<p> Kabir, the weaver-poet, has continued to permeate many facets of Indian society since his life in the fifteenth century. The poetry attributed to him is a large body of work existing in oral, print, recording, and other forms that encompasses much more today than what Kabir said in his lifetime. Between the biting social criticisms and intimate devotional messages, the poetry bridges many ideological gaps, ensuring its longevity. Through fieldwork across India, I came to understand Kabir as a musical tradition, rooted in poetry, that continually renews its sonic character to speak to new generations while maintaining a heterogeneous variety of styles (folk, classical, semi-classical, and more). Predominantly studied previously as a text-based tradition, a focus on the range of musical styles and content that Kabir encompasses enables us to understand its popularity across religious, socioeconomic, and generational divisions and provides insights into Kabir's place in today's North Indian society.</p>

<p> This dissertation is a study of the development of a relatively new musical instrument in traditional South Indian classical music known as the <i> kanjira,</i> a diminutive single-headed frame drum with a single pair of jingles. Iconographic studies and published accounts detail much of the instrument's history, which involved transculturation and diffusion from North India to South India. Organological and ethnographic studies show that significant change has occurred as the tradition migrated. Musical and cultural analyses detail the intricacies of the musical performance practice and semiotic representations incorporating zoomorphic and other kinds of icons from nature and Hinduism. Contextual analyses further explain issues having to do with continuity and culture change as the <i>kanjira</i> tradition was renewed during its diffusion from North Indian folk and court music circles into South Indian Carnatic music. Within the traditional hierarchy of Carnatic music and with the onset of modernization, social pressures manifested that resulted in <i> kanjira</i> performers adapting to new internationalized contexts that brought about further change. Drawing on my fieldwork as well as historical and electronic sources, this dissertation documents the intersection of these modernizing cultural factors and the <i>kanjira</i>'s complex development in the relatively conservative musical hierarchy of South Indian classical music, as well as its continuing musical evolution beyond the borders of India. </p>

Marriage is an intimate interpersonal bond, a juridic reality, between a man and a woman, who are legally habiles, and it comes into being through their mutual, free and irrevocable consent expressed in accord with the norm of law (cf. CIC, c. 1057; CCEO, c. 817). This mutual consent can be affected by several intrinsic and external factors which can render it null or invalid. One among these factors is grave fear imposed from without, which the person is not able to resist except by choosing marriage, and this no doubt invalidates the marriage. One form of grave fear implied in canon 1103 of the Latin Code and canon 825 of the Eastern Code is reverential fear. The effect of reverential fear on the choices one makes is determined largely by the culture of people. The system of arranged marriages is so deeply rooted in Indian culture that, even today, almost ninety-five percent of the marriages are contracted in accord with that system. Although this system has its own merits within the context of a particular culture, it is not without its negative impact on the freedom of the Christian faithful in the choice of their life-partners. This is particularly evident in cases of reverential fear. The specific question we responded to in our thesis is: What is the impact of reverential fear, which is deeply rooted in the Indian culture, on matrimonial consent? We have organized our response to this question under four sub-questions and the response to these questions is developed in four chapters. In the first chapter we deal with the interpretation of ecclesial law in light of culture. The second chapter deals with the nature and the elements of matrimonial consent. The third chapter is a study of reverential fear as a ground of marriage nullity with particular reference to the factors that underlie reverential fear in the Indian cultural context. The focus of the fourth chapter is canonical jurisprudence on reverential fear. What we have discovered in our study is that there is a very close link between culture and law, and that a proper understanding of the cultural background of a person or of a community is very important to provide a just and equitable interpretation of law, marriage law in particular, and to apply it to a concrete case. Hence, a careful analysis of various cultural factors which impinge on matrimonial consent leads us to conclude that cultural factors can have a serious impact on the consent of the spouses and, indeed, the culturally rooted reverential fear can substantially affect the freedom of choice of marriage itself and/or of the marriage partner.

While community-based natural resource management projects have acquired increasing importance in the last decade, the notion of ‘community’ that is implicit in them has been subject to critique on a number of grounds. It is this that forms the starting point for my dissertation. This dissertation starts by discussing the diverse forms that ‘the community’ takes in three different water projects in the state of Maharashtra in western India. For instance, the community could be either an administrative unit or an ecological unit or an irrigation unit, and each of these has different equity and sustainability implications. The three cases also differ in the kind of internal characteristics they possess and how these contribute to decentralized sustainable development. Furthermore, while reified notions of the community serve a strategic purpose in one water project, in general, utopian notions of communities could lead to lack of acknowledgement of the interaction between the community and other institutions such as markets, with the result that an important arena of influencing equity is lost. Secondly, a study of three kinds of equities within the three communities—equities in rule content, process of rule-making and outcomes, reveals that the redistributive potential of water is realized only to a limited extent. The different equities are inter-related and depend on a variety of factors such as ideological motivation of the actors, the kind of water source, the prior internal organization present, the legal validity of the institutional arrangements and the nature of the leadership. Equity in content is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for equity in outcome. But equity in rule-making is the most critical—it is needed for implementation, to ensure continued equity in content and outcome, and to provide flexibility to use unexpected opportunities for changes in equity. Thirdly, I discuss the role that the state can play in further facilitating community-based sustainable development efforts. For instance, the state can use legislation for a clearer constitution of the unit of the community, as well as facilitate equity by influencing the decision-making rules that associations involved in water projects follow.

