Search

The article focuses on sex work and trafficking and the Sonagachi Project HIV/AIDS intervention program in Calcutta, India. According to the Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report published by the U.S. government, majority of people are trafficked for sexual reasons and most are women. It mentions that poor employment opportunities, lack of education and less support from men make women easy targets of human trafficking. The Sonagachi Project is to spread awareness about HIV among sex workers.

The swastika traces its origin to the genesis of human civilization and has been used as a religious symbol across centuries and geographical boundaries. The swastika has an infamous connotation in the Western world today being associated with Nazism and the horrors of Holocaust. Yet its positive meaning in Eastern cultures and its usage as a religious motif have sustained. The study conducts textual analysis of 18 American online forums, nine personal homepages and blogs that discuss the symbolic significance and the future of the swastika in the West with reference to a proposed ban of the swastika by the European Union in 2005. The paper aims to analyze the symbolic significance of the swastika among a Western (namely US) audience and examines the motivations of a negative interpretation of the swastika by the latter. The paper examines the negotiation of meaning-making of the swastika among the Western audiences at multiple levels and the latter's utilization of possible binary oppositions for classifying Eastern religious symbols. Overall, the oppositional viewpoints encompassed in the online forums, which include many visceral reactions to the swastika itself, provide a unique opportunity to delineate evolving cultural outlooks in a multiracial society. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined the evolution of issues management strategies by the major US tobacco companies throughout the 1990s, leading up to the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement. We focused on documents that used the term "choice," the industry's euphemism for addiction. We applied text mining and computer-assisted content analysis to the 7 million documents from the tobacco industry's internal records maintained online by the Legacy Foundation. Semantic network analysis, combined with factor analysis, yielded major issues for each year of the decade; words comprising each factor suggested industry framing strategies. We found that specific issues in public discussion changed during the 1990s, shown by the tobacco documents' move from an aggressive pro-tobacco stance in the early '90s to a muted consideration of tobacco's place in a newly health-conscious society at the end. However, while the issues changed, the framing of the issues did not. The documents revealed a remarkably consistent set of ideological beliefs, founded on the association of tobacco products with traditional American values like freedom, individualism, and responsibility. We conclude that meanings ascribed to the tobacco industry function as cultural shorthand, and the discourse about tobacco policy reflects changing US beliefs and values, which veered toward increasing conservatism during the decade. Anti-smoking measures cannot fully succeed without taking this consistent, closed worldview into consideration. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advertising for matrimony is a unique phenomenon observable among Indians majority of whom opt for arranged marriages. The study involves a comparative textual analysis of the matrimonial advertisements of prospective brides published in newspapers with those posted in Internet matrimonial portals. The study intends to explore the differences, if any, in the representation of women in the ads posted in two different media, namely the newspaper and the Internet. The study also attempts to explore whether the Internet is providing greater opportunities for self expression to these prospective brides and also allowing the latter to exercise their choice in one of the biggest decisions of their lives. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of the current paper is to delineate the complexities of identity construction in contemporary Pakistan especially with reference to the notion of the "ummah". The paper conducts a content analysis of letters to the editor published in between 2002 and 2008 in the Karachi based English newspaper Dawn. The paper explores the tension in between the notions of the "ummah" and nationalism in the Pakistani context while examining popular reflections on identity construction as expressed in the letters. The examination of the scope and function of the "ummah" in the Pakistani perspective is also conducted and the geopolitical events that give context to negotiations of "ummah" and identity are explored. The notion of Islamic nationalism is analyzed. The socio-political context of the utilization of such a form of nationalism is examined to study the multi-dimensional process of identity creation by the Pakistani populace. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]