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Breaking The Spell Of Dharma And Other Essays
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Book Synopsis Breaking the Spell of Dharma and Other Essays by : Meera Nanda
Download or read book Breaking the Spell of Dharma and Other Essays written by Meera Nanda and published by Spotlight Poets. This book was released on 2002 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this book connect religious fundamentalism with fascism and talk about the responsibility of intellectuals, argue for linking rationalism and science for the cause of social justice and provide a detailed critique of anti-rationalist and anti-secularist currents dominant in several academic and research circles in India. This little book is a timely reminder to all those who believe in the necessity of intellectual and moral intervention in the present affairs of society and culture. In Three Celebrated And Controversial Essays Meera Nanada Connects Religious Fundamentalism Wirh Fascism And Talks About The Responsibility Of Intellectuals. She Examines The Link Between The Hindutva And Reactionary Modernism, Argues For Linking Ratioalism And Science For The Cause Of Social Justice End Provides A Detailed Critique Of Anti -Rational And Anti- Secularist Currents Dominant In Several Academic And Research Circles In India.
Book Synopsis Breaking the Spell by : Daniel C. Dennett
Download or read book Breaking the Spell written by Daniel C. Dennett and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-02-02 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestseller – a “crystal-clear, constantly engaging” (Jared Diamond) exploration of the role that religious belief plays in our lives and our interactions For all the thousands of books that have been written about religion, few until this one have attempted to examine it scientifically: to ask why—and how—it has shaped so many lives so strongly. Is religion a product of blind evolutionary instinct or rational choice? Is it truly the best way to live a moral life? Ranging through biology, history, and psychology, Daniel C. Dennett charts religion’s evolution from “wild” folk belief to “domesticated” dogma. Not an antireligious screed but an unblinking look beneath the veil of orthodoxy, Breaking the Spell will be read and debated by believers and skeptics alike.
Book Synopsis Prophets Facing Backward by : Meera Nanda
Download or read book Prophets Facing Backward written by Meera Nanda and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The leading voices in science studies have argued that modern science reflects dominant social interests of Western society. Following this logic, postmodern scholars have urged postcolonial societies to develop their own "alternative sciences" as a step towards "mental decolonization". These ideas have found a warm welcome among Hindu nationalists who came to power in India in the early 1990s. In this passionate and highly original study, Indian-born author Meera Nanda reveals how these well-meaning but ultimately misguided ideas are enabling Hindu ideologues to propagate religious myths in the guise of science and secularism. At the heart of Hindu supremacist ideology, Nanda argues, lies a postmodernist assumption: that each society has its own norms of reasonableness, logic, rules of evidence, and conception of truth, and that there is no non-arbitrary, culture-independent way to choose among these alternatives. What is being celebrated as "difference" by postmodernists, however, has more often than not been the source of mental bondage and authoritarianism in non-Western cultures. The "Vedic sciences" currently endorsed in Indian schools, colleges, and the mass media promotes the same elements of orthodox Hinduism that have for centuries deprived the vast majority of Indian people of their full humanity. By denouncing science and secularization, the left was unwittingly contributing to what Nanda calls "reactionary modernism." In contrast, Nanda points to the Dalit, or untouchable, movement as a true example of an "alternative science" that has embraced reason and modern science to challenge traditional notions of hierarchy.
Download or read book The God Market written by Meera Nanda and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2011-10-01 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conventional wisdom says that integration into the global marketplace tends to weaken the power of traditional faith in developing countries. But, as Meera Nanda argues in this path-breaking book, this is hardly the case in today’s India. Against expectations of growing secularism, India has instead seen a remarkable intertwining of Hinduism and neoliberal ideology, spurred on by a growing capitalist class. It is this “State-Temple-Corporate Complex,” she claims, that now wields decisive political and economic power, and provides ideological cover for the dismantling of the Nehru-era state-dominated economy. According to this new logic, India’s rapid economic growth is attributable to a special “Hindu mind,” and it is what separates the nation’s Hindu population from Muslims and others deemed to be “anti-modern.” As a result, Hindu institutions are replacing public ones, and the Hindu “revival” itself has become big business, a major source of capital accumulation. Nanda explores the roots of this development and its possible future, as well as the struggle for secularism and socialism in the world’s second-most populous country.
Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of Buddhist Ethics by : Daniel Cozort
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Buddhist Ethics written by Daniel Cozort and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-20 with total page 736 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many forms of Buddhism, divergent in philosophy and style, emerged as Buddhism filtered out of India into other parts of Asia. Nonetheless, all of them embodied an ethical core that is remarkably consistent. Articulated by the historical Buddha in his first sermon, this moral core is founded on the concept of karma—that intentions and actions have future consequences for an individual—and is summarized as Right Speech, Right Action, and Right Livelihood, three of the elements of the Eightfold Path. Although they were later elaborated and interpreted in a multitude of ways, none of these core principles were ever abandoned. The Oxford Handbook of Buddhist Ethics provides a comprehensive overview of the field of Buddhist ethics in the twenty-first century. The Handbook discusses the foundations of Buddhist ethics focusing on karma and the precepts looking at abstinence from harming others, stealing, and intoxication. It considers ethics in the different Buddhist traditions and the similarities they share, and compares Buddhist ethics to Western ethics and the psychology of moral judgments. The volume also investigates Buddhism and society analysing economics, environmental ethics, and Just War ethics. The final section focuses on contemporary issues surrounding Buddhist ethics, including gender, sexuality, animal rights, and euthanasia. This groundbreaking collection offers an indispensable reference work for students and scholars of Buddhist ethics and comparative moral philosophy.
Book Synopsis After Orientalism by : François Pouillion
Download or read book After Orientalism written by François Pouillion and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2014-11-27 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The debate on Orientalism began some fifty years ago in the wake of decolonization. While initially considered a turning point, Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) was in fact part of a larger academic endeavor – the political critique of “colonial science” – that had already significantly impacted the humanities and social sciences. In a recent attempt to broaden the debate, the papers collected in this volume, offered at various seminars and an international symposium held in Paris in 2010-2011, critically examine whether Orientalism, as knowledge and as creative expression, was in fact fundamentally subservient to Western domination. By raising new issues, the papers shift the focus from the center to the peripheries, thus analyzing the impact on local societies of a major intellectual and institutional movement that necessarily changed not only their world, but the ways in which they represented their world. World history, which assumes a plurality of perspectives, leads us to observe that the Saidian critique applies to powers other than Western European ones — three case studies are considered here: the Ottoman, Russian (and Soviet), and Chinese empires. Other essays in this volume proceed to analyze how post-independence states have made use of the tremendous accumulation of knowledge and representations inherited from previous colonial regimes for the sake of national identity, as well as how scholars change and adapt what was once a hegemonic discourse for their own purposes. What emerges is a new landscape in which to situate research on non-Western cultures and societies, and a road-map leading readers beyond the restrictive dichotomy of a confrontation between West and East. With contributions by: Elisabeth Allès; Léon Buskens; Stéphane A. Dudoignon; Baudouin Dupret; Edhem Eldem; Olivier Herrenschmidt; Nicholas S. Hopkins; Robert Irwin; Mouldi Lahmar; Sylvette Larzul; Jean-Gabriel Leturcq; Jessica Marglin; Claire Nicholas; Emmanuelle Perrin; Alain de Pommereau; François Pouillon; Zakaria Rhani; Emmanuel Szurek; Jean-Claude Vatin; Mercedes Volait
Book Synopsis Reclaiming the Enlightenment by : Stephen Eric Bronner
Download or read book Reclaiming the Enlightenment written by Stephen Eric Bronner and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2004-10-06 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book tackles an obvious yet profound problem of modern political life: the disorientation of intellectuals and activists on the left. As the study of political history and theory has been usurped by cultural criticism, a confusion over the origins
Book Synopsis South Asian Transnationalisms by : Babli Sinha
Download or read book South Asian Transnationalisms written by Babli Sinha and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-02-25 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: South Asian Transnationalisms explores encounters in twentieth century South Asia beyond the conventional categories of center and periphery, colonizer and colonized. Considering the cultural and political exchanges between artists and intellectuals of South Asia with counterparts in the United States, continental Europe, the Caribbean, and East Asia, the contributors interrogate the relationships between identity and agency, language and space, race and empire, nation and ethnicity, and diaspora and nationality. This book deploys transnational syntaxes such as cinema, dance, and literature to reflect on social, technological, and political change. Conceiving of the transnational as neither liberatory nor necessarily hegemonic, the authors seek to explore the contradictions, opportunities, disjunctures, and exclusions of the vexed experience of globalization in South Asia. This book was published as a special issue of South Asian History and Culture.
