Mock-epic is a concept from literary genre used here to interpret the sound bites and invectives of terrorism in the aftermath of September 11. Violence, time immemorial, has been the center of discussion; historically, it becomes the theme of evolution; psychologically, the corollary of human nature; educationally, the enemy of social learning and order; sociologically, the (wrong?) path to change.
Terrorism is identified, as ‘the violence’ of present times, monomania of politicians and the obsession of the media, has become a weapon for doctrinal camouflage and mystification to keep the reality remote from public awareness. After the demise of the Soviet Bloc the unipolar world has been in the lookout for a new enemy. ‘New war on Terrorism’, the new coinage, has at last filled up this space. The cold logic of geopolitical interests, and the self-centeredness of the privileged, wealthy and powerful nations today obscures the root causes of terrorism. To absolve any responsibility, it is important that people should not realize that today’s fully matured terrorism got nurtured during the Cold War détente decades. It is important to keep in wraps the fact that regionalization and internationalization of domestic conflicts has resulted into the formation of transnational networks among insurgent groups. It cannot be revealed that open economy has turned the terrorists into occupational forces whose money is skillfully and professionally managed by investments, trading and ‘tax collection’ from the Diaspora. People should be kept distracted from the fact that the so called ‘terrorists’ of today against whom the new war on terrorism is being fought were friends of yesteryears when they were fighting the Soviets, have suddenly become enemies of humanity. Thus, in present times the sublimity and gravity of terrorism has been subverted into a ‘mock-epic’.
Terrorists of today can operate in and from far away theaters. Globalization – increased migration and communication, greater access to weapons and training, and free flow of ideas and technologies – has made this a reality. Terrorist groups consciously incorporating the three vital elements economics, security and military strength, are capable of operating worldwide. Thus, they are following an example of multinational corporations like Coca-Cola, intelligence agencies like CIA, activist organizations like Amnesty and their true brethren- the international criminal organizations like Mafias. Just as nation states worldwide feel that they have lost control over the multinationals, similarly display a lack of regulatory actions against transnational criminality. We have to move towards respect of multiculturism – tolerance of multiethnic and multireligion practices, and learn to adjust with multilanguage expression - to triumph over the ideological posturing of the terrorists.
In case of terrorism, it is important to recognize that it is essentially a political crime and therefore must be countered by upholding law, as opposed to breaking it. Imitating criminals to reduce criminality cannot be a model for us. We want to see our terrorists as bandits and not soldiers.
Terrorism develops and spreads on the contours of counter-terrorism campaign. Vested political interest to maintain the hegemony and indiscriminate response of the state against the terrorist de-legitimize the state. This is how terrorism gains public support. Due to this ‘new war on terrorism’, in present times the seriousness of terrorism has been subverted into a ‘mock-epic’ that can only aggravate the volatile situation in today’s world; the worst hit will be the poor as usual. Military action is a short term complimentary measure that does not really wipe out the terrorists whose direction of violence is non-combatants. Thus, instead of singing paeans of admiration about the statesmanship of politicians in power for initiating ‘the new war on terrorism’, we should rather seek to establish a society founded on criteria of economic parity and social justice.
We must be exposed to the hollowness of our skewed understanding of terrorism at the alter of moral obligation of humanitarianism. Then we can try to map the root causes and meaning of terrorism, thus showing the disparity between the ‘real’ meaning and ‘applied’ meaning of terrorism. Only then may be we will have a perspective addressing the problem of terrorism in today’s world.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Tequila and Salt
1. There are at least two people in this world
that you would die for.
2. At least 15 people in this world
love you in some way.
3. The only reason anyone would ever hate you
is because they want to
be just like you.
4. A smile from you can bring happiness to anyone,
even if they don't like you.
5. Every night,
SOMEONE thinks about you
before they go to sleep.
6. You mean the world to someone.
7. You are special and unique.
8. Someone that you don't even know exists loves you.
9. When you make the biggest mistake ever,
something good comes from it.
10. When you think the world
has turned its back on you
take another look.
11. Always remember the compliments you received.
Forget about the rude remarks.
And always remember....
when life hands you Lemons,
ask for Tequila & Salt !
that you would die for.
2. At least 15 people in this world
love you in some way.
3. The only reason anyone would ever hate you
is because they want to
be just like you.
4. A smile from you can bring happiness to anyone,
even if they don't like you.
5. Every night,
SOMEONE thinks about you
before they go to sleep.
6. You mean the world to someone.
7. You are special and unique.
8. Someone that you don't even know exists loves you.
9. When you make the biggest mistake ever,
something good comes from it.
10. When you think the world
has turned its back on you
take another look.
11. Always remember the compliments you received.
Forget about the rude remarks.
And always remember....
when life hands you Lemons,
ask for Tequila & Salt !
Quality of Higher Education in India and Pay Scale Revision as per Sixth Pay Commission
The Sixth pay commission and its implementation by the Government (Center as well as State) in higher education in India has left the academic community completely divided and de-motivated. Attracting talent and promoting merit are two pariah terms in higher education today. For last two years, though ideally we should talk from the year 2006 (hence four year in reality), this process has undergone numerous changes through government orders and memorandums, all of which could have been avoided by a single comprehensive order had it not been for the fact the priorities were not lop sided. As of today the law favours those who have joined higher education in colleges and universities of India in 1992 or prior to that. Irrespective of their academic background (was far less stringent then due to absence of UGC NET), achievement (like Doctoral research and project) all teachers of colleges and universities are best placed in terms of their designation and pay packet. This has become possible because AIFUCTO, one of the highest and most powerful teachers body in the country, contrary to erstwhile role of protector of the benefits of teachers, have taken up the cause of those who have been least productive during their academic tenure.
The initial recommendation had suggested a four tired structured – Assistant Professor (present Lecturer and Senior Lecture), Junior Associate Professor (Selection Grade Lecturers-those who have not done their PhD and will have to end their career at that stage if they do not complete their PhD), Associate Professor (Reader), and Professor. This structure was formulated after a teacher’s performance and commitment to higher education was taken into consideration. However, this structure was allegedly scuttled by AIFUCTO to ensure that teachers without any research do not get differentiated nor they are held accountable for their inertial/inaction/academic impotency. Redrafted notification of UGC/MHRD, allegedly on the initiative of AIFUCTO, brought back the structure to three tires, clubbing together Associate Professor (Selection Grade Lecturers-those who have not done their PhD), Associate Professor (Reader), not foreseeing that a huge number to teachers are going to get unnecessarily penalized for it.
The complications that arose from the above notification, and intransigence of the Higher Education Departments, Governments both at Center and State of India:
1. It may be noted that re-designation process is yet to start of any where within the state run Universities.
2. New recruit teachers in the open-post of Reader after 2006 are being deprived of all the benefits of Pay Revision citing the clause that the person have remain three years in the post to claim the post of Associate Professor. Better eligibility/performance record allows a person to seek employment through open advertisement so that they can pace their advancement. Initiative and enterprise of such candidates are being trampled by promotion of academic impotency of senior teachers. This has resulted in a divide and animosity and a forced neglect among many teachers.
3. New recruit teachers in the post of Professor, after 2006, are also deprived of full pay under similar lackadaisical formulation of regulation and misinterpretation of the regulation by the UGC/MHRD/Department of Higher Education in States.
4. Those who are in-job/incumbents, and have already become readers under old regulation (after 09 years and have a PhD degree), this three year period of waiting (for completion of 12 years regular service), has placed them in an untenable situation. Reader post being abolished from 2006, they will be/are being down graded to Assistant Professor pay band (III), and no body knows what will be their designation
5. Another issue of concern and great de-motivation has been the clause regarding awarding additional increments to teachers who have been awarded PhD degree following new regulation or the then regulation (law of the land) applicable during the time of the individual teachers’ registration for PhD Degree. After all, every university functions under the prevalent regulation of the UGC, therefore a teacher who is completing PhD work now or is being awarded now cannot retroactively apply present regulation. Furthermore, if it is argued that only those who do their PhD following present format are eligible, then it is a huge “motion of no-confidence” on the seriousness and competence of the individual candidate, his/her supervisor, approval authorities like the PhD Committee, Court/Council/ Syndicate, the University as well as the recognizing body of the same University, namely, the UGC. So it is not merely a matter of pay increment but also the reputation and integrity of all concerned involved in the process is being questioned and subjected to humiliation. Therefore, there is a confusion regarding the teachers who are in service and are completing/have recently completed PhD are neither being given the three advance increments (under old regulation) nor five increments (under new regulation). It is important to take appropriate action to not only rejuvenate young teachers by recognizing their hard work under same parameters, but also save the PhD program from ill-repute.
6. Differential treatment of institutions of higher education in India has complicated the matter further. Blue chip Institutes like IIT/IIM get more attention than mainstream Universities though in terms of criteria for entry point qualification and career advancement there is no difference. The Central Universities on the other hand are flush with benefits and funds though management of the same has been dismal.
Most of the State Teacher’s Bodies have agitated for implementation of the HRD Ministry notification in toto, including enhancement of retirement age, adequate funding for university and colleges in the light of pay revision, release of arrears, filling up of vacancies in the higher education system CAS, cause of librarians of colleges, full pension on completion of 20 years of service and an end to contractual appointment in accordance with the advice of the HRD Ministry. The agitation of the teaching community seems to have been forced upon them because they have to wait longer period than that of central/state government employees for implementation of revised pay scales; refusal of the MHRD to accept/implement the UGC recommendations based on consultation with the teaching community across the country; unreasonable and intransient nature of the offers/diktats made by the MHRD at every stage, relatively less attractive monetary compensation; withering central assistance to states, limiting promotional opportunities for teachers in University vis-à-vis Colleges. However, what is seen is that various issues raised are used one against the other for not implementing any one issue. For example, arrear payment is now linked to the age of retirement of the teachers. Each issue is separate and requires detailed consideration, therefore, needs to be implemented on the basis of relative merit of the issue. Linking one with the other is a motivated act on the part of the Government to delay and deprive.
In context of Primary Education in India, Dr Niranjan Aradhya and Aruna Kashyap (2006, The ‘Fundamentals’. Right to Education in India, Centre for Child and the Law, National Law School of India University, Bangalore, p.16) correctly raise the issue of ‘content of law’ that seems appropriate for Higher Education in India also, esp. in context of the subverting merit in recent regulation regarding pay revision of teachers.
“The content of the right is left to be regulated by law. In order to implement the fundamental right to education through a rights-based model of legislation, one needs to determine the features of such a model. However, before examining the elements of a rights-based model of legislation, it may be apt to briefly discuss Amartya Sen’s caveat with respect to legislating for the implementation of a human right. He points out that legislations, which go a long way towards ensuring enforceability of specific minimum entitlements, may also have the negative effect of giving restrictive or limited interpretations of the content of the concerned human right. Legislations may also give rise to policy inaction on the ground that specific legal rules have been complied with.36 For example, if a law lays down that the duty of the State is to ensure x, y, z, then the State will restrict its activities to ensuring x, y, z without looking beyond that framework. Therefore, while legislation is certainly a welcome development, it should not be treated as the only vehicle of implementing human rights. The legislation should also be supplemented by other non-coercive rules for effective implementation of the human right…This caveat needs to be taken into account during legislative processes and adequate safeguards need to be built into the law. While there cannot be a fool-proof mechanism of countering negative outcomes of law, the identifiable negative outcomes may be mitigated. For instance, governmental inaction could be countered through institutionalised periodic review of policy as well as law to ensure that progressive changes are made to both from time to time.37 In addition to such periodic review of policies, there should also be an institutionalised periodic review of the implementation of not only the policy but also the law. Furthermore, the quality of elementary education also depends on the quality of teaching staff, non-teaching staff, sensitivity and awareness of administrative staff in the various government departments Therefore, training and developing the capacities of such personnel is a critical component of elementary education.”
In the meantime, one must worry about super-ordinate role of the commerce ministry of Government of India in recent year vis-à-vis the HRD ministry that defines education policy. The potentiality of higher education in India as a big business has attracted foreign players (can be allegedly translated into FDIs and kickbacks?) and they want to gain a share of this lucrative pie by establishing their own institutions. Overspending Governments find this as an easy avenue to spruce their coffers by allowing these players access to the Indian market. The question is at what terms?, and normatively should that be the primary focus of higher education policy in India?, esp. in context of the fact that it is the desi-higher education institutions over the last five decades have served not only the country but also far off places like the Silicon Valley in US. The dilemma of democracy in juxtaposition with a free trade regime is another area to delve into. Dweep Chanana (September 14, 2006, India's Higher Education Policy-New Rules, The Hindustan Times) correctly points out that:
Public spending on education is similar to spending on healthcare or infrastructure. From an economics perspective, it is a public good. From a social contract perspective, it is the reason why government exists. The priorities of the commerce ministry are, unfortunately, driven by neither perspective, but rather by a short-term financial perspective. Financial sustainability is important, but cannot and should not be the overarching goal of a country-wide education policy. Governments make investments in public health, education, and infrastructure not because they will generate a financial return but because they are essential to the State's development. The purpose of government is to serve its people, and providing education is one of its functions. If not, we get the sort of twisted logic the ministry has used in encouraging private sector spending: "Public spending on higher education should be discouraged since private benefits outweigh social benefits. Subsidising higher education benefits the rich more than the poor." It is true that education, particularly higher education, generates both individual and public benefits. That, however, is not the same as saying that 'private benefits outweigh social benefits'. And to go as far as saying that such spending benefits the rich more is utter nonsense.
It seems that the above is one of the most important causative factors for the widening regional disparities in higher education in India. With a motive to enhance the chances of foreign institutions in higher education in India we see evidence of retrogression of the central and state finances. Core to this financial constriction at the Centre as well as in the states has been the rise of powerful vested interests that appropriate a major share of public finances to the disadvantage of the rest of the society and economy at large. What is being ignored is the fact that these powerful lobbies do a great harm to the public exchequer by ensuring maximum private gain from public expenditure with minimum returns. The principal vested interests operating in this field could be broadly characterized as the desi industrialists in association with their foreign masters, the farm lobby, the bureaucracy with an eye for fat-pay employment in these private institutions after superannuation, and the political class. Pay revision in higher education in India this time indeed has become a victim of a strong and often unholy alliance between the ruling politicians and these vested interests to their mutual advantage.
Prashant Gupta’s (in “Making Tigers of Dinosaurs: Roadmap for Reform of Indian Universities to create Sustainable Knowledge Capital in the era of Globalization”
http://www.prashantgupta.info/tigers.pdf) views, if taken into consideration, may improve the vision of administrators and politicians at the helm of higher education in India and reduce their value deficiency:
“There are today 200 universities, 8,000 colleges, 5 million students, and 27,000 teachers in higher education. The figures are high and impressive, but the first casualty of the expansion phenomenon is the quality. In the post-Independence era, the Indian Institutes of Technology, consciously patterned after the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the U.S., received substantial overseas help right from the outset. With support from four donor nations, the five IITs benefited from guest faculty from outside of India, the ability to send Indian faculty for training abroad, and contributions of modern laboratory equipment and facilities. The Indian Institutes of Management established similar international links: IIM/Ahmedabad, for example, still maintains strong connections with the Harvard Business School. Except these APEX Quality Institutions, more than 90% Universities are providing paper degrees mainly to meet qualification criterion in government jobs and such education cannot be considered knowledge capital. Perhaps the most recent innovation in Indian higher education, the Indira Gandhi National Open University (together with similar, state-sponsored Open Universities), drew heavily on the UK experience with distance education and the Open University concept. But majority of institutions of higher education in India are suffering…Three main issues are absence of strategic planning; resource model inadequacies; and course planning, resource crunch & selection of students…University needs to transform into developers and disseminators of knowledge in the emerging medium. The mission of the research university may be expanded from the theoretical goal of increasing knowledge to one actively concerned with both increasing knowledge and sharing the benefits of that knowledge with its immediate community Here are four ways to improve: PURPOSE: the separate community, industry and education missions into a cohesive whole that seeks to benefit the development of society for e.g. better understanding of use of country’s resources tied with scientific & economic progress. SPEED: Harness the intellectual capacity at the University to encourage the systematic development and innovation of digital media in teaching and learning.
DISTRIBUTION: Build educational resources meant for distribution beyond campus & licensing University content to start-ups for development of knowledge-based resources. COLLABORATION: Joint research and greater interaction between scientists and academic community. The idea is to promote greater usage of the more expensive labs which are not being used much; while facilities which are not so expensive and are being used need not be shared. The aim is to pool in resources for maximum efficient use Understanding India's education systems contributes to the larger understanding of this complex nation's diverse society. General trends and averages concerning social conditions on a national level may not adequately describe how human activity is expressed spatially and temporally in specific areas. The great variations in local environmental and social conditions require that national and state or union territory programs aimed at improving the quality of life not adhere too strictly to any one standard plan. Local climate, topography, and drainage patterns all need to be considered in terms of how they relate to local forms of land use and ethnic and linguistic groupings. Increasing urbanization in India also complicates efforts at monitoring local conditions. Only with the full support and understanding of India's many rural and urban residents will new ways of focusing India's immense human resources toward the goals of developing and conserving renewable natural resources, limiting population growth, providing increased health care, and achieving education for all be successful.”
