Speech Genres and Identity: The Place of Adda in Bengali Cultural Discourse

This paper explores the dialectic between speech genres and group identity. It argues that certain ideologies get associated with speech genres, like adda, which inextricably link them to particular groups and situations. Adda is a kind of informal social talk in Bengali, among friends and colleagues, but its content is always of intellectual significance, addressing issues such as local/global politics, art, literature, and music. Casual conversations and gossip are common in many societies, but the creative performance of this genre by Bengali elites made adda a marker of an urban middle-class identity, especially in response to British Imperialism. Currently in Indian public discourse adda has become synonymous with Bengaliness, so much so that tourism brochures selling Calcutta tout that visiting famous cafés or joints where adda is still practiced—even participation—is a must before leaving Calcutta. In this paper I use my ethnography of adda in Calcutta to establish that this speech genre is a discursive site of cultural identity production and a means of coping with globalization. I demonstrate that the combination of malleability of content and purposefulness of style has caused the elite practice adda to be appropriated by non-elites. It also makes adda a tool for invoking the global in the local identity formation

Book Review: Power, Resistance and Women Politicians in Cambodia: Discourses of Emancipation

Review of Power, Resistance and Women Politicians in Cambodia: Discourses of Emancipation, by Mona Lilj

Fempreneurs or organic tea farmers? Entrepreneurialism, resilience and alternative agriculture in Darjeeling, India

Abstract In this article I underscore how women organic tea farmers build economic resilience through dual enactments as "organic farmers" and as "entrepreneurs." In substantiating both, women question the limited optics through which Fair Trade type sustainability ventures measure their work for a tea cooperative, as well poorly recognizing their entrepreneurial work in their households and community. Women are deeply aware of the politics of Fair Trade where their productive and reproductive labor is appropriated through the labor of organics, where women not only produce the organic green leaf tea but also produce narratives of Fair Trade's success in its certification and gender audits. Thus, to understand what sustains the new wave of "sustainable agriculture" in the global South, we must explore the intersections of organic farming practices with emerging discourses and practices of gendered entrepreneurialism in organic farming communities. In Darjeeling, India, women provide the labor necessary to sustain organics that should ideally come from the Indian state or international trading partners. They fill the gap through their labor, time, creativity and risk-taking. I contend that the success of organic farming depends on critical maneuvers that entail economic and cultural entrepreneurialism, and demonstrate forms of resilience expressed through which women farmers identify and navigate the inadequacies of alternative agriculture and related Fair Trade practices. Keywords: Women organic tea farmers, women entrepreneurs, Fair Trade, rural Darjeeling, risk-taking, resilienc

Sub-sampled OFDM based sub-band ultra-wideband system

In sub-band ultra-wideband (SUWB) systems, the use of spreading codes in conjunction with sub-banding enables energy efficient reduced sampling rate receiver designs. In this work, the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) technique is proposed for SUWB systems as a means to mitigate the multipath fading effects of the channel. The OFDM demodulation performed at the sub-sampled rate with reduced number of discrete Fourier transform (DFT) points provides scope for low power receiver implementations. Moreover, OFDM improves the flexibility as bandwidth resources can be allocated with improved granularity at integral multiples of the OFDM sub-channel bandwidth. The requisite correlation properties of the spreading codes is relaxed in the proposed OFDM-SUWB system and more number of spreading codes can be used when compared to the existing SUWB system. Also, a simple channel estimation method exploiting the low complexity advantage of the inherent spreading code based receiver is proposed. Simulation results in terms of the bit error rate (BER) performance are presented over the IEEE 802.15.4a channel models and also comparisons with the multi-band OFDM (MB-OFDM) system are made demonstrating the usefulness of the proposed scheme

Penilaian Kinerja Keuangan Koperasi di Kabupaten Pelalawan

This paper describe development and financial performance of cooperative in District Pelalawan among 2007 - 2008. Studies on primary and secondary cooperative in 12 sub-districts. Method in this stady use performance measuring of productivity, efficiency, growth, liquidity, and solvability of cooperative. Productivity of cooperative in Pelalawan was highly but efficiency still low. Profit and income were highly, even liquidity of cooperative very high, and solvability was good

Juxtaposing BTE and ATE – on the role of the European insurance industry in funding civil litigation

One of the ways in which legal services are financed, and indeed shaped, is through private insurance arrangement. Two contrasting types of legal expenses insurance contracts (LEI) seem to dominate in Europe: before the event (BTE) and after the event (ATE) legal expenses insurance. Notwithstanding institutional differences between different legal systems, BTE and ATE insurance arrangements may be instrumental if government policy is geared towards strengthening a market-oriented system of financing access to justice for individuals and business. At the same time, emphasizing the role of a private industry as a keeper of the gates to justice raises issues of accountability and transparency, not readily reconcilable with demands of competition. Moreover, multiple actors (clients, lawyers, courts, insurers) are involved, causing behavioural dynamics which are not easily predicted or influenced. Against this background, this paper looks into BTE and ATE arrangements by analysing the particularities of BTE and ATE arrangements currently available in some European jurisdictions and by painting a picture of their respective markets and legal contexts. This allows for some reflection on the performance of BTE and ATE providers as both financiers and keepers. Two issues emerge from the analysis that are worthy of some further reflection. Firstly, there is the problematic long-term sustainability of some ATE products. Secondly, the challenges faced by policymakers that would like to nudge consumers into voluntarily taking out BTE LEI