Brain Attics and Mind Weapons

2020 ◽  
pp. 179-194
Author(s):  
Michael B. Harris-Peyton

This chapter on the crime fiction of Arthur Conan Doyle, Satyajit Ray and Cheng Xiaoqing examines the central role of adaptation in the international development of the crime fiction genre in order to present a more complex understanding of the genre’s international connections and mobility. The chapter questions the distinction between original and reproduction that has typically informed critical studies on the genre’s international spread through an analysis of the works of these three writers from Britain, India (Bengal) and China. In demonstrating the ways in which Ray and Cheng adapt what is typically considered an archetypically British genre to their local settings, the chapter deconstructs the preeminent position granted to Holmes as the originator and, instead, draws attention to how Doyle himself adapted the genre in a transnational dialogue with his literary forebears.

Author(s):  
Nikos Astroulakis

<p>The paper challenges the mainstream stance in the study of applied ethics<br />in international development. Applied ethics is positioned at the macro-social level<br />of global ethics while a specific codification is attempted by formulating international development based on its structural synthesis, in a threefold level: First, the structural synthesis –associated with the framework of existing international development policy–can be found in the ‘market relations’. Second, the analysis specifies the policies applied at the national level and the role of nation-state policy. Third, the paper criticizes the international development institutions’ policies. In each of the levels mentioned above, the analysis reveals the fundamental policy theory issues of neoclassical economics, as the intellectual defender of free market economics.</p>


Author(s):  
Dan Honig

This chapter traces the relationship between political authorizing environments, international development organization (IDO) management, and IDO field agents, drawing on the empirics presented in chapters 6 and 7. It digs into the experience of working for USAID as compared to DFID. It also extends the discussion of delegation to implementing contractors and brings this book’s theorizing of Navigation by Judgment into conversation with other foreign aid solutions aimed at incorporating local knowledge, such as establishing country offices or ensuring projects have country ownership. This chapter connects Part II’s empirics more tightly to the mechanisms theorized in Part I , particularly the role of authorizing environment insecurity and the need to “manage up” (Chapter 4) and their implications for the workplace experience of agents (Chapter 3) and the entry and exit of personnel.


Author(s):  
Harry Minas

This chapter provides an overview of what is known about prevalence, social determinants, treatment, and course and impact of depression in developing, or low- and middle-income, countries. The importance of culture in depression and in the construction and application of diagnostic classifications and in health and social services is highlighted, with a particular focus on the applicability of ‘Western’ diagnostic constructs and service systems in developing country settings. The role of international organizations, such as WHO, and international development programs, such as the SDGs, in improving our understanding of depression and in developing effective and culturally appropriate responses is briefly examined. There is both a need and increasing opportunities in developing countries for greater commitment to mental health of populations, increased investment in mental health and social services, and culturally informed research that will contribute to improved global understanding of mental disorders in general and depression in particular.


GeoJournal ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Gabellieri

AbstractScholars have been investigating detective stories and crime fiction mostly as literary works reflecting the societies that produced them and the movement from modernism to postmodernism. However, these genres have generally been neglected by literary geographers. In the attempt to fill such an epistemological vacuum, this paper examines and compare the function and importance of geography in both classic and late 20th century detective stories. Arthur Conan Doyle’s and Agatha Christie’s detective stories are compared to Mediterranean noir books by Manuel Montalbán, Andrea Camilleri and Jean Claude Izzo. While space is shown to be at the center of the investigations in the former two authors, the latter rather focus on place, that is space invested by the authors with meaning and feelings of identity and belonging. From this perspective, the article argues that detective investigations have become a narrative medium allowing the readership to explore the writer’s representation/construction of his own territorial context, or place-setting, which functions as a co-protagonist of the novel. In conclusion, the paper suggests that the emerging role of place in some of the later popular crime fiction can be interpreted as the result of writer’s sentiment of belonging and, according to Appadurai’s theory, as a literary and geographical discourse aimed at the production of locality.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 328-346
Author(s):  
Esther Miedema ◽  
Winny Koster ◽  
Nicky Pouw ◽  
Philippe Meyer ◽  
Albena Sotirova

There is a burgeoning body of research on the role of ‘shame’ and ‘honour’ in decisions regarding early marriage in different parts of the world. Conceptualizing shame and honour as idioms through which gendered socio-economic inequalities are created and maintained, we examine early marriage decisions in Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Ghana, Burkina Faso and Senegal. While we acknowledge the existence of important differences between countries in terms of the nature and manifestations of shame and honour, we argue that regardless of setting, neither shame and honour, nor female sexuality and chastity can be separated from the socio-economic hierarchies and inequalities. Thus, in this article we seek to identify the cross-cutting dynamic of marriage as a means to overcome the shame associated with young single women’s sexuality, protecting family honour and social standing, and/or securing young women’s social-economic future. Building on our data and available scholarship, we question the potential of emphasizing ‘choice’ as a means of reducing early marriage and advancing women’s emancipation in international development efforts. Instead, we argue in favour of initiatives that engage with young people and caregivers on the ways in which, at grassroot levels, communities may revise narratives of respectability, marriageability and social standing.


2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-71
Author(s):  
Lorna Hill

Abstract This study will explore the role of female authors in contemporary Scottish crime fiction. Over the past thirty years, women writers have overhauled the traditionally male dominated genre of crime fiction by writing about strong female characters who drive the plot and solve the crimes. Authors including Val McDermid, Denise Mina and Lin Anderson are just a few of the women who have challenged the expectation of gender and genre. By setting their novels in contemporary society they reflect a range of social and political issues through the lens of a female protagonist. By closely examining the female characters, both journalists, in Val McDermid’s Lindsay Gordon series and Denise Mina’s Paddy Meehan series, I wish to explore the issue of gender through these writers’ perspectives. This essay documents the influence of these writers on my own practice-based research which involves writing a crime novel set in a post referendum Scotland. I examine a progressive and contemporary Scottish society, where women hold many senior positions in public life, and investigate whether this has an effect on the outcome of crimes. Through this narrative, my main character will focus on the current and largely hidden crimes of human trafficking and domestic abuse. By doing this I examine the ways in which the modern crime novel has evolved to cross genre boundaries. In addition to focusing on a crime, the victims and witnesses, today’s crime novels are tackling social issues to reflect society’s changing attitudes and values.


2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-150
Author(s):  
Jacek Mydla

Arthur Conan Doyle famously popularised science in his series of detective stories by placing its three constitutive elements (scientific knowledge, the collection of evidence, and art of making inferences), in his protagonist Sherlock Holmes. The legacy is present in contemporary crime fiction, but the competencies have been distributed among a group of individuals involved in the investigation. This distribution has affected and changed the position of the detective vis-à-vis scientific expertise. Science, chiefly in the form of different branches of forensics, is as indispensable as the detective, and authors have been working out different ways of making the two work together. As an example of this cooperation, the paper examines Mark Billingham’s 2015 novel Time of Death.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 326-327
Author(s):  
Christine Okali

Spriggs, J., Chambers, B. and Kayrooz. C. 2019: Towards Collaborative Research in International Development: The Central Role of Social Science. Edward Elgar Publishing. 244 pp. £75. ISBN: 978 1 78990 368 3 (hardcover).


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