The law’s gender: entanglements and recursions – three stories from Sri Lanka

Our essay examines the recursions, rationalities, limits, and promise of the law drawing on three recent cases of women who encountered law enforcement authorities and the courts in Sri Lanka. It provides a strong account of how dominant gender norms are mobilized to determine who is afforded the sanctuary of the law and who is not. By foregrounding the troubled encounters of the women with the law the essay also demonstrates the ways in which the law, culture, and the state combine, pull apart, and recombine in a manner that draws attention to their own internal relations; and how procedures established to ensure legal objectivity and judicial impartiality often fold back on themselves, reflecting the pliancy of the law. The essay also foregrounds the conditions of possibility, including feminist legal methodologies, that enable women to (re)turn to the law despite its transgressions. In doing so it argues for seeing the law as multilayered and recursive, reflecting the thick and uneven conditions under which women access justice in Sri Lanka. In highlighting how these women challenge and bargain with the law, the essay also acknowledges their tenacity and endurance in what, ultimately, is an effort at demanding an improved and substantive justice

Understanding Impulse Buying Behaviour: A Systematic Literature Review

The consumer buying a product can be influenced not only because of the need for them but also by the sudden urge to buy them. Academic research on impulse purchases has proliferated significantly in recent decades, spanning the last sixty years. However, attention to this phenomenon has been vitally discussed in the past few years. Thereby, the paper aimed to provide a detailed account of the impulse buying behaviour by compiling the various research work literature in the field of Retailing and Consumer Behaviour which presents a broad overview of the impulse buying construct and the various behavioural aspects of it. The authors adopted a review protocol to conduct the review, finally, through the review indented gaps and further insight have been discussed. Keywords: Impulse Buying, Systematic Revie

THE EFFECT OF MONEY AVAILABILITY FOR SHOPPING ON IMPULSIVE PURCHASING IN DIFFERENT CULTURES: THE MODERATING EFFECT OF INFLUENCE OF SHOPPING COMPANION

The paper investigates the relationship between the availability of money for shopping activities and impulsive purchasing of consumers. Further, it is observed whether decisions of consumers are changed when they go shopping with someone which means the moderating effect of influence of shopping companion on impulsive decisions of the consumers. The study will be really significant as it examines the influence of other persons in buying decisions whereas most of previous studies come out with individual level factors. For the study a sample was conveniently selected consisting 150 respondents representing Norway and Sri Lanka. The survey was employed as the tool to collect primary data by using self-administered questionnaire. Through the findings it was revealed that, the availability of money shows significant positive relationship in consumers' impulsive purchasing of both nationalities. However, as further results shopping companions significantly influence the relationship between main variables: availability of money and impulsive buying but that is only related to Sri Lankan Sample. The future research implications have discussed.&nbsp

Human rights for or by the people? Securing economic, social and cultural rights in a post-war/post-conflict context

This grounded theory (GT) study explores the economic, social and cultural (ESC) conditions and associated rights in post-war Sri Lanka during the past 10 years (2009– 2019). Tamils have been left in a challenging position after the war in terms of how other citizens have been perceiving them and their uniqueness has been disputed in terms of their rights. The overall position of the Tamils in the country has changed in recent history, which is a unique situation not only for the Tamils but also for the whole country. The 30-year Sri Lankan civil war is an important example of transformations during resettlement and the transitions back to normalcy. For many years, the war produced serious loss of life, assets and property, and in addition to these losses, the majority of people were affected either directly or indirectly. It is probably without choice that over the past decades, the Sri Lankans have faced significant economic, social, and cultural rights (ESCR) challenges, especially in the north of the country. In the 10 years since the Sri Lankan Government brought an end to the devastating civil war, the country has seen improvements in the overall security and freedom of movement, infrastructure, investment, and growth; yet there remain many ESCR challenges. This thesis identifies the forces that have been acting for and against securing ESCR for minority Tamils in post-war Sri Lanka. Specifically, the thesis identifies the strategies to secure ESCR in a post-war situation when ESCR are absent or insecure. The grounded-up nature of this thesis explores capturing the ESCR-related post-war experiences, attributes and learnings rather than gathering facts and describing acts. The thesis was designed to address the research questions in a direct manner: (1) What are the forces acting for and against securing ESCR for minority Tamils in post-war Sri Lanka; and (2) What would be the most effective strategies for securing ESCR for minority Tamils in post-war Sri Lanka? This constructivist grounded theory study collected qualitative data through in-depth, one-on-one semi-structured interviews and observations. In an effort to chart and examine what individuals and communities do in the absence of secure ESCR, I uncovered surprising and interesting coping strategies adopted by communities in their efforts to secure ESCR. A significant aim of this study was to share the results/findings with regional policymakers, especially in the north of Sri Lanka. Furthermore, with the availability of funds, this study could be expanded to incorporate a larger context in the form of a book published to assist in improving the lives of war-affected victims’ in terms of future access, promotion, protection and enjoyment of ESCR.Doctor of Philosoph