The complications, if not resolved, will not only de-motivate academicians with initiative and ambition, but also may ensnare the whole process of pay revision in higher education into legal whirlpool. The logic forwarded by K R Shyam Sundar (August 15-22, 1998 Teachers' Strike: The Larger Agenda, Economic and Political Weekly, p. 2213-2214) more than a decade back still holds well when he says: “It is well known that teachers do not enjoy the kind of perks that even bankers do, not to speak of those enjoyed by civil servants. The absence of perks needs to be compensated in direct money terms. Critics point out that teachers spend less time in the campus, which itself is a perk. Teachers do spend time in extra curricular activities and in research and general reading apart from preparing for the lectures. Secondly, considerations of quantity are not an appropriate yardstick to judge the teachers' work; this ignores quality. If quantity is a criteria, then the watchman should be more than a part time teacher. Again, a carpenter, a coolie or the construction worker should be paid at least as much as a software engineer: the bias against brawn work in favour of brain work then would need to be rectified. Finally, the limited promotional opportunities for teachers would place them in the long run in an unfavourable position as compared to civil servants.” One opinion making the rounds is to reward teachers based on their classroom performance, as measured on standardized student achievement tests and principal evaluations. This merit pay argument is designed to provide appropriate financial incentive for teachers to improve student outcomes, to encourage the retention of proficient teachers, and to attract high-skilled individuals to the teaching profession. However, according to Richard Buddin and Others, in a Working Paper, August 2007, “Merit Pay for Florida Teachers. Design and Implementation Issues”, Florida Education Association, contend that “the design and implementation of merit pay faces several key challenges. First, student outcomes are difficult to define and measure. Second, the contributions of individual teachers to student outcomes are difficult to disentangle from student background and prior achievement. The analysis shows serious deficiencies in several measures of teacher performance. Policy makers should be wary of adapting any measure without careful analysis of its properties and a plan to monitor how it is performing. The key issue is whether the incentive and sorting effects of an admittedly imperfect merit pay system can improve the quality of the teacher workforce.” The professed claim of all stake holders that higher education in India can improve qualitatively only if best students could be attracted to the teaching profession will remain a cherished dream only that got trampled under the juggernaut of mediocrity and poverty of philosophy.
The initial recommendation had suggested a four tired structured – Assistant Professor (present Lecturer and Senior Lecture), Junior Associate Professor (Selection Grade Lecturers-those who have not done their PhD and will have to end their career at that stage if they do not complete their PhD), Associate Professor (Reader), and Professor. This structure was formulated after a teacher’s performance and commitment to higher education was taken into consideration. However, this structure was allegedly scuttled by AIFUCTO to ensure that teachers without any research do not get differentiated nor they are held accountable for their inertial/inaction/academic impotency. Redrafted notification of UGC/MHRD, allegedly on the initiative of AIFUCTO, brought back the structure to three tires, clubbing together Associate Professor (Selection Grade Lecturers-those who have not done their PhD), Associate Professor (Reader), not foreseeing that a huge number to teachers are going to get unnecessarily penalized for it.
The complications that arose from the above notification, and intransigence of the Higher Education Departments, Governments both at Center and State of India:
1. It may be noted that re-designation process is yet to start of any where within the state run Universities.
2. New recruit teachers in the open-post of Reader after 2006 are being deprived of all the benefits of Pay Revision citing the clause that the person have remain three years in the post to claim the post of Associate Professor. Better eligibility/performance record allows a person to seek employment through open advertisement so that they can pace their advancement. Initiative and enterprise of such candidates are being trampled by promotion of academic impotency of senior teachers. This has resulted in a divide and animosity and a forced neglect among many teachers.
3. New recruit teachers in the post of Professor, after 2006, are also deprived of full pay under similar lackadaisical formulation of regulation and misinterpretation of the regulation by the UGC/MHRD/Department of Higher Education in States.
4. Those who are in-job/incumbents, and have already become readers under old regulation (after 09 years and have a PhD degree), this three year period of waiting (for completion of 12 years regular service), has placed them in an untenable situation. Reader post being abolished from 2006, they will be/are being down graded to Assistant Professor pay band (III), and no body knows what will be their designation
5. Another issue of concern and great de-motivation has been the clause regarding awarding additional increments to teachers who have been awarded PhD degree following new regulation or the then regulation (law of the land) applicable during the time of the individual teachers’ registration for PhD Degree. After all, every university functions under the prevalent regulation of the UGC, therefore a teacher who is completing PhD work now or is being awarded now cannot retroactively apply present regulation. Furthermore, if it is argued that only those who do their PhD following present format are eligible, then it is a huge “motion of no-confidence” on the seriousness and competence of the individual candidate, his/her supervisor, approval authorities like the PhD Committee, Court/Council/ Syndicate, the University as well as the recognizing body of the same University, namely, the UGC. So it is not merely a matter of pay increment but also the reputation and integrity of all concerned involved in the process is being questioned and subjected to humiliation. Therefore, there is a confusion regarding the teachers who are in service and are completing/have recently completed PhD are neither being given the three advance increments (under old regulation) nor five increments (under new regulation). It is important to take appropriate action to not only rejuvenate young teachers by recognizing their hard work under same parameters, but also save the PhD program from ill-repute.
6. Differential treatment of institutions of higher education in India has complicated the matter further. Blue chip Institutes like IIT/IIM get more attention than mainstream Universities though in terms of criteria for entry point qualification and career advancement there is no difference. The Central Universities on the other hand are flush with benefits and funds though management of the same has been dismal.
Most of the State Teacher’s Bodies have agitated for implementation of the HRD Ministry notification in toto, including enhancement of retirement age, adequate funding for university and colleges in the light of pay revision, release of arrears, filling up of vacancies in the higher education system CAS, cause of librarians of colleges, full pension on completion of 20 years of service and an end to contractual appointment in accordance with the advice of the HRD Ministry. The agitation of the teaching community seems to have been forced upon them because they have to wait longer period than that of central/state government employees for implementation of revised pay scales; refusal of the MHRD to accept/implement the UGC recommendations based on consultation with the teaching community across the country; unreasonable and intransient nature of the offers/diktats made by the MHRD at every stage, relatively less attractive monetary compensation; withering central assistance to states, limiting promotional opportunities for teachers in University vis-à-vis Colleges. However, what is seen is that various issues raised are used one against the other for not implementing any one issue. For example, arrear payment is now linked to the age of retirement of the teachers. Each issue is separate and requires detailed consideration, therefore, needs to be implemented on the basis of relative merit of the issue. Linking one with the other is a motivated act on the part of the Government to delay and deprive.
In context of Primary Education in India, Dr Niranjan Aradhya and Aruna Kashyap (2006, The ‘Fundamentals’. Right to Education in India, Centre for Child and the Law, National Law School of India University, Bangalore, p.16) correctly raise the issue of ‘content of law’ that seems appropriate for Higher Education in India also, esp. in context of the subverting merit in recent regulation regarding pay revision of teachers.
“The content of the right is left to be regulated by law. In order to implement the fundamental right to education through a rights-based model of legislation, one needs to determine the features of such a model. However, before examining the elements of a rights-based model of legislation, it may be apt to briefly discuss Amartya Sen’s caveat with respect to legislating for the implementation of a human right. He points out that legislations, which go a long way towards ensuring enforceability of specific minimum entitlements, may also have the negative effect of giving restrictive or limited interpretations of the content of the concerned human right. Legislations may also give rise to policy inaction on the ground that specific legal rules have been complied with.36 For example, if a law lays down that the duty of the State is to ensure x, y, z, then the State will restrict its activities to ensuring x, y, z without looking beyond that framework. Therefore, while legislation is certainly a welcome development, it should not be treated as the only vehicle of implementing human rights. The legislation should also be supplemented by other non-coercive rules for effective implementation of the human right…This caveat needs to be taken into account during legislative processes and adequate safeguards need to be built into the law. While there cannot be a fool-proof mechanism of countering negative outcomes of law, the identifiable negative outcomes may be mitigated. For instance, governmental inaction could be countered through institutionalised periodic review of policy as well as law to ensure that progressive changes are made to both from time to time.37 In addition to such periodic review of policies, there should also be an institutionalised periodic review of the implementation of not only the policy but also the law. Furthermore, the quality of elementary education also depends on the quality of teaching staff, non-teaching staff, sensitivity and awareness of administrative staff in the various government departments Therefore, training and developing the capacities of such personnel is a critical component of elementary education.”
In the meantime, one must worry about super-ordinate role of the commerce ministry of Government of India in recent year vis-à-vis the HRD ministry that defines education policy. The potentiality of higher education in India as a big business has attracted foreign players (can be allegedly translated into FDIs and kickbacks?) and they want to gain a share of this lucrative pie by establishing their own institutions. Overspending Governments find this as an easy avenue to spruce their coffers by allowing these players access to the Indian market. The question is at what terms?, and normatively should that be the primary focus of higher education policy in India?, esp. in context of the fact that it is the desi-higher education institutions over the last five decades have served not only the country but also far off places like the Silicon Valley in US. The dilemma of democracy in juxtaposition with a free trade regime is another area to delve into. Dweep Chanana (September 14, 2006, India's Higher Education Policy-New Rules, The Hindustan Times) correctly points out that:
Public spending on education is similar to spending on healthcare or infrastructure. From an economics perspective, it is a public good. From a social contract perspective, it is the reason why government exists. The priorities of the commerce ministry are, unfortunately, driven by neither perspective, but rather by a short-term financial perspective. Financial sustainability is important, but cannot and should not be the overarching goal of a country-wide education policy. Governments make investments in public health, education, and infrastructure not because they will generate a financial return but because they are essential to the State's development. The purpose of government is to serve its people, and providing education is one of its functions. If not, we get the sort of twisted logic the ministry has used in encouraging private sector spending: "Public spending on higher education should be discouraged since private benefits outweigh social benefits. Subsidising higher education benefits the rich more than the poor." It is true that education, particularly higher education, generates both individual and public benefits. That, however, is not the same as saying that 'private benefits outweigh social benefits'. And to go as far as saying that such spending benefits the rich more is utter nonsense.
It seems that the above is one of the most important causative factors for the widening regional disparities in higher education in India. With a motive to enhance the chances of foreign institutions in higher education in India we see evidence of retrogression of the central and state finances. Core to this financial constriction at the Centre as well as in the states has been the rise of powerful vested interests that appropriate a major share of public finances to the disadvantage of the rest of the society and economy at large. What is being ignored is the fact that these powerful lobbies do a great harm to the public exchequer by ensuring maximum private gain from public expenditure with minimum returns. The principal vested interests operating in this field could be broadly characterized as the desi industrialists in association with their foreign masters, the farm lobby, the bureaucracy with an eye for fat-pay employment in these private institutions after superannuation, and the political class. Pay revision in higher education in India this time indeed has become a victim of a strong and often unholy alliance between the ruling politicians and these vested interests to their mutual advantage.
Prashant Gupta’s (in “Making Tigers of Dinosaurs: Roadmap for Reform of Indian Universities to create Sustainable Knowledge Capital in the era of Globalization”
http://www.prashantgupta.info/tigers.pdf) views, if taken into consideration, may improve the vision of administrators and politicians at the helm of higher education in India and reduce their value deficiency:
“There are today 200 universities, 8,000 colleges, 5 million students, and 27,000 teachers in higher education. The figures are high and impressive, but the first casualty of the expansion phenomenon is the quality. In the post-Independence era, the Indian Institutes of Technology, consciously patterned after the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the U.S., received substantial overseas help right from the outset. With support from four donor nations, the five IITs benefited from guest faculty from outside of India, the ability to send Indian faculty for training abroad, and contributions of modern laboratory equipment and facilities. The Indian Institutes of Management established similar international links: IIM/Ahmedabad, for example, still maintains strong connections with the Harvard Business School. Except these APEX Quality Institutions, more than 90% Universities are providing paper degrees mainly to meet qualification criterion in government jobs and such education cannot be considered knowledge capital. Perhaps the most recent innovation in Indian higher education, the Indira Gandhi National Open University (together with similar, state-sponsored Open Universities), drew heavily on the UK experience with distance education and the Open University concept. But majority of institutions of higher education in India are suffering…Three main issues are absence of strategic planning; resource model inadequacies; and course planning, resource crunch & selection of students…University needs to transform into developers and disseminators of knowledge in the emerging medium. The mission of the research university may be expanded from the theoretical goal of increasing knowledge to one actively concerned with both increasing knowledge and sharing the benefits of that knowledge with its immediate community Here are four ways to improve: PURPOSE: the separate community, industry and education missions into a cohesive whole that seeks to benefit the development of society for e.g. better understanding of use of country’s resources tied with scientific & economic progress. SPEED: Harness the intellectual capacity at the University to encourage the systematic development and innovation of digital media in teaching and learning.
DISTRIBUTION: Build educational resources meant for distribution beyond campus & licensing University content to start-ups for development of knowledge-based resources. COLLABORATION: Joint research and greater interaction between scientists and academic community. The idea is to promote greater usage of the more expensive labs which are not being used much; while facilities which are not so expensive and are being used need not be shared. The aim is to pool in resources for maximum efficient use Understanding India's education systems contributes to the larger understanding of this complex nation's diverse society. General trends and averages concerning social conditions on a national level may not adequately describe how human activity is expressed spatially and temporally in specific areas. The great variations in local environmental and social conditions require that national and state or union territory programs aimed at improving the quality of life not adhere too strictly to any one standard plan. Local climate, topography, and drainage patterns all need to be considered in terms of how they relate to local forms of land use and ethnic and linguistic groupings. Increasing urbanization in India also complicates efforts at monitoring local conditions. Only with the full support and understanding of India's many rural and urban residents will new ways of focusing India's immense human resources toward the goals of developing and conserving renewable natural resources, limiting population growth, providing increased health care, and achieving education for all be successful.”
The complications, if not resolved, will not only de-motivate academicians with initiative and ambition, but also may ensnare the whole process of pay revision in higher education into legal whirlpool. The logic forwarded by K R Shyam Sundar (August 15-22, 1998 Teachers' Strike: The Larger Agenda, Economic and Political Weekly, p. 2213-2214) more than a decade back still holds well when he says: “It is well known that teachers do not enjoy the kind of perks that even bankers do, not to speak of those enjoyed by civil servants. The absence of perks needs to be compensated in direct money terms. Critics point out that teachers spend less time in the campus, which itself is a perk. Teachers do spend time in extra curricular activities and in research and general reading apart from preparing for the lectures. Secondly, considerations of quantity are not an appropriate yardstick to judge the teachers' work; this ignores quality. If quantity is a criteria, then the watchman should be more than a part time teacher. Again, a carpenter, a coolie or the construction worker should be paid at least as much as a software engineer: the bias against brawn work in favour of brain work then would need to be rectified. Finally, the limited promotional opportunities for teachers would place them in the long run in an unfavourable position as compared to civil servants.” One opinion making the rounds is to reward teachers based on their classroom performance, as measured on standardized student achievement tests and principal evaluations. This merit pay argument is designed to provide appropriate financial incentive for teachers to improve student outcomes, to encourage the retention of proficient teachers, and to attract high-skilled individuals to the teaching profession. However, according to Richard Buddin and Others, in a Working Paper, August 2007, “Merit Pay for Florida Teachers. Design and Implementation Issues”, Florida Education Association, contend that “the design and implementation of merit pay faces several key challenges. First, student outcomes are difficult to define and measure. Second, the contributions of individual teachers to student outcomes are difficult to disentangle from student background and prior achievement. The analysis shows serious deficiencies in several measures of teacher performance. Policy makers should be wary of adapting any measure without careful analysis of its properties and a plan to monitor how it is performing. The key issue is whether the incentive and sorting effects of an admittedly imperfect merit pay system can improve the quality of the teacher workforce.” The professed claim of all stake holders that higher education in India can improve qualitatively only if best students could be attracted to the teaching profession will remain a cherished dream only that got trampled under the juggernaut of mediocrity and poverty of philosophy.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Negotiating Global Corporate Culture through Innovations in Human Resource Management
Let us briefly explore and analyze the term of education, human resource development and globalization in context of the seamless transfer of Human capital in the age Globalization. The basic assumption or position taken here is that Knowledge and education level of the human resource is the key competitive weapon in the 21st century that can take care of differences and disaggregates in the organizational culture of the corporate in contemporary India.
On a simplified plane, globalization is characterized by interconnectedness, contrary to the patterns and processes of difference, inequality and division that we Indians witnessed in first three to four decades after independence. It is true that border regimes are being redrawn by globalization, as borders today increasingly transcend state structures and control, highlighting new actors and concerns in Human Resource Development. However, there is no point in denying that still there is considerable residual importance of the state.
In view of the above, your attention is being drawn to the fact that 'relations of disjuncture' is now being produced by globalization itself that is visible in the sphere of culture of an organization or in other words organizational culture.
