Major sports events,image projection and the problems of 'semi-periphery': A case study of the 1996 South Asia cricket World Cup

This paper explores the response of the international press to the co-hosting of the 1996 Cricket World Cup by India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The event had a troubled background: the shift of power within cricket towards the subcontinent and the consequential commercialisation of the sport were causing some dissension among traditionalists. At the same time there was some instability in South Asian politics, especially between India and Pakistan and because of the civil war in Sri Lanka. While these issues overshadowed the event, some aspects of its organisation were unsuccessful, leading to some negative press coverage. It is argued here, however, that the problems faced by South Asian countries in trying to use this sports event to promote a positive image were further exacerbated by underlying stereotypes and criticisms of South Asian cultures. As such, the paper addresses several important themes relating to major sports events and 'semi-peripheral' countries.     

Keywords revisited: The present as history

The Partition of India (1947) is commonly understood as a violent territorial and political separation of peoples, their forced evictions and migration as well as communal upheavals. But India's Partition can be seen as something more than separation of communities and the creation of distinct national identities. This paper suggests that refugee rehabilitation, one of the important processes of the post-Partition years, formed the rubric through which we remember 1947. Rehabilitation and resettlement of refugees formed the narrativizing principle of a number of novels that were written in the 1960s and 1970s in Bengal that deliberately looked at the fall-outs of the Partition other than communal tensions and migrations. Rehabilitation created a different experiential reality for a large number of refugees, and issues of home, settlement, livelihood, and work created a new body of literature that re-looked at Partition in important ways. In the course of this paper I examine some such novels in Bangla; one of which, Shaktipada Rajguru's Dandak Theke Marichjhapi (From Dandakaranya to Marichjhapi), is the story of a group of refugees’ journey to Dandakarnaya and then onto Marichjhapi in the Sunderbans that probes the circumstances behind one of Partition's most forgotten histories.     

“David Byrne really does love PowerPoint”: art as research on semiotics and semiotic technology

This article presents a reading of David Byrne's Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information, an art work created with MicroSoft's presentation software PowerPoint, as an instance of creative research on semiotics and semiotic technology. It reveals commonalities and differences between Byrne's ideas about PowerPoint and related ideas from linguistics and semiotics, and is intended as a contribution to research on PowerPoint, and on semiotic technologies generally, as well as to efforts aimed at developing criteria for evaluating art as research on semiotics.     

Outside Funding and the Dynamics of Participation in Community Associations

The poor and disadvantaged are widely seen as having weak organizations and low rates of participation in community associations, impeding their political representation and economic advancement. Many policy initiatives aim to build civic participation among the disadvantaged by funding local community associations. Taking advantage of random assignment in a program supporting women's community associations in Kenya, we find little evidence that outside funding expanded organizational strength, but substantial evidence that funding changed group membership and leadership, weakening the role of the disadvantaged. The program led younger, more educated, and better-off women to enter the groups. New entrants, men, and more educated women assumed leadership positions. The departure of older women, the most socially marginalized demographic group, increased substantially. The results are generalized through a formal model showing how democratic decision making by existing members of community associations can generate long-run outcomes in which the poor and disadvantaged either do not belong to any associations or belong to weak organizations.     

Even Lawyers Get the Blues: Gender, Depression, and Job Satisfaction in Legal Practice

It is an intriguing puzzle that women lawyers, despite less desirable working conditions and blocked career advancement, report similar satisfaction as men lawyers with their legal careers. The paradoxical work satisfaction reported by women and men lawyers obscures a more notable difference in their depressed or despondent feelings. Using a panel study of women and men lawyers practicing in Toronto since the mid-1980s, we find at least three causal pathways through which gender indirectly is connected to job dissatisfaction and feelings of despondency. The first path is through gender differences in occupational power, which lead to differential despondency. The second path is through differences in perceived powerlessness, which directly influence job dissatisfaction. The third path is through feelings of despondency that result from concerns about the career consequences of having children. The combined picture that results illustrates the necessity to include measures of depressed affect in studies of dissatisfaction with legal practice. Explicit measurement and modeling of concerns about the consequences of having children and depressed feelings reveal a highly gendered response of women to legal practice that is otherwise much less apparent. Women are more likely to respond to their professional grievances with internalized feelings of despondency than with externalized expressions of job dissatisfaction. That is, they are more likely to privatize than publicize their professional troubles.     

Building Trust: Social Capital, Distributive Justice, and Loyalty to the Firm

Trust is essential to successful business relations, particularly to the efficient operation of law firms. Trust fosters productive working relationships, favorable reputations, and a lucrative clientele. This paper contributes to research on law firm development through a consideration of social dynamics within law firms beyond traditional emphases on trading relationships and community solidarity. We introduce a social capital perspective on the evolution of trust and its consequences for commitment to the law firm. We argue that trust, specifically in the form of perceived distributive justice, is created and nurtured through social integration among law firm members. Yet, for women, who continue to be denied full access to these social networks and professional rewards, trust is undermined. Exclusion and emerging distrust prompt women to contemplate leaving their respective firms. This paper examines the bases of differential levels of trust and their impact on lawyers'intentions to leave practice.