The impact of dance/movement classes on adolescent behavior in an urban high school setting

The inclusion of the arts in education has been undervalued and overlooked by many public school districts throughout the country. As a result of cutbacks, dance programs in educational settings have become an afterthought. In this study the relationship between dance/movement classes and disruptive behavior was analyzed in a sample of 45 at risk students in an urban high school setting. The findings supported the hypothesis that a) dance classes can be utilized as an intervention to reduce stress and b) students who participate in dance programs in public school settings will develop self-control, self-regulation and exhibit less disruptive behavior. Implications for further research and arts programming are discussed

Verifying and Monitoring IoTs Network Behavior using MUD Profiles

IoT devices are increasingly being implicated in cyber-attacks, raising community concern about the risks they pose to critical infrastructure, corporations, and citizens. In order to reduce this risk, the IETF is pushing IoT vendors to develop formal specifications of the intended purpose of their IoT devices, in the form of a Manufacturer Usage Description (MUD), so that their network behavior in any operating environment can be locked down and verified rigorously. This paper aims to assist IoT manufacturers in developing and verifying MUD profiles, while also helping adopters of these devices to ensure they are compatible with their organizational policies and track devices network behavior based on their MUD profile. Our first contribution is to develop a tool that takes the traffic trace of an arbitrary IoT device as input and automatically generates the MUD profile for it. We contribute our tool as open source, apply it to 28 consumer IoT devices, and highlight insights and challenges encountered in the process. Our second contribution is to apply a formal semantic framework that not only validates a given MUD profile for consistency, but also checks its compatibility with a given organizational policy. We apply our framework to representative organizations and selected devices, to demonstrate how MUD can reduce the effort needed for IoT acceptance testing. Finally, we show how operators can dynamically identify IoT devices using known MUD profiles and monitor their behavioral changes on their network.Comment: 17 pages, 17 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1804.0435

Effect of Tax Structure on Income Inequality in Sri Lanka

Growing income inequality is seen as one of the most important global concerns in this decade. Hence, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2030 aims at reducing income inequality within and among countries. IMF emphasizes that income inequality emerged as one of the critical concerns for economic policy in both developed and developing countries. However, as shown by the UN, Sri Lanka is far lower than the South Asian regional income distribution standards owing to its high inequality. At the same time, tax revenue has become one of the major concerns in the country due to its broadened internal deficit. In this background, this study examines the short-run and long-run effects of tax structure on income inequality in Sri Lanka utilizing annual statistics from 1980 to 2019 by employing the ARDL model. Findings revealed that in the long run, value-added and excise taxes have a significant association with income inequality in Sri Lanka. However, the association between personal income tax and income inequality was positive but insignificant. In contrast, corporate income tax and import duty have a statistically significant negative association with income inequality in Sri Lanka. Further, in the short run, at the overall level taxes are not significantly associated with income inequality except the personal income tax which has a significant negative association with income inequality. &nbsp