According to Ellen Wallach, in Individuals and organizations: The cultural march (1983) "Organization culture is like pornography; it is hard to define, but you know it when you see it." Broadly, organizational culture is the personality of the organization. Culture is comprised of the assumptions, values, norms and tangible signs (artifacts) of organization members and their behaviors. Members of an organization soon come to sense the particular culture of an organization. Culture is one of those terms that's difficult to express distinctly, but everyone knows it when they sense it. For example, the culture of a large, for-profit corporation is quite different than that of a hospital which is quite different that that of a university. You can tell the culture of an organization by looking at the arrangement of furniture, what they brag about, what members wear, etc. -- similar to what you can use to get a feeling about someone's personality. The organizational culture differences found resided mainly at the level of practices as perceived by members. There is no consensus about its definition, but there is a broad agreement on the following characteristics of the organizational culture construct: that is it is (1) holistic, (2) historically determined, (3) related to anthropological concepts, (4) socially constructed, (5) soft, and (6) difficult to change. Therefore, it can be said that culture is shaped by an organization’s unique history and situational growth. It can be defined as the values, beliefs, and expectations more or less shared by the organization’s members. It affects the way a company does business and makes known relevant employees, customers, suppliers, and competitors.
A nation’s culture, similar to that of an organization, is comprised of the symbols, values, rituals, and traditions of the people living in a particular region. Language, food, and family traditions are all rooted in national culture. How people behave in public verse how they behave within their own home is also associated with values and standards of their nation. Cultures usually differ in relationships between the individual and society, ways of dealing with conflict, relationships to authority, and conceptions of class and gender. All of these things are comparable to organizational culture, just on a grander scale.
The disjuncture and disaggregate that we mentioned earlier is visible more and more today as we see personnel, working side by side, in corporate, are aggravated by three major challenges:
1. Variations in social, political, and economic circumstances of both the individual and organization
2. Different locations/offices have their own way of doing things and are resistant to change.
3. The perceived value of the Human Resource function varies across locations/offices.
The organizations today, due to weak organizational culture, therefore, are under distress to tackle the following problems:
1. Leadership development
2. Recruiting high-quality employees
3. Employee retention
4. Coordination of activities in many different locations.
5. Understanding the continual change of the globally competitive environment.
6. Building a global awareness in all HR departments/divisions.
7. Creating a multicultural HR team.
The following steps are often mentioned to be the desired strategies of the corporate today to negotiate through the diversified environment:
1. Develop a long-term HR plan to ensure alignment of HR strategies/objectives with corporate objectives
2. Create centralized reporting relationships around the globe.
3. Standardize assessment, development, and compensation practices
4. Introduce practices to regions around the globe and allowed the HR function in each region the autonomy to do [its] job.
5. Create global policies/processes for data management, performance management, compensation, education, and development
6. Tie regional accountability to performance management
7. Share HR best practices used in certain locations with all other locations.
Organizations have taken the following actions when trying to create a consistent corporate culture:
1. Communicate to all locations about a common corporate culture
2. Allow local cultures to maintain their identity in the context of the corporate culture
3. Establish common systems (e.g., accounting, marketing, MIS)
4. Provide management with education outlining how the company does business.
5. Create an organizational mission with input from all locations
6. Create a written strategy outlining the corporate culture
Here we need to factor in higher education as a method of skill development. Instead of top-heavy Management courses, it seems better to employ personnel with mainstream subject specialization. However, for this the educational institutions of our country need to prepare themselves to provide for knowledge and skills to students that enable them to perform in a globalized environment.
Peter Stearns [Globalization in World History 2009] offers the following questions that need to be answered, which we may consider for study:
What is the educational benefit to students at the institution?
Do relevant academic units have interest and active participation in the initiative?
Is it affordable, or at least revenue neutral?
Does the initiative involve an “interesting” part of the world and involve mutual collaboration?
Is it manageable for the institution?
Does the initiative offer the potential for possible innovation for the institution?
When it comes to business, the world is indeed becoming a smaller place. More and more companies are operating across geographic and cultural boundaries. However, most of the companies are lagging behind in developing the human resource policies, structures, and services that support globalization. The human resource function faces many challenges during the globalization process, including creating a global mind-set within the HR group, creating practices that will be consistently applied in different locations/offices while also maintaining the various local cultures and practices, and communicating a consistent corporate culture across the entire organization.
The process of globalizing resources, both human and otherwise, is challenging for any company. Organizations should realize that their global HR function that can help them utilize their existing human talent from across multiple geographic and cultural boundaries is possible when their personnel are capable academically to distance their subjective existence from the objective reality. International organizations need to employ specialists from social science disciplines to assist and incorporate their HR function to meet the challenges they face if they want to create a truly global workforce.
On a simplified plane, globalization is characterized by interconnectedness, contrary to the patterns and processes of difference, inequality and division that we Indians witnessed in first three to four decades after independence. It is true that border regimes are being redrawn by globalization, as borders today increasingly transcend state structures and control, highlighting new actors and concerns in Human Resource Development. However, there is no point in denying that still there is considerable residual importance of the state.
In view of the above, your attention is being drawn to the fact that 'relations of disjuncture' is now being produced by globalization itself that is visible in the sphere of culture of an organization or in other words organizational culture.
According to Ellen Wallach, in Individuals and organizations: The cultural march (1983) "Organization culture is like pornography; it is hard to define, but you know it when you see it." Broadly, organizational culture is the personality of the organization. Culture is comprised of the assumptions, values, norms and tangible signs (artifacts) of organization members and their behaviors. Members of an organization soon come to sense the particular culture of an organization. Culture is one of those terms that's difficult to express distinctly, but everyone knows it when they sense it. For example, the culture of a large, for-profit corporation is quite different than that of a hospital which is quite different that that of a university. You can tell the culture of an organization by looking at the arrangement of furniture, what they brag about, what members wear, etc. -- similar to what you can use to get a feeling about someone's personality. The organizational culture differences found resided mainly at the level of practices as perceived by members. There is no consensus about its definition, but there is a broad agreement on the following characteristics of the organizational culture construct: that is it is (1) holistic, (2) historically determined, (3) related to anthropological concepts, (4) socially constructed, (5) soft, and (6) difficult to change. Therefore, it can be said that culture is shaped by an organization’s unique history and situational growth. It can be defined as the values, beliefs, and expectations more or less shared by the organization’s members. It affects the way a company does business and makes known relevant employees, customers, suppliers, and competitors.
A nation’s culture, similar to that of an organization, is comprised of the symbols, values, rituals, and traditions of the people living in a particular region. Language, food, and family traditions are all rooted in national culture. How people behave in public verse how they behave within their own home is also associated with values and standards of their nation. Cultures usually differ in relationships between the individual and society, ways of dealing with conflict, relationships to authority, and conceptions of class and gender. All of these things are comparable to organizational culture, just on a grander scale.
The disjuncture and disaggregate that we mentioned earlier is visible more and more today as we see personnel, working side by side, in corporate, are aggravated by three major challenges:
1. Variations in social, political, and economic circumstances of both the individual and organization
2. Different locations/offices have their own way of doing things and are resistant to change.
3. The perceived value of the Human Resource function varies across locations/offices.
The organizations today, due to weak organizational culture, therefore, are under distress to tackle the following problems:
1. Leadership development
2. Recruiting high-quality employees
3. Employee retention
4. Coordination of activities in many different locations.
5. Understanding the continual change of the globally competitive environment.
6. Building a global awareness in all HR departments/divisions.
7. Creating a multicultural HR team.
The following steps are often mentioned to be the desired strategies of the corporate today to negotiate through the diversified environment:
1. Develop a long-term HR plan to ensure alignment of HR strategies/objectives with corporate objectives
2. Create centralized reporting relationships around the globe.
3. Standardize assessment, development, and compensation practices
4. Introduce practices to regions around the globe and allowed the HR function in each region the autonomy to do [its] job.
5. Create global policies/processes for data management, performance management, compensation, education, and development
6. Tie regional accountability to performance management
7. Share HR best practices used in certain locations with all other locations.
Organizations have taken the following actions when trying to create a consistent corporate culture:
1. Communicate to all locations about a common corporate culture
2. Allow local cultures to maintain their identity in the context of the corporate culture
3. Establish common systems (e.g., accounting, marketing, MIS)
4. Provide management with education outlining how the company does business.
5. Create an organizational mission with input from all locations
6. Create a written strategy outlining the corporate culture
Here we need to factor in higher education as a method of skill development. Instead of top-heavy Management courses, it seems better to employ personnel with mainstream subject specialization. However, for this the educational institutions of our country need to prepare themselves to provide for knowledge and skills to students that enable them to perform in a globalized environment.
Peter Stearns [Globalization in World History 2009] offers the following questions that need to be answered, which we may consider for study:
What is the educational benefit to students at the institution?
Do relevant academic units have interest and active participation in the initiative?
Is it affordable, or at least revenue neutral?
Does the initiative involve an “interesting” part of the world and involve mutual collaboration?
Is it manageable for the institution?
Does the initiative offer the potential for possible innovation for the institution?
When it comes to business, the world is indeed becoming a smaller place. More and more companies are operating across geographic and cultural boundaries. However, most of the companies are lagging behind in developing the human resource policies, structures, and services that support globalization. The human resource function faces many challenges during the globalization process, including creating a global mind-set within the HR group, creating practices that will be consistently applied in different locations/offices while also maintaining the various local cultures and practices, and communicating a consistent corporate culture across the entire organization.
The process of globalizing resources, both human and otherwise, is challenging for any company. Organizations should realize that their global HR function that can help them utilize their existing human talent from across multiple geographic and cultural boundaries is possible when their personnel are capable academically to distance their subjective existence from the objective reality. International organizations need to employ specialists from social science disciplines to assist and incorporate their HR function to meet the challenges they face if they want to create a truly global workforce.
OLD MANAGEMENT LESSONS!
SHARING CRITICAL INFORMATION TO PREVENT AVOIDABLE EXPOSURE
A man is getting into the shower just as his wife is finishing up her shower, when the doorbell rings.
The wife quickly wraps herself in a towel and runs downstairs.
When she opens the door, there stands Bob, the next-door neighbor.
Before she says a word, Bob says, 'I'll give you $800 to drop that towel.'
After thinking for a moment, the woman drops her towel and stands naked in front of Bob, after a few seconds, Bob hands her $800 and leaves.
The woman wraps back up in the towel and goes back upstairs.
When she gets to the bathroom, her husband asks, 'Who was that?'
'It was Bob the next door neighbor,' she replies.
'Great,' the husband says, 'did he say anything about the $800 he owes me?'
Moral of the story:If you share critical information pertaining to credit and risk with your shareholders in time, you may be in a position to prevent avoidable exposure.
MISSING A GREAT OPPORTUNITY DUE TO LACK OF INFORMATION
A priest offered a Nun a lift.
She got in and crossed her legs, forcing her gown to reveal a leg.
The priest nearly had an accident.
After controlling the car, he stealthily slid his hand up her leg....
The nun said, 'Father, remember Psalm 129?'
The priest removed his hand. But, changing gears, he let his hand slide up her leg again.
The nun once again said, 'Father, remember Psalm 129?'
The priest apologized 'Sorry sister but the flesh is weak.'
Arriving at the convent, the nun sighed heavily and went on her way.
On his arrival at the church, the priest rushed to look up Psalm 129.
It said, 'Go forth and seek, further up, you will find glory.'
Moral of the story:If you are not well informed in your job, you might miss a great opportunity.
ALWAYS LET YOUR BOSS HAVE THE FIRST SAY
A sales rep, an administration clerk, and the manager are walking to lunch when they find an antique oil lamp.
They rub it and a Genie comes out.
The Genie says, 'I'll give each of you just one wish.'
'Me first! Me first!' says the admin clerk. 'I want to be in the Bahamas, driving a speedboat, without a care in the world.'
Puff! She's gone.
'Me next! Me next!' says the sales rep. 'I want to be in Hawaii, relaxing on the beach with my personal masseuse, an endless supply of Pina Coladas and the love of my life..'
Puff! He's gone.
'OK, you're up,' the Genie says to the manager.
The manager says, 'I want those two back in the office after lunch.'
Moral of the story:Always let your boss have the first say.
A man is getting into the shower just as his wife is finishing up her shower, when the doorbell rings.
The wife quickly wraps herself in a towel and runs downstairs.
When she opens the door, there stands Bob, the next-door neighbor.
Before she says a word, Bob says, 'I'll give you $800 to drop that towel.'
After thinking for a moment, the woman drops her towel and stands naked in front of Bob, after a few seconds, Bob hands her $800 and leaves.
The woman wraps back up in the towel and goes back upstairs.
When she gets to the bathroom, her husband asks, 'Who was that?'
'It was Bob the next door neighbor,' she replies.
'Great,' the husband says, 'did he say anything about the $800 he owes me?'
Moral of the story:If you share critical information pertaining to credit and risk with your shareholders in time, you may be in a position to prevent avoidable exposure.
MISSING A GREAT OPPORTUNITY DUE TO LACK OF INFORMATION
A priest offered a Nun a lift.
She got in and crossed her legs, forcing her gown to reveal a leg.
The priest nearly had an accident.
After controlling the car, he stealthily slid his hand up her leg....
The nun said, 'Father, remember Psalm 129?'
The priest removed his hand. But, changing gears, he let his hand slide up her leg again.
The nun once again said, 'Father, remember Psalm 129?'
The priest apologized 'Sorry sister but the flesh is weak.'
Arriving at the convent, the nun sighed heavily and went on her way.
On his arrival at the church, the priest rushed to look up Psalm 129.
It said, 'Go forth and seek, further up, you will find glory.'
Moral of the story:If you are not well informed in your job, you might miss a great opportunity.
ALWAYS LET YOUR BOSS HAVE THE FIRST SAY
A sales rep, an administration clerk, and the manager are walking to lunch when they find an antique oil lamp.
They rub it and a Genie comes out.
The Genie says, 'I'll give each of you just one wish.'
'Me first! Me first!' says the admin clerk. 'I want to be in the Bahamas, driving a speedboat, without a care in the world.'
Puff! She's gone.
'Me next! Me next!' says the sales rep. 'I want to be in Hawaii, relaxing on the beach with my personal masseuse, an endless supply of Pina Coladas and the love of my life..'
Puff! He's gone.
'OK, you're up,' the Genie says to the manager.
The manager says, 'I want those two back in the office after lunch.'
Moral of the story:Always let your boss have the first say.
Sustainable Future: Possible Reality or Political Myth
We may start by questioning, if at all, sustainability is a desirable goal by and for the humanity. In other words, do we really want that our process of development should have a sustainable face? In course of the paper, I would endeavour to show why this question is relevant and of importance for us to address. In these two days, I am sure you all have heard many learned speakers with their considered opinion and plea for sustainable development. Clearly, this presentation does not dispute the fact that sustainable development is the only path ahead for our survival. However, if we take out a minute from the hustle and bustle of daily life and think as to why we require such a seminar or number of seminars, then we will realize it is not for allocated resource utilization at the end of the financial year that motivates us to do so. The issue of sustainability is mired in controversy and orientations that are selfishly wasteful, therefore requires critical analysis and awareness.
For the present purpose, we can say that sustainable development is a process that fulfills the requirements of the present generation by not jeopardizing the ability and survival of the future generations. We all know that we do not yet have an internationally agreed ‘objective indicators of sustainable development’ despite our professed desire to do so since the 1992 RIO Declaration. The issue at hand has two dimensions. On the one hand, it contains the issue of linkage between development and environment. On the other, it generates the issues of socio-culturally viable sustainability. It is agreed all over the world that sustainable development is possible by bolstering long term economic, social and environmental capital compounded by the ecological and human dimensions. This has resulted in the belief that sustainable development has the potential to promote tradeoffs and externalities in future. In the process, we witness emergence of new legal instruments, corpus of guidelines, best practices, and self-ordained code of conduct to regulate and manage use of natural resources. Yet the challenges to the process of sustainable development are far from getting weak. Rather they remain where they were.
A “global ecological crisis” is a crisis the causes of which are diffuse and the effects of which are universal. From the economic point of view, a global crisis is much different from local crises. In local crises, such as river-pollution, traffic jams, or soil erosion, local agents are usually directly accountable for damages to local victims (frequently the same individuals). By contrast, in the ecological global crisis, the “culprit” may be nothing less than a model of development encompassing whole continents, and “victims” may be in other continents with other styles of living. Clearly, globalization and its social effects have indirect local ecological effects, since poverty is in se a cause of worsening of environment, be it in ‘dharavi’ of Mumbai or in shanty-towns or in semi-arid over-worked countryside. However, we are here going to consider the way differentiated industrial strategies within globalization foster different attitudes towards global ecological crises and the issue of sustainable development. Let us take the case of greenhouse effect.
There was a partial consensus in the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC Report 1991) that, for a doubling of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere (or equivalent quantities of other Green House Gases), the rise in average temperature would be 3°C ± 1.5°C. This large uncertainty for a physicist is not so relevant for international relations: as a rise of + 1.5°C would itself be a major problem to tackle (and + 4.5° C an inconceivable crisis)! Uncertainty also exists on when such a concentration would be reached, but, at the present rate of emissions, it is agreed that it is a question of more or less half a century.
