Thesis (Ph. D.)--York University, 1999. Graduate Programme in Social and Political Thought. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 540-580). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNQ43414.

Thesis (M.A.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2004. / Bibliography: leaves 88-89.

Configurations of Life historicizes four distinct clusters of biological research in colonial and early post-colonial India: the Zoological Survey of India, the so called ‘wolf-children’ natural experiment by anthropologists, the program in plant physiology and insect behavior at the Bose Institute, and the interdisciplinary group led by JBS Haldane at the Indian Statistical Institute. Each of these clusters, the dissertation shows, was invested in characterizing their sciences as specifically Indian in character: in the case of the “wolf-children,” by seizing on a supposedly endemic Indian social and natural phenomenon, and in the others, by claiming an allegedly Indian epistemological stance. Each, the dissertation argues, sought authority by claiming to provide heterodox and distinctly Indian solutions to the most fundamental question of biological science – what is life? – though they differed wildly on what ‘life,’ or ‘Indian,’ or indeed, ‘science’ itself meant. While the extant historiography has often read the effusion of similar claims to ‘Indianness’ in modern knowledge systems around the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as a discursive byproduct of nationalism, this dissertation shows that the pursuit of an ‘Indian’ biology cut across racial, national and ideological lines among scientists working in British and early independent India. Instead, by tracking the complex relations between the institutional politics, material culture, and theoretical concerns across these clusters, the dissertation charts out the proselytization, practice and eventual demise of four very distinct understandings of an Indian science of life, based on ecological fieldwork, so-called natural experiments, laboratory instrumentation, and a holistic synthesis between population genetics, statistics and history, respectively. The question of the meaning of life, the dissertation shows, was mostly a rhetorical device invoked to underline the theoretical and methodological ambitions of these sciences, while enabling their individual conceptualizations of the relations between environments and organisms, between heredity and habitat, or between human and animal, to be read as the configurations of life itself. These attempts to create new, distinctly Indian knowledge systems and practices existed side by side and were informed with the larger popular and political project claiming ancient scientific glory on behalf of India, but their aspirations and methods cannot be historically conflated.

This thesis examines the depiction of the feral child through the literary study of 18th and 19th century French texts. This body of research isn’t meant to establish historical facts, or to construct a global history of childhood, but rather it’s a work on the representation of humanity, on the issues surrounding the conceptualizations of childhood and animality that emerged parallel to changes in theological and philosophical ideas or mentalities. Reflecting upon the cases of Marie-Angélique le Blanc, Victor de l’Aveyron, and Kaspar Hauser, and supporting narratives as well as on related anthologies of edifying anecdotes of wise, virtuous, obedient children, this study shows patterns of imagery and themes that confirm that the ways of viewing the child in literature and society is linked to path of thought regarding questions of humanity; stories filled with spiritual connotations fade as faith in science moves to the forefront of inquiry. / Graduate

The thesis deals with issues of SOS villages with a special focus on psychological problems. Its goal is to point out the psychological problems related to mental deprivation. The work is divided into the theoretical and the practical part. In the theoretical part, the activities of SOS villages are presented. Further explained is the notion of mental deprivation, its origin, historical development and examples, and it familiarizes with different kind of substitute family care. The practical part introduces a research by the method of questionnaire examination, which was conducted among foster mothers from the SOS village and retired foster mothers.