The soft power of popular cinema: the case of India

Among BRICS nations, India has the most developed and globalised film industry, and the Indian government as well as corporations are increasingly deploying the power of Bollywood in their international interactions. India’s soft power, arising from its cultural and civilizational influence outside its territorial boundaries, has a long history. Focusing on contemporary India’s thriving Hindi film industry, this article suggests that the globalisation of the country’s popular cinema, aided by a large diaspora, has created possibilities of promoting India’s public diplomacy. It examines the global imprint of this cinema as an instrument of soft power

E-readers and the death of the book: or, new media and the myth of the disappearing medium

The recent emergence of e-readers and e-books has b rought the death of the book to the centre of current debates on new media. In this article, we a nalyse alternative narratives that surround the possibility of the disappearance of print books, do minated by fetishism, fears about the end of humanism, and ideas of techno-fundamentalist progre ss. We argue that, in order to comprehend such narratives, we need to inscribe them in the br oader history of media. The emergence of new media, in fact, has often been accompanied by narra tives about the possible disappearance of older media: the introduction of television, for in stance, inspired claims about the forthcoming death of film and radio. As a recurrent narrative s haping the reception of media innovation, the myth of the disappearing medium helps us to make se nse of the transformations that media change provokes in our everyday life

Famine food of vegetal origin consumed in the Netherlands during World War II

Background: Periods of extreme food shortages during war force people to eat food that they normally do not consider edible. The last time that countries in Western Europe experienced severe scarcities was during World War II. The so-called Dutch famine or Hunger Winter (1944-1945) made at least 25,000 victims. The Dutch government took action by opening soup kitchens and providing information on wild plants and other famine food sources in "wartime cookbooks." The Dutch wartime diet has never been examined from an ethnobotanical perspective. Methods: We interviewed 78 elderly Dutch citizens to verify what they remembered of the consumption of vegetal and fungal famine food during World War II by them and their close surroundings. We asked whether they experienced any adverse effects from consuming famine food plants and how they knew they were edible. We identified plant species mentioned during interviews by their local Dutch names and illustrated field guides and floras. We hypothesized that people living in rural areas consumed more wild species than urban people. A Welch t test was performed to verify whether the number of wild and cultivated species differed between urban and rural citizens. Results: A total number of 38 emergency food species (14 cultivated and 21 wild plants, three wild fungi) were mentioned during interviews. Sugar beets, tulip bulbs, and potato peels were most frequently consumed. Regularly eaten wild species were common nettle, blackberry, and beechnuts. Almost one third of our interviewees explicitly described to have experienced extreme hunger during the war. People from rural areas listed significantly more wild species than urban people. The number of cultivated species consumed by both groups was similar. Negative effects were limited to sore throats and stomachache from the consumption of sugar beets and tulip bulbs. Knowledge on the edibility of famine food was obtained largely by oral transmission; few people remembered the written recipes in wartime cookbooks. Conclusion: This research shows that 71years after the Second World War, knowledge on famine food species, once crucial for people's survival, is still present in the Dutch society. The information on famine food sources supplied by several institutions was not distributed widely. For the necessary revival of famine food knowledge during the 1940s, people needed to consult a small group of elders. Presumed toxicity was a major reason given by our participants to explain why they did not collect wild plants or mushrooms during the war

Initiatives and Ownership: HDTV and the Influence of Corporatism in the United States

Throughout the 1980s, the development of high-definition television (HDTV) was discussed as the possible savior of the communications manufacturing sector of the U.S. economy, the bargaining chip for global information distribution, and the one technological development that held the key to both the telecommunications and defense industries for the 21st century. With such promise, it is surprising that HDTV did not become a reality sooner. Instead, it has become a case for shifts in both U.S. industrial policy and economic theory. Winston (1989) remarked that “HDTV has become the newest symbol of America\u27s supposed industrial decline, with the networks, the electronics manufacturers and Hollywood all accused of participating in the failure” (p. 124). A flurry of research activity late in 1990, however, prompted Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair, Alfred C. Sikes, to comment, “The conventional wisdom is that we are a poor third [internationally] in HDTV.... It\u27s my view that U.S. companies are on the leading edge” (Andrews, 1990, p. A1).