Identifying ‘Immigrants’ through Violence: Memory, Press, and Archive in the making of ‘Bangladeshi Migrants’ in Assam

This research studies the violent conflict between Bengali Muslims, who mostly migrated from the former East Bengal during colonial times, and the Bodo Tribe, who mostly follow the Bathou religion in the Bodoland region of Assam. This conflict is often seen through the preexisting lens of communal violence between Hindus and Muslims in India. Here, conflict between a religious minority and an ethnic one is investigated in its locality and this investigation highlights the complex history of the region and its part in shaping this antagonism. It does so by looking into the colonial archive which introduced the category of ‘immigrant’ to the region, together with Urdu and English press coverage of four violent events that essentialize the categories ‘Muslim’ and ‘immigrant’, respectively. Defying simple categorization, the Bengali Muslims in the Kokrajhar district have devised their own strategy for narrating time. Through archival and ethnographic research this study shows the shifting meaning of the concept of an ‘immigrant’ and its implication for social and political realities. This research addresses some less studied dynamics of the clash between two minorities and its representation in both the English and Urdu Media

An aesthetic for sustainable interactions in product-service systems?

Copyright @ 2012 Greenleaf PublishingEco-efficient Product-Service System (PSS) innovations represent a promising approach to sustainability. However the application of this concept is still very limited because its implementation and diffusion is hindered by several barriers (cultural, corporate and regulative ones). The paper investigates the barriers that affect the attractiveness and acceptation of eco-efficient PSS alternatives, and opens the debate on the aesthetic of eco-efficient PSS, and the way in which aesthetic could enhance some specific inner qualities of this kinds of innovations. Integrating insights from semiotics, the paper outlines some first research hypothesis on how the aesthetic elements of an eco-efficient PSS could facilitate user attraction, acceptation and satisfaction

Rhetorical and narrative structures in John Hersey\u27s Hiroshima: How they breathe life into the tale of a doomed city

The purpose of this thesis will explore rhetorical and narrative devices author John Hersey used to create Hiroshima, one of the foremost non-fictional works of the twentieth century

Migration for Hard Work: A Reluctant Livelihood Strategy for Poor Households in West Bengal, India

projects to promote poverty reduction globally. DFID provided funds for this study as part of that goal but the views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) alone

The Hearts and Minds project: towards a theatre of cultural diversity - script and archival production videotape

Volume One of this thesis comprises the script »td archival videotape of ati original theatre project, Hearts and Minds, written and direct«! by the author and produced by Theatre South at the Bridge Theatre, Wollongong, from 8th to 24th May 1992. The project, which dealt with relations between Anglo- and Vietnamese-Australians in the context of the continuing legacy of the Vietnam War, was a response to a perceived failure of mainstream theatre to address the reality of cultural diversity in Australia - especially with respect to cultures of Asian origin. Hearts and Minds aimed to repudiate racial stereotypes and promote intercultural exchange both thematically, in terms of its characters and story, and theatrically, by mixing traditional Vietnamese water puppetry with actor-based realism

Literary Imagination and Community Mental Health: A Deleuzian Analysis of Discourse in a Fiction Reading Group

This study presents an empirical, qualitative investigation of transformations as they occurred in the participants\u27 language during a fiction reading and discussion group in a community mental health setting. Session transcripts have been analyzed from the perspective of researcher as literary critic and through the Deleuzian lens of rhizomatic assemblages (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980/2005). This nonlinear, non-hierarchical and non-referential approach re-imagins the relationship among readers, texts and authors. Three themes follow from the rhizomatic perspective on transcript data. The first of these, Assemblage, details the ways that participants engage in and with fictional story-worlds. This engagement is such that text, readers, author, and other elements of context join together in chains or blocks of becoming. These becomings rely on the mimetic structure of the fictional texts that simulates \u27real life\u27 experiences for readers. This special kind of engagement leads to transformations of linguistic forms, images and concepts. Transformations addressed in the next segment, De-formations, include analysis of mental health talk as it encounters the poetic story world in our sessions. One result of this encounter is the vernacularization of mental health talk. Elements of clinical, usually diagnostic, language introduced in our sessions are transformed in the direction of more colloquial and \u27plain-language\u27 use. This result suggests that fiction reading moves mental health consumers away from the problem-saturated language of mental health discourse (White & Epston, 1990) that too often reifies and reinforces illness and dis-ease rather than supporting wellness. The final section, Re-narration, examines implications of transformations in participants\u27 language for narrative identity, that is, participants\u27 self-understanding and re-contextualization in light of their encounters with the fictional story-world (Ricoeur, 2005). It is possible to discern nascent or potential changes in narrative identity in the language of discussants and to speculate on what changes participants may carry forward into their lives beyond the reading and discussion group. Finally, implications are discussed for re-understanding the therapist as literary critic and for the development of locally produced bodies of literary criticism as work appropriate to community mental health providers and clients. Also, affinities between literary therapy, bibliotherapy and narrative therapy are discussed

18th-20th Century British Literature

Openly licensed anthology focused on the theme of 18th-20th Century British Literature. Contains Persuasion by Jane Austen; Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë; Lady Audley’s Secret by M.E. Braddon; Middlemarch by George Eliot; A Passage to India by E.M. Forster; Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy; Pamela by Samuel Richardson; Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu