The Cost of Empowerment: Multiple Sources of Women’s Debt in Rural India

Abstract

Poor women borrow from multiple sources. This study examines whether the source of debt matters for women’s role in household financial decisions. Drawing on a household survey from rural Tamil Nadu, we categorise women’s loans along the lines of accessibility and formality into ‘planned loans’ and ‘instant loans’. We find that ‘instant loans’ support women’s bargaining power in various types of household financial decisions, whereas ‘planned loans’ have no impact. This surprising result is better understood when the nature of ‘instant loans’ is examined – these are frequently usurious, involve coercive enforcement methods and are considered socially debasing. Hence women who use them perform a convenient role for their households and in return gain some negotiating power.     

Remarks on Compassion and Altruism in the Pratyabhijñā Philosophy

Journal of Indian Philosophy - According to Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta, a subject who has freed himself from the bondage of individuality is necessarily compassionate, and his action, necessarily...     

How Large-Scale Land Protests Succeed in China: the Role of Domestic Media

Land protests account for a large proportion of all protests in China, but existing scholarship on the topic does not explain the conditions under which large-scale land protests succeed or fail. Focusing on the role of domestic media in four of the largest land protests in China from 2012 to 2017, we argue that protests are more likely to succeed –i.e., to accomplish some or all publicly stated goals—when the domestic media side with villagers; conversely, if the domestic media adopt the government’s framing of the events or if they do not report on them, protests are less likely to accomplish their goals. This article makes two theoretical contributions to the literature on media and protests: first, we show that domestic media may function as catalysts or watchdogs in protest outcomes in authoritarian states; and second, we differentiate between short-term and long-term protest outcomes, highlighting how initial short-term concessions are often reversed or followed by repression some months or years later, after unrest dies down.

     

Migrant Network and Immigrants’ Occupational Mismatch

This article defines new measures of horizontal and vertical occupational mismatch based on the difference between the skill content of occupations in which individuals have a self-assessed productive advantage, and that of their actual job. It then investigates the impact of network use to find a job on occupational mismatch in the case of immigrants, using original survey data collected among Senegalese immigrants in four host countries. Estimation results show that migrants who obtained their job through the migrant network have a lower probability of negative vertical mismatch. By contrast, network use is not found to significantly affect horizontal mismatch.     

On the Distinction Between Epistemic and Metaphysical Buddhist Idealisms: A Śaiva Perspective

Modern scholarship has often wondered whether Indian Buddhist idealism is primarily epistemic or metaphysical: does this idealism amount to a kind of transcendental scepticism according to which we cannot decide whether objects exist or not outside of consciousness because we can have no epistemic access whatsoever to these objects? Or is it rather ontologically committed, i.e., does it consist in denying the very existence of the external world? One could deem the question anachronistic and suspect that with such an inquiry we project onto Ancient and Medieval India a distinction that remains profoundly alien to it, were it not for a few preserved texts where Indian authors themselves distinguish between two such kinds of idealism within the Buddhist philosophical tradition. As already pointed out by Dan Arnold, this is the case in the commentary by Manorathanandin on Dharmakīrti’s Pramā?avārttika; but the difference between two varieties of Buddhist idealism is also alluded to in Hindu sources, both Mīmā?saka and ?aiva. The present article offers a new analysis of Manorathanandin’s short and somewhat ambiguous distinction, and it examines in this connection some important remarks found in the works of the ?aiva nondualists Utpaladeva (c. 925–975) and Abhinavagupta (c. 975–1025). It shows that according to these authors, in fact the epistemic version of the Buddhist argument in favour of idealism is already metaphysical insofar as it necessarily involves a denial of the existence of the external world, and it attempts to assess the faithfulness of this ?aiva interpretation to its Buddhist sources.     

Reforming the Rules of the Parliamentary Game: Measuring and Explaining Changes in Parliamentary Rules in Austria,Germany, and Switzerland, 1945–2010

Questions of institutional change have recently received increased attention in comparative politics. Even though comparative legislative research has identified important effects of parliamentary rules on processes and outputs as well as large variation across countries, we know very little about changes in these rules. This article takes several steps towards mapping and explaining rule changes in European parliaments. Theoretically, it sketches a model explaining such changes based on the rational choice notion of institutions as endogenous equilibria. Methodologically, it proposes two complementary approaches to measure rule changes. In combination, these measures allow us to identify the content, relevance, and effects of changes in parliamentary rules. Empirically, the article provides the first systematic analysis of all changes in the parliamentary standing orders of Austria, Germany, and Switzerland since 1945. This analysis demonstrates that parliamentary rules are changed frequently and massively. It also identifies differences across countries and content areas that are largely in line with theoretical expectations.     

LIFE BEYOND LIFE – An Easy Way to Derive Lung Fibroblasts from Cadavers

Several protocols have illustrated the possibility of deriving cells, such as fibroblasts, from different organs. These techniques generally concern organs sampled from living persons, but have already been described for cadavers, especially concerning the skin and tendons. We present, for the first time, an easy way to derive pulmonary fibroblasts from a lung tissue sampled from a cadaver and directly culture plated. The fibroblast output was checked daily. We obtained lung fibroblasts from 3 (60%) cadavers and 2 (100%) living persons. The fibroblast output took about 3 days for cells from living persons and took up to 39 days for those from cadavers. We did not clearly identify any parameters that could explain these differences. Nevertheless, these derived cells had the same features as the source cells, especially in terms of morphology and proliferation, and could potentially be used in different research domains such as forensic or regeneration medicine.     

Resolving differing expert opinions

This paper explores procedural mechanisms to resolve differing conclusions when two experts have initially worked independently. These experts can be two human examiners or one of them may be a computer-based model. The resolving process is presented as part of the ACE-V protocol adopted widely in pattern recognition areas (e.g. fingerprints, footwear marks, toolmarks or handwritings/signatures comparisons). It set the conditions of operations and delineates a resolving process that is based on the principles of transparency and detailed argumentations. We predict a gradual but steady introduction of computer-based models in the forensic pattern recognition areas. In our opinion, the rules to resolve differing opinions ought to be articulated and documented in the form of standard operating procedures, before any deployment in casework practice.