Book Synopsis Political Theory and Political Thought by : N. D. Arora
Download or read book Political Theory and Political Thought written by N. D. Arora and published by Har-Anand Publications. This book was released on 2007 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Multiculturalism in the British Commonwealth by : Richard T. Ashcroft
Download or read book Multiculturalism in the British Commonwealth written by Richard T. Ashcroft and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2019-07-12 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At publication date, a free ebook version of this title will be available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Multiculturalism as a distinct form of liberal-democratic governance gained widespread acceptance after World War II, but in recent years this consensus has been fractured. Multiculturalism in the British Commonwealth examines cultural diversity across the postwar Commonwealth, situating modern multiculturalism in its national, international, and historical contexts. Bringing together practitioners from across the humanities and social sciences to explore the legal, political, and philosophical issues involved, these essays address common questions: What is postwar multiculturalism? Why did it come about? How have social actors responded to it? In addition to chapters on Australia, Britain, Canada, and New Zealand, this volume also covers India, Malaysia, Nigeria, Singapore, and Trinidad, tracing the historical roots of contemporary dilemmas back to the intertwined legacies of imperialism and liberalism. In so doing it demonstrates that multiculturalism has implications that stretch far beyond its current formulations in public and academic discourse.
Book Synopsis Science and Socio-Religious Revolution in India by : Pankaj Jain
Download or read book Science and Socio-Religious Revolution in India written by Pankaj Jain and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-12-19 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars have long noticed a discrepancy in the way non-Western and Western peoples conceptualize the scientific and religious worlds. Non-Western traditions and communities, such as of India, are better positioned to provide an alternative to the Western dualistic thinking of separating science and religion. The Himalayan Environmental Studies and Conservation Organization (HESCO) was founded by Dr. Anil Joshi in the 1970s as a new movement looking at the economic and development needs of rural villages in the Indian Himalayas, and encouraging them to use local resources in order to open up new avenues to self-reliance. This throughly-revised text argues that the concept of dharma, the law that supports the regulatory order of the universe in Indian culture, can be applied as an overarching term for HESCO’s socio-economic work. This book presents the social-environmental work in contemporary India by Dr. Anil Joshi in the Himalayas and by Baba Seechewal in Punjab, combining the ideas of traditional and scientific ecological knowledge systems. Based on these two examples, the book presents the holistic model transcending the dichotomies of nature vs. culture and science vs. religion, especially as practiced and utilized in the non-Western society such as India. Using the example of HESCO, the book highlights that the very categories of religion and science are problematic when applied to non-Western traditions, but that Western technologies can be radically transformed through integration with regional legacies to enable the flourishing of a multiplicity of knowledge-traditions and the societies that depend upon them. It will be of interest to students and scholars of South Asian Studies, Religion, Environmental Studies, Himalayan Studies, and Development Studies.
Book Synopsis Postcolonial Cultures by : Simon Featherstone
Download or read book Postcolonial Cultures written by Simon Featherstone and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2005 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An overview of postcolonial studies and current thought on literature, tourism, and popular culture
Book Synopsis Beacons of Dharma by : Christopher Patrick Miller
Download or read book Beacons of Dharma written by Christopher Patrick Miller and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-12-02 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today’s globalized society faces some of humanity’s most unprecedented social and environmental challenges. Presenting new and insightful approaches to a range of these challenges, the timely volume before you draws upon individual cases of exemplary leadership from the world’s Dharma traditions—Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism, and Buddhism. The volume's authors refer to such exemplary leaders as “beacons of Dharma,” highlighting the ways in which each figure, via their inspirational life work, provide us with illuminating perspectives as we continue to confront cases of grave injustice and needless suffering in the world. Taking on difficult contemporary issues such as climate change, racial and gender inequality, industrial agriculture and animal rights, fair access to healthcare and education, and other such pressing concerns, Beacons of Dharma offers a promising and much needed contribution to our global remedial discussions. Seeking to help solve and alleviate such social and environmental issues, each of the chapters in the volume invites contemplation, inspires action, and offers a freshly invigorating source of hope.
