This book critically examines dominant ceremonial practices in Sri Lanka. It presents key ideas and symbolic systems that exist to this day, in similar shapes or in different guises. It looks at issues such as misfortunes caused by demons (yaksa dosa), an important ceremonial practice known as the puna-yagaya, ideas pertaining to spirit possession, trance, and mediums. It also deals with classical Ayurvedic theories of disease, urban ceremonial practices such as cases of the apotheoses from demon to divinity, as well as multiple forms of Buddhist ceremonial practices that are part of the Sri Lankan consciousness and have found their way into public cultural performances in Sri Lanka. As a comprehensive volume on ceremonial practices in Sri Lanka, this work will be useful for scholars and researchers in cultural studies, sociology, social-anthropology, and particularly those interested in myths and rituals in South Asia.

In a major challenge to African philosophy, this book demonstrates the importance of the universalisation question for every committed African philosopher. Rooted in Africa's colonial legacy, the universalisation question challenges the African thinker to show how authentically African philosophical concepts and phenomena can be universally applicable in a globalising world. In this highly original book, the author inserts the philosophy of consolationism into African philosophical discourse, constructing a unique philosophical system that is at once African and universally relevant. The book engages major African and Western philosophers of diverse ideological leanings in a compelling dialogue that announces the future of world philosophy as one of interculturality, in which a common philosophical horizon is forged out of the cultural diversities of the world for the edification of humanity in a continually changing world. This book will be an important read for researchers in the fields of African Studies, intercultural philosophy, philosophy of mind, and existentialism.

The year 2020 went down in economic history due to the dramatic and drastic changes in economic and social conditions that resulted from the outbreak of the global pandemic of COVID-19. This book offers a multi-level narrative about the pandemic, written from national and international perspectives, enabling the authors to construct several macro- and mega-scenarios. The book consists of six chapters. Four of them discuss the process of the COVID-19 pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus in Europe in 2020, i.e. the directions and dynamics of the spread and its socioeconomic consequences, and provide a comparative analysis of fiscal and monetary packages employed by Europe, with an emphasis on Eastern European countries. The remaining two chapters contain forecasts and scenarios. The fifth chapter, dedicated to forecasts, provides readers with a comprehensive description of possible consequences of any epidemic leading to severe social losses such as high percentages of infected and dead, limited interpersonal contacts as a result of lockdown, a lowered level of general individual and social well-being, as well as economic losses, for example a decline in production as a result of the collapse of aggregate demand and a reduction in the supply capacity of the economy, consequently slowing down the pace of capital accumulation. The sixth, final chapter describes possible scenarios of the spread of the pandemic in Poland and Ukraine, depending on measures taken by the governments of those countries. The Socioeconomic Impact of COVID-19 on Eastern European Countries is designed as a practical reference for scholars, researchers and policymakers. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