Regarding the effects of a + 3°C increase in average temperature, more imprecision prevail. Interestingly though, despite the fact that we are unaware exactly what the physical effects of this would be but every body realizes who would suffer more, and relatively be worse looser economically. Going by the predictions, the many parts of the world will get tropicalized, that is weather will be globally wetter, but water will be less useful on the ground, for it will evaporate faster, as well as will erode the soil more ferociously. Countries of the geographically and socially South of the world will get affected more because of this as these countries relying heavily on agriculture and with a large peasant population. Another aspect of the same phenomenon is that countries with large population in coastal regions are going to get affected due to the dilatation of the sea water will raise its level by 30-50 cm. Countries like Maldives, India, Bangladesh, and of Africa and South America will become victims of such changes.
By contrast, in the countries of the North, like USA, though being a powerful agricultural country, but with only one semi-desert delta, has a weak “interest” in fighting green-house effect. That is because a doubling of CO2 in last 50 years with a Green House Effect of + 3°C, its cost for a country like USA, will be very low (-0,25% in expected GDP). Not surprisingly, such a low cost justifies their orientation of few anti-Green House Gas actions. Therefore, instead of "unwise" regulation and reduction in emission, an ‘ecotax’ of $ 5 US per ton of carbon, that is 58 cents per barrel of oil, is found to be more “cost-effective”.
In view of the above, it is but natural to witness the Northern countries with a “Do Nothing” attitude whereas countries of the South normally should have “Do Something” attitude. The common belief in the arena of International Relations is that the South is trying to protect its climate against the Northern pollution by Green House Gas. And here lies the paradox in contradiction, the mystery in conflict, and the source of the political myth regarding sustainable development. We will see that interestingly there are actual similarities of attitudes in the Climate negotiation among the countries of North and South, and it very much contrasts with reality.
In terms of development and underdevelopment, countries can be broadly classified following Benhaim, Caron & Levarlet [1991] in to three categories linked to the energy system: type of energy used, indices of consumption of primary energy, of energy efficiency, of energy reserves, of CO2 emissions, per capita, per unit of GDP, per country.
1. Green House Gas efficient super-virtuous countries (like Swiss, Sweden, France because of nuclear power, then other Scandinavian countries, Canada, Belgium)
2. Green House Gas virtuous countries (like Japan and EEC)
3. Fossil energy waster countries (USA, Petro-monarchies of Middle East, former Socialist countries, South-Africa and China)
4. Countries with radical accusation strategy (like India, Brazil, Mexico, Malaysia)
The first group is both rich and GHG-efficient in the production of their energy. The second group of countries is ready to implement the precaution principle, i.e. they have or can get the technologies, and they are already at a relatively low (yet unsustainable) level of emissions. The third category of countries is the worst violators and follows blockage strategy. They believe that the more a country is developed, the more it consumes energy per capita and thus it emits more CO2. Very different in appearance are the countries in the fourth category. These countries are too poor to be already GHG-dangerous and to be GHG-efficient. Nevertheless, clearly they dream to be as "developed" as Western Countries, and consider that up to now these precursors never implemented any precaution principle. These countries are pushed into an accusation strategy: denouncing the responsibility of the North-West of the World in the past for the concentration of GHG in the atmosphere, such a strategy contends that it is not yet time to implement a precaution principle in Developing Countries.
The position of USA is clearly in favour of "doing nothing" : the dangers from greenhouse effects are weak, the cost of fighting it may be very high, even if the low GHG-efficiency of their energy-production makes the marginal improvements quite inexpensive. The problem is that, from a global sustainability point of view, the improvements required from USA are far from marginal. A "sustainable" GHG production is thought to be 500kg per capita and per year. USA produce 5 000kg.
The radical accusation strategy seems to be the opposite, and indeed its glamour in a North-South conflict is very attractive: “You are the culprits, you have to do everything”. The problem is that this position is a blockage position just as well, since it is subordinated to the implementation of a precaution strategy by foreign countries which are in favour of blockage. It is quite appealing for elites who dream to imitate the US model of development (a savage capitalism in an open frontier land) and which are not too much worried by the consequences of green-house effect on their own population. Here, it is important to notice that an international negotiation involves governments, constituted by the elites, and not common people. The position of a government may be quite different from its peoples’ interests if the political regime is rather independent from civil society.
Therefore, we have in fact two types of "Do-nothing positions": the one of the North (fighting greenhouse effect is too expensive and useless for us) and the one of the South (fighting greenhouse effect would unfairly hinder our development, and the results of global warming are irrelevant to us).
Nevertheless, our analysis above indicates two classes of potential followers of a precaution strategy. The first one includes the nations which have serious reasons to believe that they would be the first victims of global warming: Bangladesh, Maldives, India, Africa, and South America. When, moreover, they are countries which are both low producers of GHG (much less than the "sustainable" 500 kg/capita) and quite GHG-inefficient, they may assume that their contribution to world production may increase for a while without being a real problem. Similarly, Japan and E.U. are Northern countries which may think of decreasing their GHG-production. Producing less than 2 tons per capita and evolving towards a “service society with a steady population, they may think that the 500 kg target is within their scope. When, moreover, they are countries particularly sensitive to the dangers stemming from demographic and ecological turmoil at their southern borders, they may assume that a precaution strategy is relatively inexpensive and useful.
To conclude, above the effort was to show how the question of sustainable development has become a political issue based on the resources and culture of country or state. Therefore, it seems pertinent to ask if at all it is possible for us to attain the professed goal of sustainable development, or is it just a political myth to which all offers just a lip service. Any discussion on sustainable development, therefore, should take in to account the politics and cost of sustainable development prior to proposing measures of intervention.
For the present purpose, we can say that sustainable development is a process that fulfills the requirements of the present generation by not jeopardizing the ability and survival of the future generations. We all know that we do not yet have an internationally agreed ‘objective indicators of sustainable development’ despite our professed desire to do so since the 1992 RIO Declaration. The issue at hand has two dimensions. On the one hand, it contains the issue of linkage between development and environment. On the other, it generates the issues of socio-culturally viable sustainability. It is agreed all over the world that sustainable development is possible by bolstering long term economic, social and environmental capital compounded by the ecological and human dimensions. This has resulted in the belief that sustainable development has the potential to promote tradeoffs and externalities in future. In the process, we witness emergence of new legal instruments, corpus of guidelines, best practices, and self-ordained code of conduct to regulate and manage use of natural resources. Yet the challenges to the process of sustainable development are far from getting weak. Rather they remain where they were.
A “global ecological crisis” is a crisis the causes of which are diffuse and the effects of which are universal. From the economic point of view, a global crisis is much different from local crises. In local crises, such as river-pollution, traffic jams, or soil erosion, local agents are usually directly accountable for damages to local victims (frequently the same individuals). By contrast, in the ecological global crisis, the “culprit” may be nothing less than a model of development encompassing whole continents, and “victims” may be in other continents with other styles of living. Clearly, globalization and its social effects have indirect local ecological effects, since poverty is in se a cause of worsening of environment, be it in ‘dharavi’ of Mumbai or in shanty-towns or in semi-arid over-worked countryside. However, we are here going to consider the way differentiated industrial strategies within globalization foster different attitudes towards global ecological crises and the issue of sustainable development. Let us take the case of greenhouse effect.
There was a partial consensus in the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC Report 1991) that, for a doubling of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere (or equivalent quantities of other Green House Gases), the rise in average temperature would be 3°C ± 1.5°C. This large uncertainty for a physicist is not so relevant for international relations: as a rise of + 1.5°C would itself be a major problem to tackle (and + 4.5° C an inconceivable crisis)! Uncertainty also exists on when such a concentration would be reached, but, at the present rate of emissions, it is agreed that it is a question of more or less half a century.
Regarding the effects of a + 3°C increase in average temperature, more imprecision prevail. Interestingly though, despite the fact that we are unaware exactly what the physical effects of this would be but every body realizes who would suffer more, and relatively be worse looser economically. Going by the predictions, the many parts of the world will get tropicalized, that is weather will be globally wetter, but water will be less useful on the ground, for it will evaporate faster, as well as will erode the soil more ferociously. Countries of the geographically and socially South of the world will get affected more because of this as these countries relying heavily on agriculture and with a large peasant population. Another aspect of the same phenomenon is that countries with large population in coastal regions are going to get affected due to the dilatation of the sea water will raise its level by 30-50 cm. Countries like Maldives, India, Bangladesh, and of Africa and South America will become victims of such changes.
By contrast, in the countries of the North, like USA, though being a powerful agricultural country, but with only one semi-desert delta, has a weak “interest” in fighting green-house effect. That is because a doubling of CO2 in last 50 years with a Green House Effect of + 3°C, its cost for a country like USA, will be very low (-0,25% in expected GDP). Not surprisingly, such a low cost justifies their orientation of few anti-Green House Gas actions. Therefore, instead of "unwise" regulation and reduction in emission, an ‘ecotax’ of $ 5 US per ton of carbon, that is 58 cents per barrel of oil, is found to be more “cost-effective”.
In view of the above, it is but natural to witness the Northern countries with a “Do Nothing” attitude whereas countries of the South normally should have “Do Something” attitude. The common belief in the arena of International Relations is that the South is trying to protect its climate against the Northern pollution by Green House Gas. And here lies the paradox in contradiction, the mystery in conflict, and the source of the political myth regarding sustainable development. We will see that interestingly there are actual similarities of attitudes in the Climate negotiation among the countries of North and South, and it very much contrasts with reality.
In terms of development and underdevelopment, countries can be broadly classified following Benhaim, Caron & Levarlet [1991] in to three categories linked to the energy system: type of energy used, indices of consumption of primary energy, of energy efficiency, of energy reserves, of CO2 emissions, per capita, per unit of GDP, per country.
1. Green House Gas efficient super-virtuous countries (like Swiss, Sweden, France because of nuclear power, then other Scandinavian countries, Canada, Belgium)
2. Green House Gas virtuous countries (like Japan and EEC)
3. Fossil energy waster countries (USA, Petro-monarchies of Middle East, former Socialist countries, South-Africa and China)
4. Countries with radical accusation strategy (like India, Brazil, Mexico, Malaysia)
The first group is both rich and GHG-efficient in the production of their energy. The second group of countries is ready to implement the precaution principle, i.e. they have or can get the technologies, and they are already at a relatively low (yet unsustainable) level of emissions. The third category of countries is the worst violators and follows blockage strategy. They believe that the more a country is developed, the more it consumes energy per capita and thus it emits more CO2. Very different in appearance are the countries in the fourth category. These countries are too poor to be already GHG-dangerous and to be GHG-efficient. Nevertheless, clearly they dream to be as "developed" as Western Countries, and consider that up to now these precursors never implemented any precaution principle. These countries are pushed into an accusation strategy: denouncing the responsibility of the North-West of the World in the past for the concentration of GHG in the atmosphere, such a strategy contends that it is not yet time to implement a precaution principle in Developing Countries.
The position of USA is clearly in favour of "doing nothing" : the dangers from greenhouse effects are weak, the cost of fighting it may be very high, even if the low GHG-efficiency of their energy-production makes the marginal improvements quite inexpensive. The problem is that, from a global sustainability point of view, the improvements required from USA are far from marginal. A "sustainable" GHG production is thought to be 500kg per capita and per year. USA produce 5 000kg.
The radical accusation strategy seems to be the opposite, and indeed its glamour in a North-South conflict is very attractive: “You are the culprits, you have to do everything”. The problem is that this position is a blockage position just as well, since it is subordinated to the implementation of a precaution strategy by foreign countries which are in favour of blockage. It is quite appealing for elites who dream to imitate the US model of development (a savage capitalism in an open frontier land) and which are not too much worried by the consequences of green-house effect on their own population. Here, it is important to notice that an international negotiation involves governments, constituted by the elites, and not common people. The position of a government may be quite different from its peoples’ interests if the political regime is rather independent from civil society.
Therefore, we have in fact two types of "Do-nothing positions": the one of the North (fighting greenhouse effect is too expensive and useless for us) and the one of the South (fighting greenhouse effect would unfairly hinder our development, and the results of global warming are irrelevant to us).
Nevertheless, our analysis above indicates two classes of potential followers of a precaution strategy. The first one includes the nations which have serious reasons to believe that they would be the first victims of global warming: Bangladesh, Maldives, India, Africa, and South America. When, moreover, they are countries which are both low producers of GHG (much less than the "sustainable" 500 kg/capita) and quite GHG-inefficient, they may assume that their contribution to world production may increase for a while without being a real problem. Similarly, Japan and E.U. are Northern countries which may think of decreasing their GHG-production. Producing less than 2 tons per capita and evolving towards a “service society with a steady population, they may think that the 500 kg target is within their scope. When, moreover, they are countries particularly sensitive to the dangers stemming from demographic and ecological turmoil at their southern borders, they may assume that a precaution strategy is relatively inexpensive and useful.
To conclude, above the effort was to show how the question of sustainable development has become a political issue based on the resources and culture of country or state. Therefore, it seems pertinent to ask if at all it is possible for us to attain the professed goal of sustainable development, or is it just a political myth to which all offers just a lip service. Any discussion on sustainable development, therefore, should take in to account the politics and cost of sustainable development prior to proposing measures of intervention.
Strategic Course Designing and Effective Teaching Methods of Sociology
What Do You Want to Accomplish?
Let us start with a question as to – what do we want accomplish as teachers of Social Science – is more directed to self than to others who may or may not have a stake in teaching and learning. The question seems relevant for us because in general, the purpose of expansion in education in India in most of the decades of 20th century was to ensure a disciplined and competent workforce, but that has undergone a sea change in last two decades. Social Sciences in general and Sociology in particular at undergraduate level in India is continuously challenged in an age where an imperative of capital under globalization demands/expects the students to be ready for the travail and trials of market. In view of this, the aim, objectives and priorities of all the stakeholders in higher education of social sciences, especially the teachers, students and their parents, and academic institutions with their management trained administrators, have changed. The paper will, therefore, try to locate the kind of forces that have been active in our country in recent years that have precipitated the changes in our field. Briefly then the paper will turn to deal with the changing aims, objectives and priorities of the stakeholders. Next the paper turns to address, another coterminous issue, which is course designing. Here the focus will on critical examination of the existing course design and syllabus of Sociology for the undergraduate students of West Bengal. Based on this analysis, the paper will try to offer some strategies for undergraduate course designing in Sociology that takes into account the nature of changes in the greater society and understand the basis of concomitant transformations. Finally, we will try to examine the delivery and dispensation method of Sociology teaching in undergraduate cases. Through this, we can understand the efficiency and utility of various methods of teaching possible at undergraduate level, thus delineating a frame of reference which accounts for the distinction and interrelation between the course design, course requirements and teaching practices.
Let us get clearly in mind at this point that we are not concerned with the entire teaching community, or even with the occupational culture and work drive of all persons employed in an institution the higher learning because they vary widely in their vision and objectives, infrastructure facilities, administrative procedures, nature of accomplishment, etc. Since there is no exact prototype to which they all conform, and university milieu in which social scientists work vary widely, according to the kind of knowledge they profess to advance and the type of humans they intend to produce, we will do well to remember that there is no one set of conditions or solutions that can address the necessities of contemporary society.
In last two decades, India has experienced an unprecedented economic resurgence. The country has witnessed a structural shift in GDP growth, propelled largely by new investments and the growth of the value enhancing services sector. Globally, India commands a new admiration and speculation of increasingly being seen as part of a new axis of economic power in the world. Of course, there are reasons to believe in the Indian Dream. In 2007, India joined the ranks of twelve countries with a trillion dollar GDP in nominal terms. Future predictions by experts and academics indicate that real GDP could grow at a compound rate of six to nine percent over the next to decades, implying a size of economy (by 2025) that would range between US$ three trillion to US$ five trillion. By this time, India’s population is expected to grow to 1.4 billion, more than 67% of whose, accounting for nearly 940 million people, will belong to productive working age group, and 42% of the total population will be below the age of 25 years. This demographic dividend will keep the country young that can significantly drive the development process in the country. McKinsey Global Institute predicts that by 2025 average household disposable income will be three times than now, registering a far higher growth rate than what has been witnessed till now. It is also estimated that the middle class in Indian society will reach 41% of the total population of the country, thus will amount to more than five hundred eighty three million people, triggering new impulses to sustain high-growth trajectory.
Despite all these glowing predictions, it may remain a distant dream for a country like India to realize it because the path is strewn with several fundamental challenges that can seriously undermine the growth process and ensnarl the pace of growth in the years to come. Traditional three-headed social problems: Poverty-Illiteracy-Unemployment remains the biggest stumbling block for a post-colonial country like India. New sets of problems have taken shape in last quarter of 20th Century when policy makers and market participants have prioritized economic activities for short term gains. Market forces, as they stand today, do not adequately reward longer term objectives of building a sustainable economy. The field of economy has become further murky with the critical role played by the MNC’s and TNC’s. The interest of the country has been compromised in most erstwhile third-world countries. In the same period, we have seen that world politics and international relations have taken a path that calls for complete re-orientation in the policies of external affairs of a country. Boundaries and sovereignty of nation states have been put in stress with the changing understanding of concepts like space and time. Growing interconnections and interdependencies, increasing volume of cultural interactions and intermixing among different cultures, and commonality of problems for the world populace have unleashed unique discontents, multitude of challenges, and ingenious localized responses. No one remains untouched; therefore, all the social institutions – marriage, family, economy, education, politics, and religion – are affected by these forces in contemporary society. Issues like group relationship, organizational culture, media representation, health, gender, ethnicity, class, law and legal procedures, movements, marginal and vulnerable groups – all have taken a political connotation.