Book Synopsis Archaeological Fantasies by : Garrett G. Fagan
Download or read book Archaeological Fantasies written by Garrett G. Fagan and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Including case studies, this collection of engaging and stimulating essays written by a diverse group of scholars, scientists and writers examines the phenomenon of pseudoarchaeology from a variety of perspectives.
Book Synopsis Contradictions of Capitalist Society and Culture by : Raju J Das
Download or read book Contradictions of Capitalist Society and Culture written by Raju J Das and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-05-15 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Love and truth are important aspects of culture. Signifying the crisis of capitalist culture in the contemporary world are their opposites, i.e. hate and lying, respectively. There is rampant lying for ideological/political purposes. There is also an increasing absence of genuine love, i.e., love as caring and solidarity, which, under certain conditions, takes romantic forms. Ideological-political lying is connected to the corruption of love, with its confinement to the private sphere of individuals and consequent isolation from the wider unequal society. This connection is via capitalism. On the one hand, capitalism resorts to ideological-political lying to cover up its contradictions that cause alienation/suffering of the masses. Lying and alienation/suffering are not conducive to genuine love in society. On the other hand, a crisis-ridden capitalism produces the right-wing politics of lying (‘post-truth’ politics). This is also a politics of hatred (or, ‘post-love, or, anti-love’) against minorities, democrats and socialists, a politics that is justified by lies about these subjects. The fight against hate-politics and post-truth politics must be part of the fight for a post-capitalist world (socialist democracy), imagined as a truthful and caring world.
Book Synopsis Force, Movement, Intensity by : Ghassan Hage
Download or read book Force, Movement, Intensity written by Ghassan Hage and published by Melbourne Univ. Publishing. This book was released on 2011-01-06 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Of all the scientific works that have influenced the social sciences and humanities, none has matched the profound effect of the work of Isaac Newton. In his 1687 masterpiece Principia Mathematica he laid the foundation of classical mechanics in his discoveries of the laws of motion and the law of universal gravitation. He reoriented human understanding of the cosmos, thus boosting the confidence of human beings to access elements of what they saw as the divine logic behind the order of things and to have a sense of control over it. From the nineteenth century to the present day, Newton's science has inspired scholars of society in their attempts to discern the patterns of social life. For others, such a positivist project serves as a cautionary tale to be resisted by contemporary social sciences. This book considers the original and continuing legacy of Newtonian theories and imaginaries in the vast array of human attempts to understand the world. Drawing from a range of disciplines; including anthropology, sociology, the history of science, literary studies, cultural studies, social theory and economics; the essays in this volume engage with Newton as a thinker and examine his legacy. Some contributions illustrate the power of physical metaphors in understanding the social world; many others point to the limits of this endeavour. Still others show how since the eighteenth century Newtonian thought has influenced thinkers as diverse as Blake, Marx, Freud and Pierre Bourdieu. This innovative collection prompts a reconsideration of the importance of Newton for the social sciences and humanities.
Book Synopsis Cosmopolitan Political Thought by : Farah Godrej
Download or read book Cosmopolitan Political Thought written by Farah Godrej and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-08-01 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cosmopolitan Political Thought asks the question of what it might mean for the very practices of political theorizing to be cosmopolitan. It suggests that such a vision of political theory is intimately linked to methodological questions about what is commonly called comparative political theory--namely, the turn beyond ideas and modes of inquiry determined by traditional Western scholarship. It is therefore an argument for applying the idea of cosmopolitanism--understood in a particular way--to the discipline of political theory itself. As Farah Godrej argues, there are four crucial components of this cosmopolitan intervention: the texts under analysis, the methods for interpreting non-Western texts and ideas, the application of these ideas across geographical and cultural boundaries, and the deconstruction of Eurocentrism. In order to be genuinely cosmopolitan, Godrej states, political theorists must reflect on their perspectives inside and outside various traditions and immerse themselves in foreign ideas, languages, histories, and cultures--ultimately relocating themselves within their disciplinary homes. The result will be a serious challenge to accepted solutions to political life.