The book covers Indian agricultural development from the colonial to the present period. It examines how ruling class political ideology determined the agricultural policies from colonial rule. It considers both quantitative and qualitative aspects in all periods: colonial period to pre-green revolution phase, post-green revolution phase (early and late stages) and post-globalisation phase after 1991. India has achieved the ability to maintain food security, through enough food grain buffer stocks to meet the enormous public distribution system. But, with India's entry into WTO in 1994, euphoria has been created among all types of farmers to adopt commercial crops like cotton cost-intensive inputs. Even food grain crops are grown through use of costly irrigation and chemicalised inputs. But they lacked remunerative prices, and so farmers began to commit suicides, which crossed 3.5 lakh. Government of India attributed this agrarian crisis to the technology fatigue and gave scope for second green revolution (GR-II). GR-I was achieved by public sector enterprise, whereas the GR-II as gene revolution is a result of private sector enterprise/MNCs. There is fear that opening up of the sector may lead to handover of the family farms to big agri-multinationals. GOI's proposal to double farmers' income by 2022 is feasible only when the problems, being faced by small, marginal and tenant farmers, are addressed in agricultural marketing, credit and extension services. Now, it is time to go for suitable forms of cooperative/collective agriculture, as 85 percent of total cultivators are the small and marginal farmers. This book is co-published with Aakar Books, New Delhi. Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the print versions of this book in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Bengalis in Burma looks at Bengali migrations and settlements in Burma from 1886 until the end of the British rule in Burma in 1948. As a result of British colonial policies, thousands of Bengalis from various classes and places in Bengal migrated to Burma and established Bengali communities in different parts of the country. The book provides a study of a vast body of Bangla writings on Burma written during this period by the Bengalis, a majority of whom went to Burma in various capacities and with various objectives. It takes note of a complex network of power, subjugation, and resistance which is integrally related to these acts of representation in Bangla textual discourses. Drawing on stories, political discussions in Bangla journals, unknown autobiographies, travelogues, and uncelebrated poems, it explores the ways contemporary Bengalis looked at Burma for various reasons and wondered about their locations within colonial systems. An important contribution to the study of South Asia, the book brings forth issues of representation, colonial knowledge system, and modernity. It will be of interest to students and researchers of history, literature, migration studies, colonialism, and South Asian studies.

1) This volume presents a conceptual understanding of inequality in the Indian context. 2) It is rich in empirical data from rural India. 3) The book will be of interest to departments of political economy, development studies, economics, development economics, sociology, public policy, political science, political sociology, rural sociology, and regional studies, across the world.

1) This book presents the women's perspective of displacement through literature, culture and societal experiences in South Asia. 2) It attempts to fill the gap in the existing literature on women & displacement and, women & rehabilitation. 3) This book will be of interest to departments of South Asian studies and cultural studies across UK and USA.

This timely book argues that the Global North's research methods and traditional assumptions are not valid to the media landscapes and audiences of the Global South. With South Africa as the focus, the authors offer a new understanding of media diversity along an audience-centred approach. Disappointingly, research shows that most South African citizens (most of whom are economically marginalised) are found to experience extremely low levels of media content diversity in their personal media diets. The contributing factors are inter-related and complex, but include the inequitable distribution of media content, a lack of African language media, and most especially, the cost of media access which is unaffordable to many. In this book, the authors examine what went wrong with post-apartheid attempts to democratise the media landscape, and why the experienced levels of media diversity by the majority South African audience remain so woefully low. While media diversity is usually measured by policymakers, sector stakeholders or by market-related imperatives, this book foregrounds the perspective of the media consumer. In doing so, traditional media measuring is inverted - leading to a more in-depth understanding of how ordinary people in the Global South receive media content, how much, and why. The authors offer a holistic analysis of the ineffectuality of key media policymaking processes, projects and institutions - while also suggesting how these could be transformed to create a more diverse and broadly accessible media landscape.

This book analyzes the practice of local-level participatory planning and budgeting and its impact on gender responsive budgeting (GRB) in Bangladesh. The book offers a conceptual framework that brings into focus the contribution of successful participatory budgeting practice to ensure GRB - the examination of whether men and women fall under existing income and expenditure patterns differently. It suggests that the ideas of participatory budgeting and GRB should be evolving together to provide a concrete idea to address gender needs. The book provides a theoretical explanation that contributes to the consolidation of the practice of GRB at the local government level through participatory budgeting. Conceptualizing the process of participatory budgeting and GRB in the context of Bangladesh, the book will be of interest to researchers in the field of Development Studies, Political Science, Public Administration, and Gender, as well as Asian Studies, in particular, South Asian Studies.