Challenges like inclusive growth and sustainable livelihood, secured energy source, up gradation of agricultural productivity and food supply, and most importantly environmental security and climate change for the future of human kind need a clear vision and mission that calls for transformational change. It is not only important to create the right policy environment, but also to ensure its longer term orientation, given the nature of investment and the long gestation period of fruition. It is critical that we engage in finding new means and policy initiatives to support in accelerating equitable and sustainable growth in the relatively marginalized sectors. Policy support and financial mechanisms will necessarily have to be longer term oriented, for which it is equally important to protect such policies from any adverse mid-course changes that could impact the very viability of these long term projects. Transformational change for any country is primarily about improving the quality of life of its people providing them a secure future. Sustainable development and inclusive growth in this age of globalization are approaches to achieving the super-ordinate goal predicted.
Course Designing
Any vibrant society continuously desires its knowledge transmission process across generation to be in tune with relevance and application of it. However, the under graduate course of Sociology (both honours and general) in our University to large extent do not fulfill this goal or desire. A few examples towards this end can substantiate this point better.
The papers dealing the basic concepts of Sociology that the new entrants in Honours course read is designed as per the content of a single book of foreign origin. This has resulted in a tremendous amount of inhibition among the students in understanding the need to read them, the connection and utility it has for the whole course. The picture is further complicated by the fact that examination dominated system does not leave the student to take initiative of their own to learn the implicit in what it infers. In the process, they end up not understanding all other papers like thought, theory, Indian society etc. Learning research technique is another area, crammed within a single (100 marks) paper, creates sufficient confusion in the mind of the students for them to derive any benefit. The paper is divided in to three almost equal parts containing methodology, quantitative analysis and field work. From personal experience, it can be stated that the students are at best ambivalent about the connection between these three parts.
The muddle created at this level manifests its negative impact on the students at a later stage when they
1. go for post graduation: when they have to relearn every thing they have been taught at the former level; this disallows the university to upgrade its syllabus with the current innovations and research in the discipline;
2. go for professional examinations like civil services or subject eligibility test like NET/SLET/SET: though the syllabus of these examinations are in consonance with whatever is taught in various universities of the country, but number of failure in these examinations point to the fact the students are unable to think analytically once the pattern of examination changes;
3. go for employment in civil society organizations: they are unable to do field work whose results can be found to be reasonably valid;
4. go for employment in media and advertising houses: very few have been able enter and succeed.
From the above stems criticism of our discipline in present times that can be broadly divided into two themes. First, the courses offered are considered a result of life-long ritualized practices by arm-chair academics and teachers, therefore are not pragmatic enough to be applicable in real life. Second, as because these courses does not provoke critical thinking, does not motivate to appraise life-events, does not encourage understanding of differences in society, and does not break the hurdles for free flow of knowledge. What remains unaccounted for in all this is the role of the institutions where these courses are taught. It is important to remember that most of the undergraduate Colleges are cash-poor and do not have the infrastructure to support the requirement of the students and the teachers. Further, lack of autonomy of these institutions force them to unquestioningly accept the diktats on the university as well as the government
In context of the above, it will be useful to see how we can overcome the above problems. First, keeping the interest of the students in mind, the following aspects are very important:
To be aware of the diverse categories of children coming out of school who join the undergraduate courses,
To craft micro-planning at college level the basis for assessment and identification of necessities of these children,
To formulate strategies that are diverse and flexible suiting to the needs of the students admitted,
To design the course content and pedagogy responsive to the requirements of a first generation learner, so that they can acquire age-appropriate concepts, skills and competencies.
Second, the following changes in the institutions of under graduate studies can improve the performance of its students:
The College environment should promote active participation among students in every kind of activity;
Instead of promoting break-neck competition and an examination oriented system, the Colleges can promote positive interdependence, interaction, accountability, interpersonal skills, group activity and processing. These will inculcate qualities among students like leadership, independent decision-making, conflict management, trust-confidence, and communication.
The above can be done only as shadow curriculum with the help of the teachers within the class room.
Third, for a strategic course designing, adopting the following steps can be found to be useful:
Deciding what kind of capacity building the course wants to accomplish;
Defining and limiting course content not in terms of a content of a book but by stressing core concepts, enduring social issues, and trimming of optional areas;
Structuring the course in a fashion where it moves from immediate reality to distant context and abstract theories;
Deciding upon on the referred text book not only depending upon content that is lucid, informative and correct, but also by its availability in market, cost and size.
Teaching Practices
We can now move from problems of discourse, to inherent power structures and finally unto the actual teaching practice. With the creation of a global market in higher education that has given rise to an online environment, traditional learning in is under threat. However, this has enlarged the scope and reach of higher education in general, and institutions of higher education now are able to forge partnership and pool their expertise, and offer it to a world-wide clientele of students. Individuals at any stage of their life and of any profession are now enabled to undertake education of whatever personal interest without carrying out the traditional formality of entering educational institution. Nevertheless, the problem of hidden curriculum that sustains the process of social reproduction that endorses the existing inequalities embedded in every layer of the society continues to thrive under the circumstances. The utopian beliefs of a democratic society like India of assumed similarities in capability or accomplishment among students severely hampers the distribution of limited resources in higher education. In the process, the elites in the society continue to corner the biggest share of all the plans and programs undertaken by the state.
Higher education for both students and teachers is much like entering into matrimony: every person concur that it is a significant episode in their life but there are so many intangibles factors involved that nobody knows exactly how it is going to workout in their life. This is further complicated by the fact that chance and the pressure of circumstances play just as decisive a role as sentiment and rational choice. Under the given situation, certain derived problems emerge that dilute the nature and practice of teaching-learning of Sociology. For example, the deterministic nature of Course designing and deliberate teaching practice to fit in a rigid framework leaves the students of Sociology high and dry in understanding the logic and connectivity among the divisions in the syllabus. Generally, teachers in colleges and universities seek to provide a well-formed and comprehensive education whereas policy-makers and institutions of higher education desire that practice of teaching-learning programs match to state’s professed aims and the socio-economic profile thus fulfill the demands of employment and market. Hence, there is a dis-connection between the goals and the expectations of teaching-learning Social Sciences in general.
The teaching practices in undergraduate classes continue with its quasi-symmetric approach where the compulsions and implications of knowledge production are based on persistence and change in hegemonic social condition in our society. Exclusion of a large section of the society, over the years, for multiple conditions/ ascribed reasons has resulted in a scenario where intellectual interrogations and research in the field continue to replicate the inequalities and power divisions. Further, set nomenclature of teaching and examination credit system does not give space for initiative and creativity. Therefore, we have a disproportionately high number of overqualified populations who are unable to find white-collar or professional jobs.
Conclusion
To go back to the question as to what we want to accomplish, it will be pertinent to remember that we are not only facing changed requirements from students in context of globalization, but also we are being challenged by pseudo-researchers who are in the market to provide support to industry with half-baked social impact studies. On the positive side, present times have opened up windows for free flow of knowledge and pooling of knowledge base through networking. We can conclude by saying that time is ripe now for us to take stock of the situation and devise strategies in course designing and teaching practices that not only address the concerns of our students, but also prepare them to face the travail and trials of market.
Let us start with a question as to – what do we want accomplish as teachers of Social Science – is more directed to self than to others who may or may not have a stake in teaching and learning. The question seems relevant for us because in general, the purpose of expansion in education in India in most of the decades of 20th century was to ensure a disciplined and competent workforce, but that has undergone a sea change in last two decades. Social Sciences in general and Sociology in particular at undergraduate level in India is continuously challenged in an age where an imperative of capital under globalization demands/expects the students to be ready for the travail and trials of market. In view of this, the aim, objectives and priorities of all the stakeholders in higher education of social sciences, especially the teachers, students and their parents, and academic institutions with their management trained administrators, have changed. The paper will, therefore, try to locate the kind of forces that have been active in our country in recent years that have precipitated the changes in our field. Briefly then the paper will turn to deal with the changing aims, objectives and priorities of the stakeholders. Next the paper turns to address, another coterminous issue, which is course designing. Here the focus will on critical examination of the existing course design and syllabus of Sociology for the undergraduate students of West Bengal. Based on this analysis, the paper will try to offer some strategies for undergraduate course designing in Sociology that takes into account the nature of changes in the greater society and understand the basis of concomitant transformations. Finally, we will try to examine the delivery and dispensation method of Sociology teaching in undergraduate cases. Through this, we can understand the efficiency and utility of various methods of teaching possible at undergraduate level, thus delineating a frame of reference which accounts for the distinction and interrelation between the course design, course requirements and teaching practices.
Let us get clearly in mind at this point that we are not concerned with the entire teaching community, or even with the occupational culture and work drive of all persons employed in an institution the higher learning because they vary widely in their vision and objectives, infrastructure facilities, administrative procedures, nature of accomplishment, etc. Since there is no exact prototype to which they all conform, and university milieu in which social scientists work vary widely, according to the kind of knowledge they profess to advance and the type of humans they intend to produce, we will do well to remember that there is no one set of conditions or solutions that can address the necessities of contemporary society.
In last two decades, India has experienced an unprecedented economic resurgence. The country has witnessed a structural shift in GDP growth, propelled largely by new investments and the growth of the value enhancing services sector. Globally, India commands a new admiration and speculation of increasingly being seen as part of a new axis of economic power in the world. Of course, there are reasons to believe in the Indian Dream. In 2007, India joined the ranks of twelve countries with a trillion dollar GDP in nominal terms. Future predictions by experts and academics indicate that real GDP could grow at a compound rate of six to nine percent over the next to decades, implying a size of economy (by 2025) that would range between US$ three trillion to US$ five trillion. By this time, India’s population is expected to grow to 1.4 billion, more than 67% of whose, accounting for nearly 940 million people, will belong to productive working age group, and 42% of the total population will be below the age of 25 years. This demographic dividend will keep the country young that can significantly drive the development process in the country. McKinsey Global Institute predicts that by 2025 average household disposable income will be three times than now, registering a far higher growth rate than what has been witnessed till now. It is also estimated that the middle class in Indian society will reach 41% of the total population of the country, thus will amount to more than five hundred eighty three million people, triggering new impulses to sustain high-growth trajectory.
Despite all these glowing predictions, it may remain a distant dream for a country like India to realize it because the path is strewn with several fundamental challenges that can seriously undermine the growth process and ensnarl the pace of growth in the years to come. Traditional three-headed social problems: Poverty-Illiteracy-Unemployment remains the biggest stumbling block for a post-colonial country like India. New sets of problems have taken shape in last quarter of 20th Century when policy makers and market participants have prioritized economic activities for short term gains. Market forces, as they stand today, do not adequately reward longer term objectives of building a sustainable economy. The field of economy has become further murky with the critical role played by the MNC’s and TNC’s. The interest of the country has been compromised in most erstwhile third-world countries. In the same period, we have seen that world politics and international relations have taken a path that calls for complete re-orientation in the policies of external affairs of a country. Boundaries and sovereignty of nation states have been put in stress with the changing understanding of concepts like space and time. Growing interconnections and interdependencies, increasing volume of cultural interactions and intermixing among different cultures, and commonality of problems for the world populace have unleashed unique discontents, multitude of challenges, and ingenious localized responses. No one remains untouched; therefore, all the social institutions – marriage, family, economy, education, politics, and religion – are affected by these forces in contemporary society. Issues like group relationship, organizational culture, media representation, health, gender, ethnicity, class, law and legal procedures, movements, marginal and vulnerable groups – all have taken a political connotation.
Challenges like inclusive growth and sustainable livelihood, secured energy source, up gradation of agricultural productivity and food supply, and most importantly environmental security and climate change for the future of human kind need a clear vision and mission that calls for transformational change. It is not only important to create the right policy environment, but also to ensure its longer term orientation, given the nature of investment and the long gestation period of fruition. It is critical that we engage in finding new means and policy initiatives to support in accelerating equitable and sustainable growth in the relatively marginalized sectors. Policy support and financial mechanisms will necessarily have to be longer term oriented, for which it is equally important to protect such policies from any adverse mid-course changes that could impact the very viability of these long term projects. Transformational change for any country is primarily about improving the quality of life of its people providing them a secure future. Sustainable development and inclusive growth in this age of globalization are approaches to achieving the super-ordinate goal predicted.
Course Designing
Any vibrant society continuously desires its knowledge transmission process across generation to be in tune with relevance and application of it. However, the under graduate course of Sociology (both honours and general) in our University to large extent do not fulfill this goal or desire. A few examples towards this end can substantiate this point better.
The papers dealing the basic concepts of Sociology that the new entrants in Honours course read is designed as per the content of a single book of foreign origin. This has resulted in a tremendous amount of inhibition among the students in understanding the need to read them, the connection and utility it has for the whole course. The picture is further complicated by the fact that examination dominated system does not leave the student to take initiative of their own to learn the implicit in what it infers. In the process, they end up not understanding all other papers like thought, theory, Indian society etc. Learning research technique is another area, crammed within a single (100 marks) paper, creates sufficient confusion in the mind of the students for them to derive any benefit. The paper is divided in to three almost equal parts containing methodology, quantitative analysis and field work. From personal experience, it can be stated that the students are at best ambivalent about the connection between these three parts.
The muddle created at this level manifests its negative impact on the students at a later stage when they
1. go for post graduation: when they have to relearn every thing they have been taught at the former level; this disallows the university to upgrade its syllabus with the current innovations and research in the discipline;
2. go for professional examinations like civil services or subject eligibility test like NET/SLET/SET: though the syllabus of these examinations are in consonance with whatever is taught in various universities of the country, but number of failure in these examinations point to the fact the students are unable to think analytically once the pattern of examination changes;
3. go for employment in civil society organizations: they are unable to do field work whose results can be found to be reasonably valid;
4. go for employment in media and advertising houses: very few have been able enter and succeed.
From the above stems criticism of our discipline in present times that can be broadly divided into two themes. First, the courses offered are considered a result of life-long ritualized practices by arm-chair academics and teachers, therefore are not pragmatic enough to be applicable in real life. Second, as because these courses does not provoke critical thinking, does not motivate to appraise life-events, does not encourage understanding of differences in society, and does not break the hurdles for free flow of knowledge. What remains unaccounted for in all this is the role of the institutions where these courses are taught. It is important to remember that most of the undergraduate Colleges are cash-poor and do not have the infrastructure to support the requirement of the students and the teachers. Further, lack of autonomy of these institutions force them to unquestioningly accept the diktats on the university as well as the government
In context of the above, it will be useful to see how we can overcome the above problems. First, keeping the interest of the students in mind, the following aspects are very important:
To be aware of the diverse categories of children coming out of school who join the undergraduate courses,
To craft micro-planning at college level the basis for assessment and identification of necessities of these children,
To formulate strategies that are diverse and flexible suiting to the needs of the students admitted,
To design the course content and pedagogy responsive to the requirements of a first generation learner, so that they can acquire age-appropriate concepts, skills and competencies.
Second, the following changes in the institutions of under graduate studies can improve the performance of its students:
The College environment should promote active participation among students in every kind of activity;
Instead of promoting break-neck competition and an examination oriented system, the Colleges can promote positive interdependence, interaction, accountability, interpersonal skills, group activity and processing. These will inculcate qualities among students like leadership, independent decision-making, conflict management, trust-confidence, and communication.
The above can be done only as shadow curriculum with the help of the teachers within the class room.
Third, for a strategic course designing, adopting the following steps can be found to be useful:
Deciding what kind of capacity building the course wants to accomplish;
Defining and limiting course content not in terms of a content of a book but by stressing core concepts, enduring social issues, and trimming of optional areas;
Structuring the course in a fashion where it moves from immediate reality to distant context and abstract theories;
Deciding upon on the referred text book not only depending upon content that is lucid, informative and correct, but also by its availability in market, cost and size.
Teaching Practices
We can now move from problems of discourse, to inherent power structures and finally unto the actual teaching practice. With the creation of a global market in higher education that has given rise to an online environment, traditional learning in is under threat. However, this has enlarged the scope and reach of higher education in general, and institutions of higher education now are able to forge partnership and pool their expertise, and offer it to a world-wide clientele of students. Individuals at any stage of their life and of any profession are now enabled to undertake education of whatever personal interest without carrying out the traditional formality of entering educational institution. Nevertheless, the problem of hidden curriculum that sustains the process of social reproduction that endorses the existing inequalities embedded in every layer of the society continues to thrive under the circumstances. The utopian beliefs of a democratic society like India of assumed similarities in capability or accomplishment among students severely hampers the distribution of limited resources in higher education. In the process, the elites in the society continue to corner the biggest share of all the plans and programs undertaken by the state.
