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In the past decade, financial inclusion has emerged as a leading international development paradigm to tackle poverty. It seeks to integrate all unbanked (adults) into the global financial system through credit and other financial services. From a political economy perspective, the rhetoric of financial inclusion has been criticised, among other things, for masking the financialisation of social reproduction in which (a) the unbanked become a new market segment for international capital and (b) households with low and insecure incomes must increasingly organise their precarious living conditions through debt. This paper builds on the critique of neoliberal development policy and supplements it with a materialist-postcolonial lens that examines the historical interconnectedness of the indebtedness of subaltern classes, colonial rule, and capitalist development in the context of India. It shows that financial inclusion/exclusion from the 19th century onwards was the response to a structural subsistence crisis that was decisively shaped by both British colonial rule and capitalist (class) relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Opium was a major cash-crop in nineteenth-century India. Over a million peasants cultivated poppy for the British-Indian government, which held a monopoly over the production of the drug and could thus keep the prices paid to the cultivators at an extremely low level. The major question this paper seeks to answer is why so many peasants cultivated this laborious crop despite a clear lack of financial incentives. This problem is tackled by applying two approaches from development economics, i. e. interlinked transactions and Kaushi Basu’s triadic relations model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Sozialer Fortschritt is the property of Duncker & Humblot GmbH and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In recent years, vegetable grafting has emerged as a rapid tool in tailoring plants to adapt to climate resilient growing conditions. Utilization of grafting technique is increasing mainly in commercial cucurbitaceous vegetables viz., watermelon, cucumber, bitter gourd and muskmelon. These vegetables are preferably grafted with interspecific hybrid rootstocks for their seedling vigor, high degree of resistance against biotic and abiotic stresses. Moreover, the hybrid rootstock increases the yield of respective scions. To harness the potentiality of rootstocks, an attempt has been made to develop interspecific hybrid rootstocks by using 48 Cucurbita moschata and four Cucurbita maxima lines and hybridization was attempted through Line x Tester mating design. These 52 genotypes were collected from various diverse agro climatic regions of India and World Vegetable Centre, Taiwan, raised by following proper isolation distance and selfed to maintain the genetic purity. Using 48 Cucurbita moschata genotypes as lines and four Cucurbita maxima genotypes as testers, 192 interspecific hybrids were developed, out of which only 16 hybrids were fertile and in rest of the hybrids, cross incompatibility was observed. Among the lines, CMo 28, CMo 43 and CMo 44 were highly cross compatible with different Cucurbita maxima testers. Among the testers, CMa 49 and CMa 52 were highly cross compatible with different Cucurbita moschata lines. Among the fertile hybrid rootstocks, CMo 44 × CMa 52, CMo 28 × CMa 52 and CMo 43 × CMa 51 were identified as promising ones and used for graftingstudies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the fact that the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) is considered to be one of the most widely signed and ratified international human rights treaties, it seems that its implementation is confronted with significant problems. In particular, tensions arise between the endorsement of women's rights and the culture and tradition of each Member State. This may lead to different interpretations of women's rights according to each cultural background (cultural relativism), at the expense of universality of human rights. This tension is illustrated by the considerable number of reservations to the Convention, which impede its actual implementation. In this framework the article focuses on India. Being a relatively early signatory of CEDAW, with a great variety of religions and languages, different traditions and long cultural history, India offers a great example of the dimensions that the implementation of the Convention may have. The article, after examining first the cultural and constitutional background in India, seeks to clarify how the international protection of women's rights and Cultural Relativism interact here. For this purpose the paper discusses the reservations of India to CEDAW and its legal nature. Finally, it outlines the newest developments in India and makes explicit how the culture and legal regimes may determine one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Soziale Welt is the property of Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper presents and analyses ideas about creation and conception among the Dongria Kond in Orissa, India. Its main aim is to understand a complex cultural system in which women are ascribed all creative power while men are expected to be active in order to facilitate and uphold creation. Using analytical concepts as redefined by Carol Delaney ( 1986, 2001) I argue that Dongria Kond do not have a concept o f "paternity", but of "maternity" since they ascribe all creative powers to women. Women are seen as the sole creators, yet their role in Dongria Kond society changes markedly with marriage. Before this event, young girls sleep in dormitories where they are visited by boys from other clans. Sexual encounters between boys and girls are controlled by the girls, who should avoid becoming pregnant. With marriage, women leave their parent's village and join the village of their husbands, where they have sexual intercourse that should result in procreation. Marriage can be seen as the culturally legitimate form for men to gain control over the creative powers resting in women and it takes two forms: either through exchange of one form of "life" against the other in marriages involving bridewealth prestations, or through violence involved in cases of bride-capture. Similar ideas about men's active role and the need to appropriate fertility associated with the female earth goddess are further identified in the buffalo sacrifices regularly performed by Dongria Kond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The German indophilia between 1790 and 1820 is an impressive example for the contemporary project of an encompassing and relational historiography of mankind. India became an important reference point within the process of German cultural self-assurance and positioning. Here, especially pictures, drawings and poetic forms of expression played a crucial role and they clarify a pictorial style of early German ethnography itself. This article's detailed analysis of ethnographic pictures of India illuminates a figurative and relational entanglement between Indian and European contexts. The visual practices of cutting, pasting and transferring shed light on colonial structures, political exchange and identity politics. Within these tense figurations the ethnographic picture composes a particular knowledge, which centrally relies on visualized categories that have to be ‚typical‘, ‚ideal‘, and ‚characteristic‘. Hence, early ethnography has to be understood as both a text-picturegenre and a research activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article criticizes the book "Die versunkenen Schätze der 'Bom Jesus'," written by Dieter Noli and Wolfgang Knabe about the 2008 archaeological excavation of the wreck of the Portuguese trade ship Bom Jesus off the coast of Namibia. The author discusses the portrayals of 16th-century international trade in the book, offers additional information and corrections pertaining to the trade relations between Portugal, Germany, and India in that time, and examines the economic history of the international trade in spices and precious metals.

