Search Results

 The “Kālī Practice”: Rereading Women's Roles in Tantra

Loriliai Biernacki

in Renowned Goddess of Desire: Women, Sex, and Speech in Tantra

This chapter addresses women's roles in Tantra, examining how and whether women function as actors within Tantric rites or to what degree they function merely as objects of male desire. This chapter ... More

This chapter addresses women's roles in Tantra, examining how and whether women function as actors within Tantric rites or to what degree they function merely as objects of male desire. This chapter argues that Tantric texts are varied, offering a multiplicity of views. Particularly, this chapter presents evidence from Tantric sources associated with the Northeast region of India in the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries for a particular Tantric tradition that accords women respect and in which we find women as gurus and initiates. This chapter proposes that the model for understanding the veneration of women in these texts finds a parallel in the veneration of the Brahmin, where women in these texts are by analogy likened to Brahmins.Less

Ministerial Responsibility

R. A. W. Rhodes, John Wanna, and Patrick Weller

in Comparing Westminster

This chapter examines how elite political actors are held to account. It examines collective responsibility, individual ministerial responsibility, and their personal accountability for actions not ... More

This chapter examines how elite political actors are held to account. It examines collective responsibility, individual ministerial responsibility, and their personal accountability for actions not directly related to their duties as ministers. Governments confronted the dilemmas posed by the arrival of ‘responsible party government’. The constitutional conventions creaked under the impact of party self-interest. The shared responses to improvise to meet whatever political exigencies confronted the government. So, notions of cabinet solidarity were relaxed to accommodate dissent, ministerial resignations became prime ministerial tactical calculations of political dispensability, and prime ministers found other ways to renew their ministries to ensure turnover. However, such improvization prompted outrage, and calls for a return to responsible government. So, governments sought refuge in new codes. Today, we still operate with ‘heroic’ notions of ministers, yet they are embedded in a web of accountabilities, constantly negotiating their way through overlapping and multiple demands.Less

Orange Alert

Haleh Liza Gafori

in Love and Forgiveness for a More Just World

A poem by Haleh Liza Gafori that criticizes the language of the so-called War on Teror.

The Popularisation of Shādhilī Sufism

Nathan Hofer

in The Popularisation of Sufism in Ayyubid and Mamluk Egypt, 1173-1325

In the previous two chapters I characterised the early Shādhilī collectivity as a textual community that traced its unique Sufi identity to the †arīqa of Abū l-Óasan al-Shādhilī. After the deaths of ... More

In the previous two chapters I characterised the early Shādhilī collectivity as a textual community that traced its unique Sufi identity to the †arīqa of Abū l-Óasan al-Shādhilī. After the deaths of al-Shādhilī and Abū l-ʿAbbās al-Mursī this †arīqa was disseminated in Egypt primarily through Ibn ʿA†āʾ Allāh al-Iskandarī’s discursive construction across several different texts, especially La†āʾif al-minan, and through his public preaching. It was the subsequent repetition and collective performance of that †arīqa that institutionalised the eponymous identity of al-Shādhilī and constituted the institutionalised social field from which the Shādhilī †āʾifa developed. In Chapter 3 I argued that it was largely the efforts of the state– the rulers and the Sufis of the khānqāh– which brought their form of Sufism to the urban populace of Cairo. It was principally in public spaces that they collectively produced and popularised a culture of Sufism accessible across multiple strata of society. Key to my understanding of the processes of popularisation is this notion of mass or large-scale cultural production, which is necessarily collective and happens at multiple social sites. Therefore, given the widespread popularity of the Shādhilī †arīqa and subsequent †āʾifa, we must ask a similar question.Less

The Reversibility of Reification: Adorno from the Aesthetic to the Social

Anita Chari

in A Political Economy of the Senses: Neoliberalism, Reification, Critique

This chapter turns to Theodor Adorno’s aesthetic theory of reification for a more embodied approach to critique. The chapter argues that Adorno's aesthetic theory, perhaps despite himself, provides ... More

This chapter turns to Theodor Adorno’s aesthetic theory of reification for a more embodied approach to critique. The chapter argues that Adorno's aesthetic theory, perhaps despite himself, provides one crucial strategy for dereified praxis, the notion of the “defetishizing fetish,” an artwork that acts a kind of Trojan Horse, a homeopathic assault upon forms of domination in neoliberal society.Less

1966 and All That: The Story of the Practice Statement 1

Louis Blom-Cooper

in The Judicial House of Lords 1876–2009:

This chapter focuses on the Practice Statement by the Lord Chancellor (Lord Gardiner) and the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary on July 26, 1996, before judgments were given in the House of Lords, which ... More

This chapter focuses on the Practice Statement by the Lord Chancellor (Lord Gardiner) and the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary on July 26, 1996, before judgments were given in the House of Lords, which dropped a pebble into the judicial pool that produced not merely a few ripples but also a seismic wave in English juridical thinking. It is argued that the experience of the Practice Statement in 1966 dispelled whatever was left of the myth that judges do not make law. At the same time it has had a profound effect on the psyche of appellate judges, such that the Court of Appeal might now be enticed to follow suit, at least in the Civil Division, where it has become effectively the final court of appeal in private law litigation. The sharpening of awareness of the creativity of the appellate task, and consequentially a more overt concern with the search for a more just rule, as well as the discarding of some forensic deadwood, cannot sensibly be confined to the judges in the final court of appeal. The phenomenon should extend to the intermediate appellate court.Less