Higher education for both students and teachers is much like entering into matrimony: every person concur that it is a significant episode in their life but there are so many intangibles factors involved that nobody knows exactly how it is going to workout in their life. This is further complicated by the fact that chance and the pressure of circumstances play just as decisive a role as sentiment and rational choice. Under the given situation, certain derived problems emerge that dilute the nature and practice of teaching-learning of Sociology. For example, the deterministic nature of Course designing and deliberate teaching practice to fit in a rigid framework leaves the students of Sociology high and dry in understanding the logic and connectivity among the divisions in the syllabus. Generally, teachers in colleges and universities seek to provide a well-formed and comprehensive education whereas policy-makers and institutions of higher education desire that practice of teaching-learning programs match to state’s professed aims and the socio-economic profile thus fulfill the demands of employment and market. Hence, there is a dis-connection between the goals and the expectations of teaching-learning Social Sciences in general.
The teaching practices in undergraduate classes continue with its quasi-symmetric approach where the compulsions and implications of knowledge production are based on persistence and change in hegemonic social condition in our society. Exclusion of a large section of the society, over the years, for multiple conditions/ ascribed reasons has resulted in a scenario where intellectual interrogations and research in the field continue to replicate the inequalities and power divisions. Further, set nomenclature of teaching and examination credit system does not give space for initiative and creativity. Therefore, we have a disproportionately high number of overqualified populations who are unable to find white-collar or professional jobs.
Conclusion
To go back to the question as to what we want to accomplish, it will be pertinent to remember that we are not only facing changed requirements from students in context of globalization, but also we are being challenged by pseudo-researchers who are in the market to provide support to industry with half-baked social impact studies. On the positive side, present times have opened up windows for free flow of knowledge and pooling of knowledge base through networking. We can conclude by saying that time is ripe now for us to take stock of the situation and devise strategies in course designing and teaching practices that not only address the concerns of our students, but also prepare them to face the travail and trials of market.
SOCIAL ADJUSTMENT OF THE ELDERLY IN INDIA
In today’s human society age based prejudices and discrimination are firmly embedded. Therefore, the word like ‘elderly’ has in itself acquired a negative connotation. For practical purposes, we define elderly as those people who have crossed a given life span, 65 years in developed countries and 60 years in developing countries like India. Growing old being a gradual process, such definition will always remain presumptuous and arbitrary. Elderly survivors of today, unlike all other generations throughout the remainder of the recorded human history, are those whose lived experience embraces massive scientific, technological, and social changes that occurred in the last century. But unfortunately for them improvement in the quality of life has not been proportional to the increases in quantity of life. Unlike upto the mid-life, satisfaction of an elderly depends on the presence of a spouse, children, social support, income, good physical and emotional health, adequate housing and transportation and independence. But we must remember that elderly are not a homogeneous category because of which their needs are also not uniform. The elderly are not only expected to adjust to the society but also to the crucial events in their life. First category of such events is related to the process of aging of the elderly. Second set of such events is related to the historical time when these individuals are growing old. Hence the process of demographic transition, industrialization and development affect the status of the elderly. Often than not, in this process of adjustment elderly internalizes negative societal perceptions. These attitudes combined with frequent losses (e.g. job, spouse, status, home) lead the elderly to acquire debased self-image and deflated self-esteem. Moreover, the elderly because of increasing lack of control over their life constantly feel a lack of self-efficacy. Physically the elderly experience many stresses, crisis and losses, in addition to their need to cope with a devalued status. For example they, unlike other segments of population, need more intervention even in minor physical matters, which may otherwise escalate into a major concern.
The study of social lives of the elderly covers a large area, ranging from interpersonal relationships, living arrangement, to retirement, to intergenerational equity, health, care giving, death, bereavement, and the politics of age. Due to the wide scope of this field, it is informed by multidisciplinary researches. It helps us to understand the diverse dimensions of what it is to be an elderly in our contemporary society. After all there are several factors in our society that contribute to the worsening relative position of the elderly.
Aging as a field of research developed rapidly in the last 60 years in response to a rapidly growing population of the older people, as well as due to newly emerging values in the society. Also, there has been a shift towards heightened research interest about the experiences across the life course. In the 19th and early 20th Century researchers mostly focused on the earlier years of life, i.e. childhood, youth, and early adult hood. But as the population significantly grew older by the second half of 20th century, the purview of life course research expanded to the latter years.
While studying aging, we must look into the perspectives and discourses that the elderly have towards their daily experiences. This approach focuses on ordinary experience of the elderly in their daily living, how they manage successes and face failures, and the manner in which they reconstruct their past and redefine their future in relation to present lived experiences. This process comprises the meanings that are based on how the elderly themselves interpret and discern about what is like to ‘become old’ and ‘being old’ in today’s world. The aging experience, therefore, includes the thoughts, feelings and actions of the elderly. As we know mundane life centers around the meanings that we make of various situations. Elderly do it on their own terms, as they interpersonally construct their social world depending on pleasurable or pernicious experiences of daily life.
This approach opens up new possibilities. The world is made up of particular kind of facts – not numbers, frequency tables or statistical tests – facts of life constructed by those whose lives are in question. Life is not viewed by the elderly, like the other segments of population, in terms of specific age categories. Just like the rest of us, for the elderly, a much more complex set of categories constitute their worlds. Like us the elderly also care for their loved ones, make a living, have their own friend circle and have their own idiosyncrasies. Other than their aggregation by age, these elderly can be like any other person in the society of any age category. Further, aging process is episodic in nature, so, its indices cannot be understood in a unilinear way. Thus, objective age of a person often do not have any bearing on that person’s subjective meaning of age.
We derive the meanings of our experiences from the views of others, from what is presented to us, learned from the way things are presented in mass media. Of course numerous other ways are there by which meanings are conveyed to us. We must also remember that the world of meaning varies from person to person, because its application is dependent on ones local social context. This contextuality can give a distinct dimension to the social understanding and to our personal interpretation.
In everyday life, the body, despite its objective condition, is assigned an enormous range of meanings that makes a great deal of difference as to what those meanings are to the individual. When ones body is casually described as fat, lean, youthful, aged or death like it does have an uplifting or devastating effect on that individual. In consequence of a person’s imagination, even the interpretation of that individual’s reflection in the mirror gets affected. Reflection in the mirror may have little bearing on how that individual feels behind the face. This is how the subjective body is constructed in the society. Subjective body is thus understood from a particular perspective, distinct from its objective existence in the world of everyday life. In our society, people’s reaction to an individual, to a large extent depends on the cultural definition of the body image. When these cultural definitions become motivated, the consequent effects of labeling make the elderly particularly susceptible to negative self-image.
Society tends to side with certain type of body image, like aesthetically youthful physical appearance is the benchmark for comparison and judgment in today’s society. The transient nature of modern society restricts its member’s knowledge about their fellow beings in terms of their outward physical appearances, not their social identity. Fast life, instrumental interrelationship and loss of social identity in today’s society naturally propel us to focus only on our appearance and manifest behavior that has an immediate impact. So we consciously try to project those aspects of our body that is in consonance with the social imperatives of civilized behavior. Controlled social image of an individual also manipulates one’s position of favor, influence and power.
The genesis of stigma towards the appearance of the elderly crops up because they do not remain agile enough to cope with the life style of modern society. Lack of reflexive control over the body exclude the elderly from acceptable standards, thus embedding a sense of ‘us’ and ‘them’ – in other words, ageism. Unless ageism is allowed to thrive, consumer capitalism will not be able to nurture the cult of youth, their captive consumer market. Under these circumstances, it is but natural that the elderly has to endure sufferance and indignities. Body image politics, therefore, not only shape the life of the elderly, but also maintains the power balance, thus controlling the opportunities available to them.
VARIOUS CHANGES THAT WE HUMANS FACE, AS WE GROW OLD.
First, at individual level the elderly experience biophysical decline that includes their loss of physical strength and functioning, reproductive capacity and become prone to attacks of various diseases.
Second, at the psychological level the elderly at the prime of their maturity suddenly confront the inevitable shrinkage in their goals of life and diminishing self-esteem.
Third, sociologically, we know as a person progresses through the life, an individual has to perform diverse roles. They experience greater incidence of responsibility, their network of relationship gets wider, and thus, authority and decision taking power of the elderly is at its peak. This process takes an abrupt reverse turn for an elderly who after a ‘cutoff’ age has to endure a decline in his/her position, and fails to adjust to such a change.
Besides, we have to consider the impact that the changing society has on the elderly. Human history has gone through epochal changes giving rise to conditions, which are even difficult to adjust for those humans, who have brought such changes. One such change was transformation of the economy from predominantly agricultural to industrialized form with all its far-reaching ramifications in the socio-cultural sphere, popularly labeled as industrialization.
Majority of the elderly in the developing world face material poverty. Poverty related disadvantages are compounded further for the elderly due to their inadequate social, political and economic participation. This marginalizes the elderly from the mainstream society, which in effect perpetuates their social exclusion. Poverty resulting in poor housing facility, ill health, and insecurity bring about social inferiority, isolation and vulnerability for the elderly, thus making their infirmities more insurmountable.
With age, role performance of men and women become more diverse. In their dissimilar ways, though they responsibly perform important roles for their own families and communities, yet often the responsibilities undertaken by elderly women are not recognized and are undervalued. The needs for patronage also are gender specific for the elderly to a great extent. But due to our lack of knowledge and appreciation, society treats the elderly as an undifferentiated mass, thus gender specific requirements of the elderly remain unattained. Throughout the life course, as men and women experience the impact of social and economic structures differently, it is but natural that at the later years of life they will remain differentially placed in the society. Similarly, marriage experiences differ vastly for men and women. Motherhood and household chores extract much from the lives of women. Early age of marriage increases the density of widowhood among elderly women.
Countering poverty also has a gender dimension, in the sense that systems of social welfare and insurance in most cases do not provide for women the full benefits due to absence in their records of continuous paid employment. Again, women most likely do not own property and other assets, which they can use at the time of necessity. In developing countries the scenario of the elderly women is further complicated due to the fact that they lack access to educational opportunities, that restrict their avenues in the labor market. The unpaid and unorganized labor given by elderly women in household economies accord no guarantee to them about their future material security. Gender specific variation in health issue of the elderly is also seen. Poor nutrition, endemic communicable diseases, arduous and dangerous working conditions and violence are common in the lived experience of the elderly in the developing world. But due to the discriminatory nutritional practices, women experience greater disadvantage. Added to this women face problems related to reproductive health unique to their lot.
Mass migration of people is the highest common denominator in human civilization from mid 20th century that spans not only from the villages to the cities or between regions within a country but also across the international borders. It is not only witnessed due to economic reasons but also caused by political victimization, human disasters and natural calamities that result in displacement. In reality many factors of such migration actually have negative impact on the lives of the elderly, including both, who are migrating and those who remain behind.
The politics of age in the developing world make elderly vulnerable in emergency situations like human disasters (Bhopal tragedy, Gujrat riots) or natural calamities (Gujrat earthquake). As a whole, though the community suffers under the impact of such disasters, the elderly suffer the most, as politics of age leave little support system available for them. Thus, their capacity to respond and take care of themselves under such situation is seriously compromised. Due to the destitution of the families and communities, isolated elderly are left with no one to turn to but to fend for themselves. During such disasters even the capacity of the community is seriously compromised due to want of food, medical, material and human resources, which they could otherwise have had. Prejudice and discrimination can take effect in subtle ways against the elderly, under such emergency situations, because the priority structure of the organizational mechanism in our society often segregates them.
Politics of age actually neglects the knowledge of traditional coping strategies and alternative technical know-how’s of the elderly. It is the elderly who play an integrative role with their sense of history and identity of the community. In emergency situations such role can preserve a community from disintegrating as well as can lead to their regeneration. The politics of age instead of portraying elderly as givers, more likely show them as takers, of support.
The Indian elderly population being second largest in the world is the primary background condition for the politics of old age to work. Out of the total Indian population, elderly were 4.3 crores in 1981, 5.5 crores in 1991, 7.6 crores in 2001, more than 9 crore in 2007, and estimably will cross over 13crores mark in another 20 years. By any standards, the decadal percent growth in elderly population, which is double the rate of general population growth, is nightmarish for any policy-decision maker. It is but natural that the resources and efforts necessary would be stupendous for empowering these elderly. Another way of looking at this picture will be by calculating the burden constituted by the elderly, known as old dependency ratio, that can be obtained by dividing the percentage of population in the age group of 60 plus by that in the age group of 15-59, and by multiplying the quotient by 100. Calculated in this way, we can see on every person in the productive age group (15-59), in 1981 there were 12 dependent elderly people, 15 in 1991 and estimated to be doubled in another two decades. Here we should remember that the nature of burden that the elderly pose is different from others as it is more centered on the facilities for geriatric health care and housing. As we know that the sex ratio in India is adverse to the females, and this is also true in case of the elderly. But the degree in the number of males decline as they age, and within their respective genders, the percentage of the elderly females is higher than the same among the males.
Similarly another condition that places the Indian elderly in a relative position of weakness is that out of their total population, substantially higher number of them live in rural India. Like all other Indians, elderly in rural areas are less privileged than their urban counterparts. The incidence of age in rural India is caused by higher fertility rate, as well as due to rural to urban migration. The urban population in India has a substantial proportion of rural immigrants. More often than not the migrant adults, some times out of compulsion and many a times out of sheer bias leave their aged parents in their rural homes. We also witness mostly among the lower class people, the retired elderly return to their rural home communities from urban areas.
Marital status of the aged is another factor that weakens the position of the elderly within the greater society. Loss of married partners has different impact on men and women. On one hand, men suffer from loneliness and lack of support that they found readily available all their life. On the other hand, women are distressed by the inevitable destitution that they have to experience because of their perennial economic dependence on their male partners.
Illiteracy and lack of education are major hurdles that allow the society to marginalize the elderly in India. It will be frivolous to separately discuss about the educational background of the Indian elderly, when we know the educational background of the general population itself is far from satisfactory. In India, in the last couple of decades proactive steps have been taken to raise the educational level of the population. But the elderly of today, who have been brought up prior to these efforts never had these opportunities; therefore they lag very far behind the general population in case of educational attainments. In this fast changing world low educational attainments actually breeds vulnerability among the elderly as they are supposed to respond to these changes and for that they must be ready to assume new roles and responsibilities.
In India there is a general lack of understanding regarding the unique nature of health problems that an elderly has. Whereas the younger population suffer most from infectious diseases, the elderly suffer more from chronic ailments like problems of joints, cough, respiratory problems, blood pressure, heart diseases, urinary problems, piles and diabetes. This is the reason why our medical facilities do not have elder friendly provisions. Neither do we have sufficient number of trained personnel to take care of our elderly.
Social adjustment of the elderly in India to a great extent is dependent on their economic condition that can be gauged by their employment status or their income. Elderly not only are forced to survive with no income or diminished income, but also retirement from regular employment, which was a source of identity for them for a long period of time, has damaging impact on the personality of the elderly. Suddenly they are expected to do away with their identity and social status through which they used to relate themselves with the society. Economic reforms in last one decade have brought qualitative changes in the Indian economic scene, affecting the economic role of the aged remarkably. A major area of concern is rate of work participation in the formal sector of the elderly. Comparatively India being in the early stage of structural adjustment in the economy, we still see a relatively higher work participation rate among the elderly. But progressively there will be further erosion in the work participation rates of the elderly as already evident in urban India where the economy is relatively more organized than the rural areas. Again, the elderly who still have employment are mostly engaged in the informal sector, which is relatively less remunerative in nature. So in foreseeable future, predictably the elderly in India will remain in financial quagmire.
Changing Indian economic scenario has affected the institution of family by diminishing its capacity to take care of its elders. Economic compulsions force the young adults to pursue career independently that also frees them from the economic authority of the elders. Migration and establishment of separate household by the young adults, not only constricts the family circle of their elderly, on whom they could depend, but also compel them to fall back upon their own limited personal resources. The pattern of family in India, that we witness today, is either nucleated that off shoots to simple lineal joint family for sometime, which again reverses back to nuclear stage. In this emergent pattern of families, the elderly, living with their married children in the urban areas, face difficulty in adjusting to the interpersonal family ties. Also, changed lifestyle not only restricts the number of caregivers available for the elderly within the family, but even then it cannot be taken for granted that it will be possible for these members to take care of them.
As India urbanizes another aspect of concern that comes to the fore is the adjustment of the elderly to the urban lifestyle. Due to the shortage of living space, type of housing, lack of public amenities like foot paths, parks etc., the elderly are constantly reminded of their age, infirmities and limitations. Like all urban dwellers, the aged are consumed with the fear of violence and crime, more so because of the physical infirmities and traumatic consequences. Overall, these factors severely compromise the quality of life of the elderly in urban areas.
The biggest problem in today’s society is our unwillingness to confront explicitly the role of ourselves in the society, thus we do not articulate moral commitment. Through this act of omission, in case of the elderly, we have created hegemonic ideas and corrupting ideologies that have labeled the elderly as a vulnerable set of people who are burdensome for the society. Social construction of ‘old age’, in the words of Bytheway (1995:118) “… can be seen as a process of systematic stereotyping of and discrimination against us when we are considered old”. But such social construction is done by the powerful groups within the society who define what is normal, appropriate and acceptable, thus who should be included or excluded. But these dominant ideas with their own historical logic determine, explain and justify the activities of people. If, we the people of India, do not confront the biases against the elderly with determined efforts of intergenerational equity, then it is not far off when in order to rationalize population policies and for scientific improvement of our productive forces, we will start killing our elderly population as happened in the hands of the Nazi regime in Germany during the Second World War.