This book explores Nigeria's progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, presenting key country-specific lessons, as well as providing innovative solutions and practices which are transferrable to other emerging economies. Despite all of Nigeria's potential, and substantial oil revenues, poverty remains widespread and the country faces many challenges. The contributors to this book provide comparative historical and contemporary analysis of the main challenges for achieving progress in the SDGs, and make recommendations for the most effectives ways of developing, adopting, disseminating and scaling them. Starting with the conceptualisation and evolution of the SDGs, the book goes on to consider the goal on ending poverty, and the urgent need to combat climate change and its impacts. The book also reflects on the role of business and taxation, and the cultural and societal dimensions of the SDGs, including education, gender, and the role of the church. Overall, the book focuses on knowledge/implementation gaps and the role of collaborative partnerships and disruptive technologies in implementing the framework in general. This book will be of interest to scholars, policy makers and practitioners of sustainable development and African studies, as well as those with a particular interest in Nigeria.

This book, - presents a comprehensive overview of the contemporary experiences of democracy in India. It explores the modes by which democracy as an idea, and as a practice, is interpreted, enforced, and lived in India's current political climate. - employs 'case studies' as a methodological vantage point to evolve an innovative conceptual framework for the study of democracy in India. - is a key critical intervention on contemporary politics in South Asia, and will be essential reading for scholars and researchers of political studies, political science, political sociology, comparative government and politics, sociology, social anthropology, public administration, public policy, and South Asia studies.

1. This is a comprehensive book dealing with cultural history of Ayurveda Medicine. 2. The book has rich archival material and extensive primary data from the field. 3. With popularity of alternative medicine, Yoga and emergence of indigenous studies, this book will have a good market in both UK and USA.

1) This book brings together the unique work of a major contemporary thinker, S.N. Balagangadhara. 2) It looks at his work on ethics, learning, religion, and happiness. 3) This book will be a major resource for departments of philosophy, philosophy of science, ethics, religious studies, postcolonial studies, sociology and social anthropology, cultural studies, literature, comparative studies and Global South studies.

Launches and develops the concept of cultural statecraft that has advantages compared to alternative terms, such as cultural diplomacy and soft power. Russia's cultural statecraft has received growing attention in the Western world, but there is no comprehensive analysis of the interlinkages between politics and culture across a variety of fields.

This book investigates women as business owners in emerging markets, documenting the structural difficulties they face as a result of their seeking access to global supply chains, and demonstrating the ways in which they are rewriting norms and challenging market assumptions. Although women own an estimated one-third of all small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in emerging markets, they are deeply underrepresented in global supply chains. In what the author refers to as the Women in Trade Deficit, women-owned enterprises earn less than 1% of all money spent on vendors by large corporations and governments worldwide. Drawing on an in-depth empirical investigation of a range of SMEs in Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Sri Lanka, this book investigates how women enter the supply chains of major global firms and multinational corporations and the challenges they face in doing so. Overall, the book argues that these business owners are rewriting norms and rearranging markets through networked enterprises to advance what the author calls prosocial industrialism. Whilst many studies focus on women at the micro-enterprise or laborer level, this book makes an important contribution to our understanding of their role at the helm of SMEs that trade internationally. As such, it will be of interest to researchers across business studies, economics, sociology, and development studies, and to donor agencies, policymakers, and the global private sector.

War, famine, poverty, organized crime, environmental catastrophes, refugees, epidemics and pandemics, modern slavery - all these affect people in the non-Western world to an increasingly disproportionate extent. It is also where wealthy governments wield economic leverage and military force to renegotiate existing norms of international relations. Under these circumstances, it is difficult to overestimate the importance and urgency of comprehending the mechanisms and motivations driving these phenomena. This book is the outcome of a decade-long effort to advance both theoretical and empirical understanding of what motivates non-Western governments' decisions to cooperate/not cooperate regionally. It starts by acknowledging the Western-centrism of prevailing international relations theories, abandoning deeply entrenched assumptions regarding the nature and roles of states, and redefining state weakness. The inquiry continues by elaborating this new concept and applying it to Southeast Asian polities while positing that it creates governments vulnerable to internal and external threats, in line with Joel S. Migdal's well-known findings on the topic. A set of regional cooperation strategies is then inferred, based on the survival needs of insecure governing elites and its empirical validity is tested against the experience of regional organizations in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The second part of the book provides an in-depth examination of how Southeast Asian governments' shared security needs and interests shaped the emergence of the identified regional cooperation pattern and its evolution over 50 years of cooperation within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Overall, this book is a call to international relations scholars to do our part in understanding non-Western experiences and making a substantive contribution to addressing humanity's most intractable security threats.

