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In this paper, we will attempt to analyze the reasons behind suicide and human self-sacrifice involving the salvation of polis in Euripides' fragmented tragedy Erechtheus, written in the last quarter of the 5th century B. C. It is our purpose to provide evidence of the complex perspective that the Athenian dramatist had on such topics, especially considering the display of his talents in a play that reveals the impossibility of reconciliating antagonistic visions on voluntary self-sacrifice. In that sense, we intend to present the existence of a conceptual problem, as well as pose questions concerning voluntary selfsacrifice which continue to linger beyond Ancient times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the consecration and transformation of the customary practice of sati (widow burning) in the aftermath of a violent case of immolation in 1987 in Rajasthan, India. Focusing on debates around a penal law that was subsequently passed to criminalize all "glorification" of sati, I follow how the material substrate of the practice of worship got implicated in rivalling forms of adjudication. I draw on my historical and ethnographic research on the eponymous Rani Sati Temple in Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan, to disentangle the overlapping discourses of civil activism, legal intervention and ritual practice through which the specific offering of chunari (red veil) became available for signification and intervention. The article advances the concept of disintermediation to understand the shifting semiotic trajectory of the custom as it gets reflected in the changing discursive fate of this one offering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, in addition to the textual debates on sati, reviews the relevance of sensationalism around and governance of the sati cases by the nineteenth-century colonial state in the United Provinces (then known as the North-Western Provinces). While this article contains plenty of evidence to show the colonial engagement with shastras (more appropriately the vyavasthas), yet the question that has been posed is that the six volumes of Parliamentary Papers published on sati need to be read as a source material for writing women’s ethno-psychological history. Numerous cases of women burning themselves cannot be reduced to a question of mere shastric concern. As will become evident from the cases cited here—Hindu widows across caste had imbibed a deep sense of what a dutiful wife/widow should do. These notions of duty and faith accumulated over the ages, not only in a specific time and space. This article also argues that the historical process through which the colonial state and the Hindu reformers engaged with the position of the Hindu widow, produced two dominant ideas on the reform of the Hindu widows—one that the Hindu widows burnt themselves with their husband’s dead bodies by ‘volition’; the other that the colonial state (like its predecessors) possessed (or at least claimed to possess) a ‘moral–ethical’ status to scrutinize whether the custom of widow immolation was ‘involuntary’ or ‘voluntary’. These two processes complemented each other in a colonial context; the idea of a ‘voluntary’ widowhood germinated within official circles in the late nineteenth century and the idea of a living sati was extended to the public sphere by the Hindu reformist discourse. This nineteenth-century officio-reformist debate and discussion was marked by profound creativity for discourses and representations of the body and identity of a Hindu widow. It is this distinct ‘colonial’ Hindu widow whose image was later incorporated into nationalist and post-Independence discourses on nation and development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

El artículo discurre sobre las batallas rituales de las poblaciones indígenas en la región de Mesoamérica. El autor analiza efigies cerámicas descubiertas en varios sitios arqueológicos por Mesoamérica que demuestran la importancia de esta ritual en la vida cotidiana de los grupos indígenas. Describe las tres formas de sacrificio, incluyendo las batallas, los juegos de pelota y la guerra. Se nota que las víctimas trajeron prosperidad y buena suerte a la comunidad.