The article discusses the usefulness of the concept of cultural translation by analyzing the cross-cultural exchanges and communication of two missionaries, the German Benjamin Schultze and the Tamil Daniel Pullei, in 18th-century Tranquebar, India. After providing a brief overview of Christian missionary work in India since the 16th century, it describes Schultze's and Pullei's activities as dubashi, or translators and interpreters. It particularly emphasizes how the position of translator between cultures equipped both with agency and a certain degree of power.

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Rechtssoziologie is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Relating to a research project in the trans-Himalayan region of Ladakh, Northwest-India, the paper examines indications that the shamanic vocation and practice grew significantly in this region. The author tries to link this increase to severe psychological pressures imposed by the heavy presence of the Indian Army, political and administrative ties to the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir (with a predominantly Muslim population), and the region's status as a popular tourist destination. The paper argues that shamanic rituals performed by so-called oracles that embody deities of the Buddhist pantheon in trance (lhamo, lhapa) not only provide important services of healing and divination, they contribute significantly to medical prevention in times of growing competition and the deterioration of value systems. Turning from a local (Ladakh, the Tibetan Plateau) to a global perspective, it is further argued that the preventive function of shamanism has often been overlooked in previous ethnographic research and might be neglected by increasing efforts (also fostered by indigenous ritualists themselves) to establish and legitimize traditional ritual practices as part of modern health care systems which might eventually lead to the medicalization of traditional ceremonies--in short: "shamans do a lot more than just heal people".

Reinhold Mueller has been the one and only historian of medicine in Germany who worked in the field of the Indian history of medicine from the 1920s to the 1960s. He influenced German, American and Indian researchers, but he was nearly forgotten soon after his death. This is the first paper about his life and work to be published. Mueller studied a wide range of topics, the history of Indian gynaecology, of psychiatry, of immunology and of general practice and his subsequent articles were published in the principal contemporary magazines. However, he did not have a perfect understanding of Sanskrit language and writing. Moreover, as he subordinated his research to the premises of National Socialism and of communism, some of his articles have to be seen as part of an Aryan-Germanic race discourse. Yet, these inadequacies and mistakes did not prevent other researchers from maintaining contact with him after 1945. Even when Anglo-American historians of medicine began to study Indian medicine in the 1980s, his publications were re-examined and analysed.

The first part of this paper gives a short historical survey of veterinary medicine in India starting from vedic times. The knowledge about hippiatry was highly valued since horses played an important role in warfare. The review of authors and publications on Indian hippiatry and hippology is followed by a synopsis on these traditions in Europe. The second part of this article includes further references and research on the Aśvaśăstra of Nakula and a translation of chapter 4 describing the anatomy of the horse.

The existing investigations about the Torus palatinus are not comparable. The tori are not described in all morphological details and very often without quantitative registrations. The present paper tries to show an economic way of quantifying and describing the Torus palatinus. Skulls from Griesheim (Kreis Darmstadt-Dieburg, Western Germany; "Fränkisches Gräberfeld"), Langd (Kreis Giessen, West Germany; "Alter Friedhof"), India and Pakistan, as well as crania of a population of chimpanzees from Eastern Liberia have been investigated. In the series from Griesheim and Langd the Torus palatinus was found in 32.7% and 34.5% respectively, in the examined crania from India and Pakistan the torus appears only in 3.7% of the individuals. The skulls of the chimpanzees from Eastern Liberia show the Torus palatinus much more frequently than it has been observed until now (in 17% of the crania).

The etiology, clinical features and course of chronic pancreatitis as reported from developing countries of Africa and Asia ("Afro-asian type") differ significantly from that described in Europe and America ("Euro-american type"). The paper presents the natural history of chronic pancreatitis in India, a country in which both types of the disease have been reported. The incidence is lowest in north and increases as one descends to the south. In the north the euro-american type is more common whereas in the south afro-asian type predominates. The exact etiology of afro-asian type is not known; however, suggestive evidence indicates that protein malnutrition is in some way responsible.