautological response that the change was driven by culture – which amounts to the unsatisfying argument that culture drives culture, all the way down, or back – this paper presents a theory developed by Andrey Vyshedskiy, whose work on autism and language therapies has led him to an account of the neurobiological basis of voluntary imagination, which here I redescribe as an account of the evolution of the neurology of culture
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