The study of social lives of the elderly covers a large area, ranging from interpersonal relationships, living arrangement, to retirement, to intergenerational equity, health, care giving, death, bereavement, and the politics of age. Due to the wide scope of this field, it is informed by multidisciplinary researches. It helps us to understand the diverse dimensions of what it is to be an elderly in our contemporary society. After all there are several factors in our society that contribute to the worsening relative position of the elderly.
Aging as a field of research developed rapidly in the last 60 years in response to a rapidly growing population of the older people, as well as due to newly emerging values in the society. Also, there has been a shift towards heightened research interest about the experiences across the life course. In the 19th and early 20th Century researchers mostly focused on the earlier years of life, i.e. childhood, youth, and early adult hood. But as the population significantly grew older by the second half of 20th century, the purview of life course research expanded to the latter years.
While studying aging, we must look into the perspectives and discourses that the elderly have towards their daily experiences. This approach focuses on ordinary experience of the elderly in their daily living, how they manage successes and face failures, and the manner in which they reconstruct their past and redefine their future in relation to present lived experiences. This process comprises the meanings that are based on how the elderly themselves interpret and discern about what is like to ‘become old’ and ‘being old’ in today’s world. The aging experience, therefore, includes the thoughts, feelings and actions of the elderly. As we know mundane life centers around the meanings that we make of various situations. Elderly do it on their own terms, as they interpersonally construct their social world depending on pleasurable or pernicious experiences of daily life.
This approach opens up new possibilities. The world is made up of particular kind of facts – not numbers, frequency tables or statistical tests – facts of life constructed by those whose lives are in question. Life is not viewed by the elderly, like the other segments of population, in terms of specific age categories. Just like the rest of us, for the elderly, a much more complex set of categories constitute their worlds. Like us the elderly also care for their loved ones, make a living, have their own friend circle and have their own idiosyncrasies. Other than their aggregation by age, these elderly can be like any other person in the society of any age category. Further, aging process is episodic in nature, so, its indices cannot be understood in a unilinear way. Thus, objective age of a person often do not have any bearing on that person’s subjective meaning of age.
We derive the meanings of our experiences from the views of others, from what is presented to us, learned from the way things are presented in mass media. Of course numerous other ways are there by which meanings are conveyed to us. We must also remember that the world of meaning varies from person to person, because its application is dependent on ones local social context. This contextuality can give a distinct dimension to the social understanding and to our personal interpretation.
In everyday life, the body, despite its objective condition, is assigned an enormous range of meanings that makes a great deal of difference as to what those meanings are to the individual. When ones body is casually described as fat, lean, youthful, aged or death like it does have an uplifting or devastating effect on that individual. In consequence of a person’s imagination, even the interpretation of that individual’s reflection in the mirror gets affected. Reflection in the mirror may have little bearing on how that individual feels behind the face. This is how the subjective body is constructed in the society. Subjective body is thus understood from a particular perspective, distinct from its objective existence in the world of everyday life. In our society, people’s reaction to an individual, to a large extent depends on the cultural definition of the body image. When these cultural definitions become motivated, the consequent effects of labeling make the elderly particularly susceptible to negative self-image.
Society tends to side with certain type of body image, like aesthetically youthful physical appearance is the benchmark for comparison and judgment in today’s society. The transient nature of modern society restricts its member’s knowledge about their fellow beings in terms of their outward physical appearances, not their social identity. Fast life, instrumental interrelationship and loss of social identity in today’s society naturally propel us to focus only on our appearance and manifest behavior that has an immediate impact. So we consciously try to project those aspects of our body that is in consonance with the social imperatives of civilized behavior. Controlled social image of an individual also manipulates one’s position of favor, influence and power.
The genesis of stigma towards the appearance of the elderly crops up because they do not remain agile enough to cope with the life style of modern society. Lack of reflexive control over the body exclude the elderly from acceptable standards, thus embedding a sense of ‘us’ and ‘them’ – in other words, ageism. Unless ageism is allowed to thrive, consumer capitalism will not be able to nurture the cult of youth, their captive consumer market. Under these circumstances, it is but natural that the elderly has to endure sufferance and indignities. Body image politics, therefore, not only shape the life of the elderly, but also maintains the power balance, thus controlling the opportunities available to them.
VARIOUS CHANGES THAT WE HUMANS FACE, AS WE GROW OLD.
First, at individual level the elderly experience biophysical decline that includes their loss of physical strength and functioning, reproductive capacity and become prone to attacks of various diseases.
Second, at the psychological level the elderly at the prime of their maturity suddenly confront the inevitable shrinkage in their goals of life and diminishing self-esteem.
Third, sociologically, we know as a person progresses through the life, an individual has to perform diverse roles. They experience greater incidence of responsibility, their network of relationship gets wider, and thus, authority and decision taking power of the elderly is at its peak. This process takes an abrupt reverse turn for an elderly who after a ‘cutoff’ age has to endure a decline in his/her position, and fails to adjust to such a change.
Besides, we have to consider the impact that the changing society has on the elderly. Human history has gone through epochal changes giving rise to conditions, which are even difficult to adjust for those humans, who have brought such changes. One such change was transformation of the economy from predominantly agricultural to industrialized form with all its far-reaching ramifications in the socio-cultural sphere, popularly labeled as industrialization.
Majority of the elderly in the developing world face material poverty. Poverty related disadvantages are compounded further for the elderly due to their inadequate social, political and economic participation. This marginalizes the elderly from the mainstream society, which in effect perpetuates their social exclusion. Poverty resulting in poor housing facility, ill health, and insecurity bring about social inferiority, isolation and vulnerability for the elderly, thus making their infirmities more insurmountable.
With age, role performance of men and women become more diverse. In their dissimilar ways, though they responsibly perform important roles for their own families and communities, yet often the responsibilities undertaken by elderly women are not recognized and are undervalued. The needs for patronage also are gender specific for the elderly to a great extent. But due to our lack of knowledge and appreciation, society treats the elderly as an undifferentiated mass, thus gender specific requirements of the elderly remain unattained. Throughout the life course, as men and women experience the impact of social and economic structures differently, it is but natural that at the later years of life they will remain differentially placed in the society. Similarly, marriage experiences differ vastly for men and women. Motherhood and household chores extract much from the lives of women. Early age of marriage increases the density of widowhood among elderly women.
Countering poverty also has a gender dimension, in the sense that systems of social welfare and insurance in most cases do not provide for women the full benefits due to absence in their records of continuous paid employment. Again, women most likely do not own property and other assets, which they can use at the time of necessity. In developing countries the scenario of the elderly women is further complicated due to the fact that they lack access to educational opportunities, that restrict their avenues in the labor market. The unpaid and unorganized labor given by elderly women in household economies accord no guarantee to them about their future material security. Gender specific variation in health issue of the elderly is also seen. Poor nutrition, endemic communicable diseases, arduous and dangerous working conditions and violence are common in the lived experience of the elderly in the developing world. But due to the discriminatory nutritional practices, women experience greater disadvantage. Added to this women face problems related to reproductive health unique to their lot.
Mass migration of people is the highest common denominator in human civilization from mid 20th century that spans not only from the villages to the cities or between regions within a country but also across the international borders. It is not only witnessed due to economic reasons but also caused by political victimization, human disasters and natural calamities that result in displacement. In reality many factors of such migration actually have negative impact on the lives of the elderly, including both, who are migrating and those who remain behind.
The politics of age in the developing world make elderly vulnerable in emergency situations like human disasters (Bhopal tragedy, Gujrat riots) or natural calamities (Gujrat earthquake). As a whole, though the community suffers under the impact of such disasters, the elderly suffer the most, as politics of age leave little support system available for them. Thus, their capacity to respond and take care of themselves under such situation is seriously compromised. Due to the destitution of the families and communities, isolated elderly are left with no one to turn to but to fend for themselves. During such disasters even the capacity of the community is seriously compromised due to want of food, medical, material and human resources, which they could otherwise have had. Prejudice and discrimination can take effect in subtle ways against the elderly, under such emergency situations, because the priority structure of the organizational mechanism in our society often segregates them.
Politics of age actually neglects the knowledge of traditional coping strategies and alternative technical know-how’s of the elderly. It is the elderly who play an integrative role with their sense of history and identity of the community. In emergency situations such role can preserve a community from disintegrating as well as can lead to their regeneration. The politics of age instead of portraying elderly as givers, more likely show them as takers, of support.
The Indian elderly population being second largest in the world is the primary background condition for the politics of old age to work. Out of the total Indian population, elderly were 4.3 crores in 1981, 5.5 crores in 1991, 7.6 crores in 2001, more than 9 crore in 2007, and estimably will cross over 13crores mark in another 20 years. By any standards, the decadal percent growth in elderly population, which is double the rate of general population growth, is nightmarish for any policy-decision maker. It is but natural that the resources and efforts necessary would be stupendous for empowering these elderly. Another way of looking at this picture will be by calculating the burden constituted by the elderly, known as old dependency ratio, that can be obtained by dividing the percentage of population in the age group of 60 plus by that in the age group of 15-59, and by multiplying the quotient by 100. Calculated in this way, we can see on every person in the productive age group (15-59), in 1981 there were 12 dependent elderly people, 15 in 1991 and estimated to be doubled in another two decades. Here we should remember that the nature of burden that the elderly pose is different from others as it is more centered on the facilities for geriatric health care and housing. As we know that the sex ratio in India is adverse to the females, and this is also true in case of the elderly. But the degree in the number of males decline as they age, and within their respective genders, the percentage of the elderly females is higher than the same among the males.
Similarly another condition that places the Indian elderly in a relative position of weakness is that out of their total population, substantially higher number of them live in rural India. Like all other Indians, elderly in rural areas are less privileged than their urban counterparts. The incidence of age in rural India is caused by higher fertility rate, as well as due to rural to urban migration. The urban population in India has a substantial proportion of rural immigrants. More often than not the migrant adults, some times out of compulsion and many a times out of sheer bias leave their aged parents in their rural homes. We also witness mostly among the lower class people, the retired elderly return to their rural home communities from urban areas.
Marital status of the aged is another factor that weakens the position of the elderly within the greater society. Loss of married partners has different impact on men and women. On one hand, men suffer from loneliness and lack of support that they found readily available all their life. On the other hand, women are distressed by the inevitable destitution that they have to experience because of their perennial economic dependence on their male partners.
Illiteracy and lack of education are major hurdles that allow the society to marginalize the elderly in India. It will be frivolous to separately discuss about the educational background of the Indian elderly, when we know the educational background of the general population itself is far from satisfactory. In India, in the last couple of decades proactive steps have been taken to raise the educational level of the population. But the elderly of today, who have been brought up prior to these efforts never had these opportunities; therefore they lag very far behind the general population in case of educational attainments. In this fast changing world low educational attainments actually breeds vulnerability among the elderly as they are supposed to respond to these changes and for that they must be ready to assume new roles and responsibilities.
In India there is a general lack of understanding regarding the unique nature of health problems that an elderly has. Whereas the younger population suffer most from infectious diseases, the elderly suffer more from chronic ailments like problems of joints, cough, respiratory problems, blood pressure, heart diseases, urinary problems, piles and diabetes. This is the reason why our medical facilities do not have elder friendly provisions. Neither do we have sufficient number of trained personnel to take care of our elderly.
Social adjustment of the elderly in India to a great extent is dependent on their economic condition that can be gauged by their employment status or their income. Elderly not only are forced to survive with no income or diminished income, but also retirement from regular employment, which was a source of identity for them for a long period of time, has damaging impact on the personality of the elderly. Suddenly they are expected to do away with their identity and social status through which they used to relate themselves with the society. Economic reforms in last one decade have brought qualitative changes in the Indian economic scene, affecting the economic role of the aged remarkably. A major area of concern is rate of work participation in the formal sector of the elderly. Comparatively India being in the early stage of structural adjustment in the economy, we still see a relatively higher work participation rate among the elderly. But progressively there will be further erosion in the work participation rates of the elderly as already evident in urban India where the economy is relatively more organized than the rural areas. Again, the elderly who still have employment are mostly engaged in the informal sector, which is relatively less remunerative in nature. So in foreseeable future, predictably the elderly in India will remain in financial quagmire.
Changing Indian economic scenario has affected the institution of family by diminishing its capacity to take care of its elders. Economic compulsions force the young adults to pursue career independently that also frees them from the economic authority of the elders. Migration and establishment of separate household by the young adults, not only constricts the family circle of their elderly, on whom they could depend, but also compel them to fall back upon their own limited personal resources. The pattern of family in India, that we witness today, is either nucleated that off shoots to simple lineal joint family for sometime, which again reverses back to nuclear stage. In this emergent pattern of families, the elderly, living with their married children in the urban areas, face difficulty in adjusting to the interpersonal family ties. Also, changed lifestyle not only restricts the number of caregivers available for the elderly within the family, but even then it cannot be taken for granted that it will be possible for these members to take care of them.
As India urbanizes another aspect of concern that comes to the fore is the adjustment of the elderly to the urban lifestyle. Due to the shortage of living space, type of housing, lack of public amenities like foot paths, parks etc., the elderly are constantly reminded of their age, infirmities and limitations. Like all urban dwellers, the aged are consumed with the fear of violence and crime, more so because of the physical infirmities and traumatic consequences. Overall, these factors severely compromise the quality of life of the elderly in urban areas.
The biggest problem in today’s society is our unwillingness to confront explicitly the role of ourselves in the society, thus we do not articulate moral commitment. Through this act of omission, in case of the elderly, we have created hegemonic ideas and corrupting ideologies that have labeled the elderly as a vulnerable set of people who are burdensome for the society. Social construction of ‘old age’, in the words of Bytheway (1995:118) “… can be seen as a process of systematic stereotyping of and discrimination against us when we are considered old”. But such social construction is done by the powerful groups within the society who define what is normal, appropriate and acceptable, thus who should be included or excluded. But these dominant ideas with their own historical logic determine, explain and justify the activities of people. If, we the people of India, do not confront the biases against the elderly with determined efforts of intergenerational equity, then it is not far off when in order to rationalize population policies and for scientific improvement of our productive forces, we will start killing our elderly population as happened in the hands of the Nazi regime in Germany during the Second World War.
MOTHER'S EYE
A Mom comes to visit her son Kumar for dinner......who lives with a girl roommate Smita. During the course of the meal, his mother couldn't help but notice how pretty Kumar's roommate was. She had long been suspicious of a relationship between the two, and this had only made her more curious.
Over the course of the evening, while watching the two interact, she started to wonder if there was more between Kumar and his roommate than met the eye.
Reading his mom's thoughts, Kumar volunteered, 'I know what you must be thinking, but I assure you, Smita and I are just roommates.'
About a week later, Smita came to Kumar saying, 'Ever since your mother came to dinner, I've been unable to find the silver plate. You don't suppose she took it, do you?'
Kumar said ,'Well, I doubt it, but I'll email her, just to be sure.'
So he sat down and wrote :
Dear Mother:
I'm not saying that you 'did' take the silver plate from my house, I'm not saying that you 'did not' take the silver plate.. But the fact remains that it has been missing ever since you were here for dinner.
Love, Kumar
.
..
...
................. Several days later, Kumar received an email from his Mother :
Dear Son:
I'm not saying that you 'do' sleep with Smita, and I'm not saying that you 'do not' sleep with Smita. But the fact remains that if she was sleeping in her OWN bed, she would have found the silver plate by now under the pillow...
Love,
Mom
Over the course of the evening, while watching the two interact, she started to wonder if there was more between Kumar and his roommate than met the eye.
Reading his mom's thoughts, Kumar volunteered, 'I know what you must be thinking, but I assure you, Smita and I are just roommates.'
About a week later, Smita came to Kumar saying, 'Ever since your mother came to dinner, I've been unable to find the silver plate. You don't suppose she took it, do you?'
Kumar said ,'Well, I doubt it, but I'll email her, just to be sure.'
So he sat down and wrote :
Dear Mother:
I'm not saying that you 'did' take the silver plate from my house, I'm not saying that you 'did not' take the silver plate.. But the fact remains that it has been missing ever since you were here for dinner.
Love, Kumar
.
..
...
................. Several days later, Kumar received an email from his Mother :
Dear Son:
I'm not saying that you 'do' sleep with Smita, and I'm not saying that you 'do not' sleep with Smita. But the fact remains that if she was sleeping in her OWN bed, she would have found the silver plate by now under the pillow...
Love,
Mom
SOLUTIONS TO THE FOOD SHORTAGE IN WORLD!
A worldwide survey was conducted by the UN. The only question asked was:
"Would you please give your honest opinion about solutions to the food shortage in the rest of the world?"
The survey was a huge failure,
In Africa they didn't know what 'food' meant,
In India they didn't know what 'honest' meant,
In Europe they didn't know what 'shortage' meant,
In China they didn't know what 'opinion' meant,
In the Middle East they didn't know what 'solution' meant,
In South America they didn't know what 'please' meant,
And in the USA they didn't know what 'the rest of the world' meant!
