From Moscow with love

One of the less researched aspects of postcolonial India’s “progressive” culture is its Soviet connection. Starting in the 1950s and consolidating in the 1960s, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics invested in building up “committed” networks amongst writers, directors, actors, and other theater- and film-practitioners across India. Thus, an entire generation of cultural professionals was initiated into the anticolonial solidarity of emerging Afro-Asian nations that were seen, and portrayed, by the Soviets as being victims of “Western” imperialism. The aspirational figure of the New Soviet Man was celebrated through the rise of a new form of “transactional sociality” (Westlund 2003). This paper looks at selected cases of cultural diplomacy—through the lens of cultural history—between the USSR and India for two decades after India’s Independence, exploring the possibility of theorizing it from the perspective of an anticolonial cultural solidarity that allowed agency to Indian interlocutors

S(t)imulating a Social Psychology : G. H. Mead and the Reality of the Social Object

Social psychology is often said to be a scientific discipline aiming at the observation and explanation of actions between human beings or, more generally, between the human individual and the environment. This general proposition holds for most social psychologists, irrespective of allegiance. Accepting this, it is implied that we are observing the social aspect of a human individual. This text will ask for the conditions under which this social psychology is possible. Indeed, what has to be the case for the observation and explanation of the sociality of the individual to occur? On the basis of G. H. Mead, generally considered the hub around which modern social psychology developed, it will be argued that for a social psychological science to be possible, conditions are implied that make it impossible. Less rhetorically put, accepting or returning to Meads social argument and trying to co-ordinate it with basic premises of scientific conduct, one will find oneself caught between two Meadian facts. On the one hand each individual must be considered social, i.e., appearing to experience as two objects at once. On the other hand, however, explaining an object is to state the object in an unambiguous fashion, i.e., as an independent, hence individual, object. It will be argued here that Mead’s epistemology does not support a scientific and social psychology. Rather a scientific social psychology based on Mead constitutes a contradiction in terms, stemming from a series of misinterpretations. It is the objective of this text to demonstrate these misinterpretations with respect to attempts at a scientific social psychology based on the social vision of this scholar

Structure and Dynamics of Interfacial Water in an L(α) Phase Lipid Bilayer from Molecular Dynamics Simulations

Based on molecular dynamics simulations, an analysis of structure and dynamics is performed on interfacial water at a liquid crystalline dipalmitoylphosphatidycholine/water system. Water properties relevant for understanding NMR relaxation are emphasized. The first and second rank orientational order parameters of the water O–H bonds were calculated, where the second rank order parameter is in agreement with experimental determined quadrupolar splittings. Also, two different interfacial water regions (bound water regions) are revealed with respect to different signs of the second rank order parameter. The water reorientation correlation function reveals a mixture of fast and slow decaying parts. The fast (ps) part of the correlation function is due to local anisotropic water reorientation whereas the much slower part is due to more complicated processes including lateral diffusion along the interface and chemical exchange between free and bound water molecules. The 100-ns-long molecular dynamics simulation at constant pressure (1 atm) and at a temperature of 50°C of 64 lipid molecules and 64 × 23 water molecules lack a slow water reorientation correlation component in the ns time scale. The (2)H(2)O powder spectrum of the dipalmitoylphosphatidycholine/water system is narrow and consequently, the NMR relaxation time T(2) is too short compared to experimental results