The book unravels the dynamics of capitalist development, critically assesses the socialist experiment in charting out a course of development different from capitalism, explains the contradictions in the post-Independence development process in India, evaluates other efforts outside the state towards ushering in 'development', and then proposes an alternative path to progress - an employment based ecologically sustainable model of decentralized development based on local resource endowment and heightened mass consciousness which will take the country out of the dependency paradigm. This book is co-published with Aakar Books, New Delhi. Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the print versions of this book in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

The idea of 'New India' has acquired a new currency. The dominant grammar of politics dilutes the critical impulse and deters the expression of alternate politics. The interpretive possibilities have been replaced by a reactive exchange. Technology is presented as a panacea, rather than just a facilitator. Legitimacy and normative dignity for these ideas is acquired by redefining the role of the institutions and also through constitutional amendments. A major intellectual effort is required to reformulate public policy, governance systems and social relations to balance the opposite claims of market efficiency and economic growth with social equity and justice. This book is co-published with Aakar Books, New Delhi. Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the print versions of this book in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

While examining the intersections and engagements between sociology and management education in historical and contemporary terms, this slim volume outlines the agenda of a promising prospective engagement between the two. It specifically foregrounds the Indian experience without being indifferent to the global context that has shaped the unprecedented rise of business schools. Employing a perspective from the Global South, it contextualises the dominance of the US model of management curriculum and disciplinary practices in relation to wider geopolitics of knowledge production. Parenthetically, it presents a critical assessment of Indian scholarly contributions to the field of management studies. This book should be of interest to management educators, administrators, and sociologists besides the students and researchers in the broad area of organisation studies.

This book investigates how culture reflects change in Zimbabwe, focusing predominantly on Mnangagwa's 2017 coup, but also uncovering deeper roots for how renewal and transition are conceived in the country. Since Emmerson Mnangagwa ousted Robert Mugabe in 2017, he has been keen to defi ne his "Second Republic" or "New Dispensation" with a rhetoric of change and a rejection of past political and economic cultures. This multi and inter- disciplinary volume looks to the (social) media, language/ discourse, theatre, images, political speeches and literary fiction and non- fiction to see how they have reflected on this time of unprecedented upheaval. The book argues that themes of self- renewal stretch right back to the formative years of the ZANU PF, and that despite the longevity of Mugabe's tenure, the latest transition can be seen as part of a complex and protracted layering of postcolonial social, economic and political changes. Providing an innovative investigation of how political change in Zimbabwe is reflected on in cultural texts and products, this book will be of interest to researchers across African history, literature, politics, culture and post- colonial studies.