In this study I explore two understudied aspects of India's informal economy, viz. the institutions that sustain informal knowledge, and gender disparities among self-employed workers using a combination of primary survey and interview methods as well as econometric estimation. The data used in the study come from the Indian National Sample Survey (NSS) as well as from fieldwork conducted in the city of Banaras (Varanasi) in North India. The vast majority of the Indian work-force is "uneducated" from a conventional point of view. Even when they have received some schooling, formal education rarely prepares individuals for employment. Rather, various forms of apprenticeships and on-the-job training are the dominant modes of knowledge acquisition. The institutions that enable creation and transfer of knowledge in the informal economy are poorly understood because informal knowledge itself is understudied. However, the rise of the so-called "Knowledge Society" has created a large literature on traditional and indigenous knowledge and has brought some visibility to the informal knowledge possessed by peasants, artisans, and other workers in the informal economy. The present study extends this strand of research. In Chapter Three, taking the weaving industry as a case-study, work is introduced into the study of knowledge. Thus informal knowledge is studied in the context of the production relations that create and sustain it. Further, the family mode of production and apprenticeships are foregrounded as important institutions that achieve inter-generational transfer of knowledge at a low cost. Clustering of weaving firms ensures fast dissemination of new fabric designs and patterns which holds down monopoly rents. In Chapter Four taking advantage of a recently issued Geographical Indication (GI), an intellectual property right (IPR) that attempts to standardize the Banaras Sari to protect its niche in the face of powerloom-made imitation products, I investigate the likely effects of such an attempt to create craft authenticity. Through field observations and via interviews with weavers, merchants, State officials and NGO workers, I find that the criteria of authenticity have largely been developed without consulting artisans and as a result tend to be overly restrictive. In contrast, I find that weavers themselves have a more dynamic and fluid notion of authenticity. Homeworking women are widely perceived to be among the most vulnerable and exploited groups of workers. Piece-rates and undocumented hours of work hide extremely low hourly wages and workers themselves are often invisible. Though women form a crucial part of the Banaras textile industry, to the outside observer they are invisible, both because they are in purdah and because women's work proceeds in the shadow of weaving itself, which is a male occupation. In Chapter Five, using field observations, interviews, and time-use analysis I show that women perform paid work for up to eight hours a day but are still seen as working in their spare time. Because the opportunity cost of spare time is zero, any wage above zero is deemed an improvement. Hourly wage rates in Banaras are found to be as low as eight to ten cents an hour, well below the legal minimum wage. In Chapter Six, I use National Sample Survey data on the informal textile industry to test the hypothesis that emerges from ethnographic work in Banaras. If women are indeed penalized for undertaking joint production of market and non-market goods, women working on their own without hired workers are expected to perform much worse than men working by themselves. I find that after accounting for differences in education, assets, working hours, occupation and other relevant variables, women working by themselves earn 52% less than their male counterparts. This gender penalty disappears in case of self-employed women who can afford to employ wage-workers. I also show that women in the informal economy are more likely to be engaged in putting-out or subcontracting arrangements and suffer a gender penalty as a result.

No description available.

<p>My dissertation seeks to explain the variations in decentralization we observe among states. Why, for example, are some states more decentralized than others? More importantly, why do central leaders in some states devolve power to local politicians, who may defect to pose challenges to the leader? </p><p> </p><p>In answering these questions, I develop a theory of decentralization with two main components: First, information asymmetries that exist between central leaders and local politicians about voters - local politicians know more about the voters than central leaders do, and second, the fear central leaders have about local defection. I argue that central leaders undertake decentralization when information asymmetries that exist between the central leaders and local politicians become politically salient and the chances of local defection are fewer. </p><p>This information theory is tested systematically on quantitative and qualitative evidence from Indian cases. In the concluding chapter, I examine how the theory could explain decentralization in cases outside India.</p> / Dissertation

<p> The Tharu are reportedly the fourth largest minority group in Nepal. Yet despite their numerical strength, their social experience in modern Nepal largely consists of marginalization. A culturally and linguistically diverse people indigenous to the flat, southern Terai region of Nepal, the Tharu have claimed an ethnic group identity in the past sixty years in light of their shared geographic location and state exploitation, as well as the rise of ethnic politics in Nepal. I examine how performance practices and musical experiences are central to the Tharu&rsquo;s group identity formation. First, I examine how the Tharu combat their social exploitation largely through musical means. I focus on the role of sociomusical practices in community ritual, its transformation through folkloricization, and extension as tools for activism. The cultural significance of these practices shift as the Tharu come into contact not only with Nepal&rsquo;s changing political, social and economic scenes, but also paradigms of global indigenism and human rights. However, even as a marginalized people, the Tharu have their own internal politics. Second, I examine how musical practices are locations for productive friction within Tharu communities. Musical performances constitute intense community negotiation and contestation concerning Tharu womanhood and religious identity, and are places where the Tharu produce situated knowledge about development and modernity. While not ignoring political, historical, and global frameworks, my focus on sociomusical practices brings attention to how an ethnic identity is generated and embodied on a local level.</p>

<p> The study explored the impact of acculturation on the stigma associated with mental illness and the relationship of shame with stigma towards mental illness in an Asian Indian sample. The participants of the study were college students residing in the USA and India who responded to one of two randomly assigned vignettes describing a hypothetical cousin who was either experiencing the symptoms of moderate depression or schizophrenia. Correlation, multivariate analysis, and regression analysis were conducted on the acquired data. The results indicated that level of acculturation had a statistically significant relationship with stigma in both samples. However, when specific aspects of stigma were examined, such as expected consequences, disclosure, concealment and help-giving attitudes, no significant relationships were found. Exploratory analyses were conducted to examine associations between other variables and it was found that expected consequences and shame were strongly related.</p><p>

Abstract not available.