‘a miserable sham’: Flora Annie Steel's short fictions and the question of Indian women's reform

The article examines a few short stories of Flora Annie Steel, a Scottish memsahib who spent a number of decades in the late nineteenth century in India with her husband, a British colonial official. Steel's short stories are interesting because they were produced at a time when most Anglo-Indian fictions (especially those authored by memsahibs) focused exclusively on station romances, and they explore with some seriousness and sense of complexity, issues related to the impact of Imperial reformatory intervention in the lives of Indian women. Her female contemporaries wrote fictions that more often than not completely ignored the existence of Indians, and even famous male writers like Kipling stereotypically reduced Indian women either to sexually licentious or completely passive, voiceless entities. Steel, in her stories, examines questions of gender, sexuality and reform in the context of Indian women's lives in ways that often seem to go beyond such racial stereotypes. The stories have been examined within the context of the different political and social formations of the specific regions – Punjab or Bengal – in which they are based, since women's reform had very different trajectories in these regions. The remarkableness of Steel's stories, however, lies in their attempting to look at the reform question from the Indian women's perspectives. What cannot be ignored are the ways in which these stories attempt to go beyond the prevalent Anglo-Indian modes of stereotyping or completely erasing Indian women and register their voices in examining questions related to their reform. This is not to say that racial and Imperial hierarchies are entirely abandoned in her writings. In fact the omniscient narrator in these fictions often narrates in ways that sustain and strengthen such hierarchies. However, there are moments when the diegetic narrative mode gives way to an ironically nuanced narrative voice and to ambivalences that seem to gesture at complex questioning of the bases of Imperial authority and its ostensibly benevolent intervention in the lives of Indian women. It is these moments that make the stories worth exploring.     

The "Ball of Confusion" in Federal Budgeting: A Shadow Agenda for Deliberative Reform of the Budget Process

The budget process is seriously flawed, as Irene Rubin suggests, but there is little prospect for its effective reform. Current economic and political conditions could open the window for reform, but the excessive partisanship that helped create these conditions also has reduced the pool of institutionalists who could lead reforms. More important is confusion about which reforms might be most effective. Most proposed reforms would create more rules, but they will not work unless politicians commit to meeting the goals such rules are intended to support. Those commitments could be produced by deliberation over critical issues that have been neglected in recent discussions of budget process reform: how the process could support macroeconomic policy making, how improved budget concepts could accurately measure finances and aid in dealing with upcoming policy challenges, how reorganization could enable intelligent priority setting, and how the process could be better aligned with the constitutional sharing of powers and the electoral system.     

Effects of prefrontal cortical stimulation on aggressive and antisocial behavior: A double-blind,stratified, randomized,sham-controlled,parallel-group trial

Journal of Experimental Criminology - This study examines the influence of high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation (HD-tDCS) of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) on aggressive behavior...     

The organisational and geographic diversity and innovation potential of EU-funded research networks

The Journal of Technology Transfer - Public funding of research improves the systemic conditions of entrepreneurial ecosystems. It provides early-stage financing to technologies that form the basis...     

The Heat is On: Thermal Sensing and Newsgathering – A Look at the Legal Implications of Modern Newsgathering

Thermal imaging technology, which was once used primarily by the military, has made its way into the civilian world. Journalists have begun making use of the technology, and, as that use becomes more prevalent, concerns about legal issues also arise. This article, relying on tort privacy cases, Fourth Amendment case law, and theoretical conceptualizations of privacy, provides an in-depth examination of the legal implications surrounding the use of thermal imaging devices for newsgathering.     

Welfare and state centralisation

The expansion of the welfare state is said to have led to the direct involvement of local government in the provision of social services. Increased participation of local government in welfare services would furthermore produce a centralisation of power. In this article, the above sequence of links is investigated in eight West European countries. One observes no strong correlation between the level of welfare provision and the level of state centralisation. But this absence of links results from two strong associations: one positive between welfare effort and local government involvement, and the other negative between the latter and state centralisation.     

Use of facial composite systems in US law enforcement agencies

Abstract

Facial composite images are often used in the criminal investigation process to facilitate the search for and identification of someone who has committed a crime. Since the use of facial composite images is sometimes relied upon as an integral part of an investigation, it is important to ascertain information about the various decisions made and procedures implemented by law enforcement regarding the use of composites. A 39-item survey was developed to examine the prevalence of a number of procedures related to composite production, including the systems implemented, criteria for selecting systems, law enforcement training, satisfaction with systems, legal challenges, and procedural issues with respect to interviewing multiple witnesses and the distribution of composite images. Surveys were distributed to 1637 city, state and county law enforcement agencies nationwide; 163 completed surveys were returned. This paper summarizes our survey results and discusses the implications for investigative procedures, law enforcement training, and future research needs.     

Linkage between internal migration and crime: Evidence from India

Migration has been a major source of human survival, adaptation, and economic change over centuries across regions. Today, more than ever, migration forms a central part of the global flow of humans, practices, and ideas. However, from a social point of view, migration is often considered as a potential source of social disorder and crime. Several explanations have been provided on this aspect in Indian context but none of these provide a sound analysis of the linkage between migration and crime. This paper attempts to investigate empirically the association between interstate migration and crime in India. Our analysis does not show any significant association between interstate migration and crime. Therefore, this study discards the controversial thought that migration is responsible for increasing crime in the nation, and suggests adopting constructive means to control crime rather than staring at migration.