Conclusion: Diabetes and Its Discontents

Mari Armstrong-Hough

in Biomedicalization and the Practice of Culture: Globalization and Type 2 Diabetes in the United States and Japan

This concluding chapter summarized the central argument of the book: Biomedicalization does not flatten out differences so much as it proliferates them. As the biomedical paradigm has become central ... More

This concluding chapter summarized the central argument of the book: Biomedicalization does not flatten out differences so much as it proliferates them. As the biomedical paradigm has become central to lay systems of meaning, the language and ideas of biomedicine are imbued with cultural meanings. In this way, medicine shapes and reorganizes cultural meanings. But the reverse also occurs: the cultural meanings that arise from lay systems shape the patient-provider encounters and narratives that lie at the heart of the practice of medicine. These meetings of lay and medical systems of meaning are sense-making events in which patients and providers “practice culture.” In the United States, biomedicalization and a capitalist ethic of productivity and individual responsibility become mutually reinforcing: the individual is continually reinscribed as the primary category of being and the object of medicine. In Japan, biomedicalization intertwines with discourses of nationhood, membership in a purportedly unique racial-cultural community, and gendered domestic labor. While biomedicalization does not flatten, its targets are reshaped in traceable ways by the cultural repertoires that inform it. As biomedicalization renders interactions between providers and patients more uncertain and more collaborative, the cultural resources that they bring to those encounters become more—not less—relevant.Less

Research governance

Paul Farquhar-Smith

in An Introduction to Clinical Governance and Patient Safety

This chapter discusses research governance, which aims to facilitate the conduct of high quality, ethical scientifically valid research, while protecting both subjects and investigators. Good ... More

This chapter discusses research governance, which aims to facilitate the conduct of high quality, ethical scientifically valid research, while protecting both subjects and investigators. Good research governance mandates meticulous record keeping and trial surveillance, and drives a quality research culture. The Research Governance Framework explicitly sets out national standards supported by legislation for research conducted within the NHS in the United Kingdom. This document defines the roles and responsibilities of all those involved in research, and the implementation of the framework using Good Clinical Practice (GCP) principles and standard operating procedures (SOPs). It also highlights the importance of meticulous documentation and monitoring (local and external) during any trial. These mechanisms ensure continual assessment of the quality of conduct of research and allow continuing trial development and improvement.Less

Code Consequences for UK Boards

Adrian Cadbury

in Corporate Governance and Chairmanship A Personal View

The report of the Committee on the Financial Aspects of Corporate Governance with its Code of Best Practice was published in December 1992. The report included recommendations to investors, ... More

The report of the Committee on the Financial Aspects of Corporate Governance with its Code of Best Practice was published in December 1992. The report included recommendations to investors, accountants, and auditors, but at its heart was the Code of Best Practice, which was directed to the boards of all listed companies registered in the UK. This chapter deals primarily with the consequences of the development of governance codes for the chairmen and boards of UK listed companies.Less

Felix Offensatio in Practice in Christianity

Jason A. Mahn

in Fortunate Fallibility: Kierkegaard and the Power of Sin

This chapter closely analyzes Practice in Christianity (by Kierkegaard's pseudonym Anti-Climacus) to show how Christ comprises good news to sinners only by incarnating the very possibility of ... More

This chapter closely analyzes Practice in Christianity (by Kierkegaard's pseudonym Anti-Climacus) to show how Christ comprises good news to sinners only by incarnating the very possibility of offense. After glimpsing the inherent goodness of human fragility (as traced in Chapter 2) and becoming increasingly capable of spirited sin (Chapter 3), it offers Kierkegaard's readers the Christian cure to the sin-sick soul in Practice in Christianity. Yet the chapter shows how this unbounded love of God through Christ introduces a more devastating possibility of sin—the possibility of taking offense. The chapter analyzes this negative, critical function of Practice but draws on the work of Emmanuel Levinas to argue that such negative witness is rooted in the excessiveness of Christ and redemption, similar in function to the earliest utterance of felix culpa.Less

Philosophical Tools

Stephen Backhouse

in Kierkegaard's Critique of Christian Nationalism

Kierkegaard frequently defined his project by virtue of opposition to the work of Martensen and Grundtvig, This chapter identifies the key ‘philosophical tools’ that underlie the Kierkegaardian ... More

Kierkegaard frequently defined his project by virtue of opposition to the work of Martensen and Grundtvig, This chapter identifies the key ‘philosophical tools’ that underlie the Kierkegaardian critique. Drawing chiefly from Philosophical Fragments, Concept of Anxiety and Practice in Christianity, the chapter analyses ‘the moment’ (Øieblikket) and ‘the leap’ that leads to ‘contemporaneity’ (Samtidigheden). Together these notions represent what Kierkegaard meant by authentic existence, and what he understands as true Christianity distinct from the habitual religion of Christendom. As a ‘moment’ or a ‘moment of vision’ Øieblikket refers to both a temporal/historical relation and also to an orientation and way of being. Likewise, Samtidigheden has clear temporal connotations, but is also the means by which humans relate to God in Christ. For Kierkegaard, Øieblikket and Samtidigheden together allow the individual to exist authentically, regardless of the historical or cultural context.Less