The immolation of Hindu widows has generated much horror while remaining tenaciously mixed with clandestine admiration. Reported in many eyewitness accounts and literary works, the topic has given rise to highly contested sociocultural, legal and ideological debates, strongly linked to women’s rights. But the root question has not gone away: is suttee/sati just painful female victimisation or can it also reflect powerful female agency and the power of devotion? This article examines two literary works, Maud Diver’s Lilamani, in which an Englishwoman unreservedly idolises a suttee, and Krupabai Satthianadhan’s Kamala, where an Indian woman expresses deep pride in sutteehood. Engaging in a search for deeper meanings, this article asks what makes these two women writers revere a suttee so totally. Can one really be a suttee-saint through selflessness, or are there some deeper meanings yet to be uncovered? A wider political interpretation is suggested to re/present the root meaning of suttee. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Sati, the immolation of a Hindu widow on her husband's funeral pyre, is a rare, but highly controversial practice. It has inspired a surfeit of scholarly studies in the last twenty years, most of which concentrate on one of two main historical sati ‘episodes’: that of early-colonial Bengal, culminating with the British prohibition of 1829, and that of late twentieth-century Rajasthan, epitomised by the immolation of Roop Kanwar in 1987. Comparatively little detailed historical analysis exists on sati cases between these two events, however, a lacuna this paper seeks to address by exploring British and Indian discourses on sati as they existed in late-colonial India. The paper argues that sati remained a site of ideological and actual confrontation in the early twentieth century, with important implications for ongoing debates about Hindu religion, identity and nation. It focuses on the intersection between various colonial debates and contemporaneous Indian social and political concerns during the controversy surrounding the immolation of Sampati Kuer in Barh, Bihar, in 1927, emphasising resonances with postcolonial interpretations of sati and the dissonance of early nineteenth-century tropes when reproduced in the Patna High Court in 1928. Thus, while Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid have suggested that ‘ad hoc’ attempts to piece together a ‘modern’ narrative of widow immolation began in the 1950s, this paper will suggest that various contemporary discursive formations on sati can be observed in late-colonial India, when discussions of sati became entwined with Indian nationalism and Hindu identity politics and evoked the first organised female response to sati from an emergent women's movement that saw it as an ideological, as well as physical, violation of women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the study is to evaluate the impact of the selling point promotional tools such as, discount coupons, price discount, free sample, buy-one-get-one-free , and in-store display on the purchase behaviours of East Blacksea Region consumers on low involvement products. Whether there were potential significant differences according to demographic factors by the impact of the sales promotional tools on consumers' purchase behaviours or not were also investigated in the paper. A total of 404 consumers in the East Blacksea Region were surveyed using a structured questionnaire. Finally, the results show that the sales promotional tools such as discount coupons, price discounts, free samples and buy-one-get-one-free were associated with the purchase behavior of low involvement products, where it is understood that in-store display application does not have any significant effect on it. The research that was limited with only one category of product (low involvement products) was considered to investigate in the further researches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article's approach to sati and similar phenomena is functionally and morally neutral. A society that practices following in death is not, for that matter, considered inferior. Schneewind, however, pleads for a normative moral approach, ranking societies according to their ability to rid themselves of harmful customs. What in the article is shown as a mere functional difference between European (or Christian) and (some) non-Western societies thereby appears as an illegitimate Eurocentrism or ethnocentrism. Such a view should not be read into the text, as it will inhibit consideration of important questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While world and comparative historians need not research each local instance in great depth, Jörg Fisch's recent article "Dying for the Dead: Sati in Universal Context" neglects most of the research on a case he stresses, China. Fisch's argument that only "outsiders" can end following in death practices overlooks how historical movements compromise such clear categorization and relies rhetorically on terms that foreclose the possibility of abolition by "insiders." His claim that only "outsiders" have historically ended such practices overlooks the complexities of the effects (and causes) of colonialism and the unanswerable question of what might have happened without it. His choice to set aside in his analysis the means of death conflicts with evidence he provides that suggests means might have fi gured in women's own calculations about how to demonstrate faithfulness to the dead, further foreclosing the possibility that insiders can change their own societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During their encounter with sati in early nineteenth century Bengal, the British constructed an image of the Hindu widow who burned on her husband’s funeral pyre as a passive victim of a barbaric oriental practice. The imagery that they produced, which denied the widow both agency and rational engagement with the processes of sati, remains influential today and has led to those who oppose sati in the present being accused of adopting “western” attitudes. Yet this was not the only interpretation of sati to emerge from the colonial encounter. When the British experienced sati in the alternate context of the Rajput States (1830–60) their understanding of it changed subtly, as the widow was increasingly depicted as self‐determined—the perpetrator rather than the victim of sati. This article explores these shifts in British understanding, and asks what implications this alternate colonial interpretation might have for discourses on sati in contemporary India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the operation and abolition of human sacrifice in Southwest Nigeria. Human sacrifice was considered central to Yoruba paganism and history. Previous research on the subject found that human sacrifice is central to the exercise of royal authority and as an ideology. Opposition to the practice were mostly voiced by the intervention of Christian missionaries. However, Christian teachings failed to end the practice. The suspension of the practice was realized through the decision of the British government to change it policy from appeasement to confrontation.