This book is a detailed analysis of the food scarcity and epidemics among the womenfolk and other vulnerable sections of society in colonial Orissa. Its major significance lies in the fact that the food crisis, mass exodus and adverse sex ratio continue to raise questions in the contemporary world. Studies of such experiences help in re-designing strategies to meet the challenges arising from natural disasters, wars, pandemics, besides poverty and uncertain production outcomes. The study of Orissa Famine of 1866 explodes the myth upheld by the colonial administrators that women died at a lower rate than men in famines, because they could easily adapt to food scarcity and were supposedly less prone to infectious diseases. Evidence based on historical, sociological and biological factors showed that increasing male migration, much of it, leading to high mortality, explains the change in sex ratio during the colonial period. This work also shows that many of today's consumption preferences, linguistic usages and cultural habits of people, carry traces of cataclysmic experiences. This book also highlights the fact that most famines are the result of policy failures and, are often rooted in structural inequalities with serious consequences for women, lower castes and the poor alike. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Africans living in the diaspora have a unique position as potential agents of change in helping to address Africa's political and socioeconomic challenges. In addition to sending financial remittances, their multiple, hybrid identities in and out of geographical and psychocultural spaces allow them to play a role as cultural and political ambassadors to foster social change and sustainable development back in their African homelands. However, this hybrid position is not without challenges, and this book reflects some of the conundrums faced by members of the diaspora as they negotiate their relationships with their home countries. The author uses her lived experiences and empirical research to ask: are members of the diaspora conduits of Western cultural hegemony at the cost of their traditional preservation and meaningful development in Africa? How does the Western media's portrayal of Africa as the "Dark Continent" in the 21st century influence their decision-making process to invest back home? How could African nations' governments manage their relationships with citizens abroad to motivate them to invest in their home countries? How do some citizen-residents in Africa and African Diaspora communities perceive each other in the context of Africa's development? How could the African Diaspora collaborate with citizen-residents across growth sectors to impact Africa's development? The book hopes to inspire agents of change within the diaspora and features diverse African entrepreneurs' success stories and their experiences of tackling these challenges. The book will be of interest to aspiring entrepreneurs, researchers across African studies, and the expanding and vibrant field of diaspora research.

This book explores the emergence and assertion of Africa as a significant actor and stakeholder in global affairs and the transformation of the India-Africa relationship. Beginning from this strategic perspective, the book presents an in-depth exploration of India-Africa partnership in all its critical dimensions. It delineates the historical backdrop and shared colonial past to focus on and contextualise the evolution of the India-Africa engagement in the first two decades of the 21st century. The book scrutinises the unfolding international competition in Africa in depth, which includes global actors such as the EU, US, and Japan, among others, focusing especially on China's growing influence in the region. Further, it dissects objectively the continental, regional and bilateral facets of India-Africa relations and offers a roadmap to strengthen and deepen the relationship in the coming decade. This volume will be very useful for students and researchers working in the field of international relations, foreign policy, governance, geopolitics, and diplomacy.

This book presents the first systematic critical exploration of the philosophical and political thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi and Sri Aurobindo, both pioneers of modern Indian thought. Bringing together experts from across the world, the volume examines the thoughts, ideas, actions, lives and experiments of Mahatma Gandhi and Sri Aurobindo on themes such as radical politics and human agency; ideals of human unity; social practices and citizenship; horizons of sustainable development and climate change; inclusive freedom; conceptions of swaraj; interpretations of texts; Sri Aurobindo's views on Indian culture; integral yoga; transformative leadership; Anthropocene and alternative planetary futures. The book discusses the contemporary legacies and works of the two influential thinkers. It offers insights into historical, philosophical, theoretical, literary and sociological questions that establish the need for transdisciplinary dialogues and the relevance of their visions towards future evolution. This book will be useful to scholars and researchers of political science, Indian political thought, comparative politics, philosophy, Indian philosophy, sociology, anthropology, modern Indian history, peace studies, cultural studies, religious studies and South Asian studies.

Poland in a Colonial World Order is a study of the interwar Polish state and empire building project in a changing world of empires, nation-states, dominions, protectorates, mandates, and colonies. Drawing from a wide range of sources spanning two continents and five countries, Piotr Puchalski examines how Polish elites looked to expansion in South America and Africa as a solution to both real problems, such as industrial backwardness, and perceived issues, such as the supposed overrepresentation of Jews in "liberal professions." He charts how, in partnership with other European powers and international institutions such as the League of Nations, Polish leaders made attempts to channel emigration to South America, to establish direct trade with Africa, to expedite national minorities to far-away places, and to tap into colonial resources around the globe. Puchalski demonstrates the intersection between such national policies and larger processes taking place at the time, including the internationalist turn of colonialism and the global fascination with technocratic solutions. Carefully researched, the volume is key reading for scholars and advanced students of twentieth-century European history.