This article compares the official debate over the abolition of "sati" in colonial India in the 1820s with an understudied 1830 sentimental novel "The Suttee, or, the Hindoo Converts." Like the political and missionary texts that contributed to the official debate, the book's literary representation of sati figures an encounter between British observers and Hindu participants, between European values and Hindu "superstitions," between British feelings and the suffering body of the sati. The writer of the book stages this encounter not as between British men and Hindu women, but as a cross-cultural, homosocial interaction, where the most important dialogues are between British women and Hindu women, and between British men and Hindu men.

Discusses sati in Europe. Importance of religion in understanding sati; Position of the widow within the discourse; Nature of moral judgments.

If we can anticipate that life extension will be too expensive to provide to everyone, is that a reason not to research and develop it? Collective suttee is the policy of inhibiting or prohibiting life extension on such grounds: just as widows are killed on their husbands' funeral pyres, potential Methuselahs would not be allowed to outlive everyone else. However, in other contexts we judge that taking from the haves is unjustified when doing so confers a merely marginal benefit—or no benefit—to the have-nots. By this standard, collective suttee is probably unjustified, for the burdens borne by the have-nots are likely to be too small to justify denying extra decades or centuries to those who can afford it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What's wrong with suicide bombing? The tactic has been used by the Tamil Tigers, by the Japanese kamikaze, by al-Qaeda, by Palestinian militants against Israel, by Iraqi defenders loyal to Saddam Hussein against the U.S. invasion, and by others; it is typically understood by these groups as martyrdom rather than suicide. Scientific theories of suicide—biological , psychological, and sociological--do not contribute to an understanding. Nor is the claim that it is amoral, the product of psychopathology or mental illness, adequate. The central moral core of the issue of suicide bombing rests, rather, on the violation of a tacit assumption of equality in combat: ’they’ have a weapon ’we’ don't. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examples of recent cases of martyrs are examined in order to identify the basic issues of whether martyrdom can be viewed as altruistic suicide. Several issues are identified: whom does the act have to benefit, does the act have to have its intended consequences or is the intent sufficient, does the martyr have to be thinking rationally, and whether execution by the state can be viewed as altruistic suicide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Altruistic suicide has a long history in India, even being noted in the Dharmashastras, an ancient religious text. In ancient India, two forms of altruistic suicide were practiced. One was Jauhar, a kind of mass suicide by women of a community when their menfoolk suffered defeat in battle the other was Sati, a suicide of a widow on the funeral pyre of her husband or after the cremation. The practice of Jauhar ended with the fall of the Muslim rule and the practice of Sati is against the law, but cases of Sati still occur. The act of Sati is now seen as suicide, not as altruistic, and there are laws against abetment and glorification. Specific ancient cases and more modern ones are presented to illustrate this type of suicide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last few centuries, science has become arithmetic, tabular, taxonomic, to explain living creatures, chemical elements and even diseases of the mind. Emile Durkheim attempted to do the same with his enduring volume, Suicide: A Study of Sociology, first published in 1897. Durkheim showed that suicide could be divided into an order: egoistic, altruistic, anomic and fatalistic--here, we focus on the question, who is the altruistic suicide? Durkheim's additional question is raised: When is a motive praiseworthy and when not--when to be called altruistic or heroic, and when terrorist? Further study is warranted--and thus, this opening editorial to an array of studies on the topic, from antiquity to the Christian martyrs into this century, to the act of Sati in India, to the suicide bomber in the Moslem world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports on the view of some Indian women's organizations on Charan Shah's self-immolation. View of Hindu traditionalists on her act of literal self-sacrifice; How the ruling Hindu Nationalist Party government originally came to power.