"Would you please give your honest opinion about solutions to the food shortage in the rest of the world?"
The survey was a huge failure,
In Africa they didn't know what 'food' meant,
In India they didn't know what 'honest' meant,
In Europe they didn't know what 'shortage' meant,
In China they didn't know what 'opinion' meant,
In the Middle East they didn't know what 'solution' meant,
In South America they didn't know what 'please' meant,
And in the USA they didn't know what 'the rest of the world' meant!
TEST YOU MAY AVOID!
ONE NIGHT 4 MBA STUDENTS WERE BOOZING TILL LATE NIGHT AND DIDN'T STUDY
FOR THE TEST WHICH WAS SCHEDULED FOR THE NEXT DAY.
IN THE MORNING THEY THOUGHT OF A PLAN. THEY MADE THEMSELVES LOOK AS DIRTY
AND WEIRD AS THEY COULD WITH GREASE AND DIRT.
THEY THEN WENT UP TO THE DEAN AND SAID THAT THEY HAD GONE OUT TO A WEDDING
LAST NIGHT AND ON THEIR RETURN THE TYRE OF THEIR CAR BURST AND THEY HAD TO
PUSH THE CAR ALL THE WAY BACK AND THAT THEY WERE IN NO CONDITION TO APPEAR
FOR THE TEST.
THEN DEAN WAS A JUST PERSON SO HE SAID THAT YOU CAN HAVE THE RETEST AFTER 3
DAYS.
THEY SAID THEY WILL BE READY BY THAT TIME. ON THE THIRD DAY THEY APPEARED
BEFORE THE DEAN. THE DEAN SAID THAT THIS WAS A SPECIAL CONDITION TEST.
ALL FOUR WERE REQUIRED TO SIT IN SEPARATE CLASSROOMS FOR THE TEST. THEY ALL
AGREED AS THEY HAD PREPARED WELL IN THE LAST THREE DAYS. THE TEST CONSISTED
OF 2 QUESTIONS WITH TOTAL OF 100 MARKS.
Q.1. WRITE DOWN YOUR NAME -----(2 MARKS)
Q.2. WHICH TYRE BURST -------(98 MARKS)!!
FOR THE TEST WHICH WAS SCHEDULED FOR THE NEXT DAY.
IN THE MORNING THEY THOUGHT OF A PLAN. THEY MADE THEMSELVES LOOK AS DIRTY
AND WEIRD AS THEY COULD WITH GREASE AND DIRT.
THEY THEN WENT UP TO THE DEAN AND SAID THAT THEY HAD GONE OUT TO A WEDDING
LAST NIGHT AND ON THEIR RETURN THE TYRE OF THEIR CAR BURST AND THEY HAD TO
PUSH THE CAR ALL THE WAY BACK AND THAT THEY WERE IN NO CONDITION TO APPEAR
FOR THE TEST.
THEN DEAN WAS A JUST PERSON SO HE SAID THAT YOU CAN HAVE THE RETEST AFTER 3
DAYS.
THEY SAID THEY WILL BE READY BY THAT TIME. ON THE THIRD DAY THEY APPEARED
BEFORE THE DEAN. THE DEAN SAID THAT THIS WAS A SPECIAL CONDITION TEST.
ALL FOUR WERE REQUIRED TO SIT IN SEPARATE CLASSROOMS FOR THE TEST. THEY ALL
AGREED AS THEY HAD PREPARED WELL IN THE LAST THREE DAYS. THE TEST CONSISTED
OF 2 QUESTIONS WITH TOTAL OF 100 MARKS.
Q.1. WRITE DOWN YOUR NAME -----(2 MARKS)
Q.2. WHICH TYRE BURST -------(98 MARKS)!!
ON A LIGHTER VEIN FALL OUT OF TECHNOLOGY
A man checked into a hotel. There was a computer in his room, so he decided to send an e-mail to his wife. However, he accidentally typed a wrong e-mail address, and without realizing his error, he sent the
e-mail.
Meanwhile.....somewhere else, a widow had just returned home from her husband's funeral. The widow decided to check her e-mail, expecting messages from relatives and friends. After reading the first message, she fainted. The widow's son rushed into the room, found his mother on the floor, and saw the computer screen which read:
To: My Loving Wife
Subject: I've Reached
Date: 31 May 2004
Darling, I know you're surprised to hear from me. They have computers here now, and you are allowed to send e-mails to your loved ones. I've just reached and have been checked in. I see that everything has been prepared for your arrival tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing you then!
Hope your journey will be as uneventful as mine was.
e-mail.
Meanwhile.....somewhere else, a widow had just returned home from her husband's funeral. The widow decided to check her e-mail, expecting messages from relatives and friends. After reading the first message, she fainted. The widow's son rushed into the room, found his mother on the floor, and saw the computer screen which read:
To: My Loving Wife
Subject: I've Reached
Date: 31 May 2004
Darling, I know you're surprised to hear from me. They have computers here now, and you are allowed to send e-mails to your loved ones. I've just reached and have been checked in. I see that everything has been prepared for your arrival tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing you then!
Hope your journey will be as uneventful as mine was.
IMAGING TRUTH!
Tipper Gore discovered that her husband's great great uncle, Gunther Gore, was hanged for horse stealing and train robbery in Tennessee in 1889.
The only existing photograph shows him standing on the gallows. On the back of the picture is this inscription: "Gunther Gore; horse thief. Sent to Tennessee Prison 1883, escaped 1887. Robbed the Tennessee Flyer six times. Caught by Pinkerton detectives, convicted and hanged in 1889."
After letting President Clinton's large staff of professional image consultants review this discovery, they took the following actions to assist Al's campaign to become our next president. They decided to crop Gunther's picture, scan it in as an enlarged image, and edited it with image processing software so that all that is seen in the final picture is a head shot. Along with this enhanced photo, the accompanying biographical sketch was sent to the Associated Press:
"Gunther Gore was a famous cattleman in early Tennessee history. His business empire grew to include acquisition of valuable equestrian assets and intimate dealings with the Tennessee railroad company. Beginning in 1883, he devoted several years of his life to service at a government facility, finally taking leave to resume his business enterprise with the railroad. In 1887 he was a key player in a vital investigation run by the renowned Pinkerton Detective Agency. In 1889 Gunther regrettably died suddenly during an important civic function held in his honor when the platform on which he was standing collapsed."
The only existing photograph shows him standing on the gallows. On the back of the picture is this inscription: "Gunther Gore; horse thief. Sent to Tennessee Prison 1883, escaped 1887. Robbed the Tennessee Flyer six times. Caught by Pinkerton detectives, convicted and hanged in 1889."
After letting President Clinton's large staff of professional image consultants review this discovery, they took the following actions to assist Al's campaign to become our next president. They decided to crop Gunther's picture, scan it in as an enlarged image, and edited it with image processing software so that all that is seen in the final picture is a head shot. Along with this enhanced photo, the accompanying biographical sketch was sent to the Associated Press:
"Gunther Gore was a famous cattleman in early Tennessee history. His business empire grew to include acquisition of valuable equestrian assets and intimate dealings with the Tennessee railroad company. Beginning in 1883, he devoted several years of his life to service at a government facility, finally taking leave to resume his business enterprise with the railroad. In 1887 he was a key player in a vital investigation run by the renowned Pinkerton Detective Agency. In 1889 Gunther regrettably died suddenly during an important civic function held in his honor when the platform on which he was standing collapsed."
Saturday, July 17, 2010
LIVING IN THRESHOLD
LIVING IN THRESHOLD
Thresholds, the space where we enter a house and where we leave it, it is where we don’t dwell. The threshold designates the passing from one state to another, from the inside to the outside, or the point where things start to become different. A threshold is a step to overcome, a passage in itself, a moment of opening significant in anthropology of rituals, a hyphen that separates and unites at the same time. Nevertheless, in philosophy, the threshold also expresses the human condition itself, a state that we never leave, a state we should not even try to overcome because it concentrates our whole being. The threshold would then be a “zone” as Walter Benjamin calls it, a space where man evolves, always “in between”. On the threshold of the other, as in Martin Buber’s thought, or always on the verge of becoming as Henri Bergson describes “the creation of the self by the self”, the state of the human condition is on the threshold of being. The Hegelian becoming also is a threshold, the overcoming of the self in a dynamic momentum. In order to introduce the threshold as a technical term in philosophical vocabulary, we suggest the theme of “soglitude”, taking its etymology from the Italian word soglia for threshold and the consonance of the solitary state of the human condition, a loneliness however that always leads to another world, another being, or matter, or even colour. Forever on the threshold of the other, the other person he encounters or the other world he discovers, man is always in between things, interacting and creating a symbiosis with the world in which he evolves. The state on the threshold, the “soglitude”, could well be the deep tonality of the human condition itself. Not a temporary state but rather the expression of the passing and becoming all in one, the movement and the stillness, the link between time passing and the moment that escapes us.
EXTRACTED INTERESTING READ FROM A CFP
Thresholds, the space where we enter a house and where we leave it, it is where we don’t dwell. The threshold designates the passing from one state to another, from the inside to the outside, or the point where things start to become different. A threshold is a step to overcome, a passage in itself, a moment of opening significant in anthropology of rituals, a hyphen that separates and unites at the same time. Nevertheless, in philosophy, the threshold also expresses the human condition itself, a state that we never leave, a state we should not even try to overcome because it concentrates our whole being. The threshold would then be a “zone” as Walter Benjamin calls it, a space where man evolves, always “in between”. On the threshold of the other, as in Martin Buber’s thought, or always on the verge of becoming as Henri Bergson describes “the creation of the self by the self”, the state of the human condition is on the threshold of being. The Hegelian becoming also is a threshold, the overcoming of the self in a dynamic momentum. In order to introduce the threshold as a technical term in philosophical vocabulary, we suggest the theme of “soglitude”, taking its etymology from the Italian word soglia for threshold and the consonance of the solitary state of the human condition, a loneliness however that always leads to another world, another being, or matter, or even colour. Forever on the threshold of the other, the other person he encounters or the other world he discovers, man is always in between things, interacting and creating a symbiosis with the world in which he evolves. The state on the threshold, the “soglitude”, could well be the deep tonality of the human condition itself. Not a temporary state but rather the expression of the passing and becoming all in one, the movement and the stillness, the link between time passing and the moment that escapes us.
EXTRACTED INTERESTING READ FROM A CFP
WISDOM:The paradox of our time!
“The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider freeways, but narrow viewpoints; we spend, but have less; we buy more but enjoy it less. We have bigger houses, but smaller families; more conveniences, but less time; we have more degrees, but less sense; more knowledge, but less judgement; more experts, but more problems; more medicine, but less wellness. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We’ve learned how to make a living, but not a life; we’ve added years to life, not life to years. We’ve been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor. We’ve conquered outer space, but not inner space; we’ve cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul; we’ve split the atom, but not our prejudice. We have higher incomes, but lower morals; we’ve become long on quantity, but short on quality. These are the times of tall men, and short character; steep profits, and shallow relationships. These are the times of world peace, but domestic warfare; more leisure, but less fun; more kinds of food, but less nutrition. These are the days of two incomes, but more divorce; of fancier houses, but broken homes. It is a time when there is much in the show window and nothing in the stockroom; a time when technology can bring this tweet to you, and a time when you can choose either to make a difference …..or…..just hit DELETE.”
SOURCE: UNKNOWN
SOURCE: UNKNOWN
What is Semiotics?
What is Semiotics?
If one goes into a bookshop and ask them where to find a book on semiotics one is likely to meet with a blank look. Even worse, one might be asked to define what semiotics is - which would be a bit tricky if one was looking for a beginner's guide. It's worse still if one does know a bit about semiotics, because it can be hard to offer a simple definition which is of much use in the bookshop. If he has ever been in such a situation, he will probably agree that it's wise not to ask. Semiotics could be anywhere. The shortest definition is that it is the study of signs. But that doesn't leave enquirers much wiser. 'What do you mean by a sign?' people usually ask next. The kinds of signs that are likely to spring immediately to mind are those which we routinely refer to as 'signs' in everyday life, such as road signs, pub signs and star signs. If he was to agree with them that semiotics can include the study of all these and more, people will probably assume that semiotics is about 'visual signs'. He would confirm their hunch if he said that signs can also be drawings, paintings and photographs, and by now they'd be keen to direct him to the art and photography sections. But if he is thick-skinned and tells them that it also includes words, sounds and 'body language' they may reasonably wonder what all these things have in common and how anyone could possibly study such disparate phenomena. If he gets this far they've probably already 'read the signs' which suggest that he is either eccentric or insane and communication may have ceased.
It is... possible to conceive of a science which studies the role of signs as part of social life. It would form part of social psychology, and hence of general psychology. We shall call it semiology (from the Greek semeîon, 'sign'). It would investigate the nature of signs and the laws governing them. Since it does not yet exist, one cannot say for certain that it will exist. But it has a right to exist, a place ready for it in advance. Linguistics is only one branch of this general science. The laws which semiology will discover will be laws applicable in linguistics, and linguistics will thus be assigned to a clearly defined place in the field of human knowledge. (Saussure 1983, 15-16; Saussure 1974, 16).
Thus wrote the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), a founder not only of linguistics but also of what is now more usually referred to as semiotics (in his Course in General Linguistics, 1916). Other than Saussure (the usual abbreviation), key figures in the early development of semiotics were the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (sic, pronounced 'purse') (1839-1914) and later Charles William Morris (1901-1979), who developed a behaviourist semiotics. Leading modern semiotic theorists include Roland Barthes (1915-1980), Algirdas Greimas (1917-1992), Yuri Lotman (1922-1993), Christian Metz (1931-1993), Umberto Eco (b 1932) and Julia Kristeva (b 1941). A number of linguists other than Saussure have worked within a semiotic framework, such as Louis Hjelmslev (1899-1966) and Roman Jakobson (1896-1982). It is difficult to disentangle European semiotics from structuralism in its origins; major structuralists include not only Saussure but also Claude Lévi-Strauss (b. 1908) in anthropology (who saw his subject as a branch of semiotics) and Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) in psychoanalysis. Structuralism is an analytical method which has been employed by many semioticians and which is based on Saussure's linguistic model. Structuralists seek to describe the overall organization of sign systems as 'languages' - as with Lévi-Strauss and myth, kinship rules and totemism, Lacan and the unconscious and Barthes and Greimas and the 'grammar' of narrative. They engage in a search for 'deep structures' underlying the 'surface features' of phenomena. However, contemporary social semiotics has moved beyond the structuralist concern with the internal relations of parts within a self-contained system, seeking to explore the use of signs in specific social situations. Modern semiotic theory is also sometimes allied with a Marxist approach which stresses the role of ideology.
Semiotics began to become a major approach to cultural studies in the late 1960s, partly as a result of the work of Roland Barthes. The translation into English of his popular essays in a collection entitled Mythologies (Barthes 1957), followed in the 1970s and 1980s by many of his other writings, greatly increased scholarly awareness of this approach. Writing in 1964, Barthes declared that 'semiology aims to take in any system of signs, whatever their substance and limits; images, gestures, musical sounds, objects, and the complex associations of all of these, which form the content of ritual, convention or public entertainment: these constitute, if not languages, at least systems of signification' (Barthes 1967, 9). The adoption of semiotics in Britain was influenced by its prominence in the work of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the University of Birmingham whilst the centre was under the direction of the neo-Marxist sociologist Stuart Hall (director 1969-79). Although semiotics may be less central now within cultural and media studies (at least in its earlier, more structuralist form), it remains essential for anyone in the field to understand it. What individual scholars have to assess, of course, is whether and how semiotics may be useful in shedding light on any aspect of their concerns. Note that Saussure's term, 'semiology' is sometimes used to refer to the Saussurean tradition, whilst 'semiotics' sometimes refers to the Peircean tradition, but that nowadays the term 'semiotics' is more likely to be used as an umbrella term to embrace the whole field (Nöth 1990, 14).
Semiotics is not widely institutionalized as an academic discipline. It is a field of study involving many different theoretical stances and methodological tools. One of the broadest definitions is that of Umberto Eco, who states that 'semiotics is concerned with everything that can be taken as a sign' (Eco 1976, 7). Semiotics involves the study not only of what we refer to as 'signs' in everyday speech, but of anything which 'stands for' something else. In a semiotic sense, signs take the form of words, images, sounds, gestures and objects. Whilst for the linguist Saussure, 'semiology' was 'a science which studies the role of signs as part of social life', for the philosopher Charles Peirce 'semiotic' was the 'formal doctrine of signs' which was closely related to Logic (Peirce 1931-58, 2.227). For him, 'a sign... is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity' (Peirce 1931-58, 2.228). He declared that 'every thought is a sign' (Peirce 1931-58, 1.538; cf. 5.250ff, 5.283ff). Contemporary semioticians study signs not in isolation but as part of semiotic 'sign systems' (such as a medium or genre). They study how meanings are made: as such, being concerned not only with communication but also with the construction and maintenance of reality. Semiotics and that branch of linguistics known as semantics have a common concern with the meaning of signs, but John Sturrock argues that whereas semantics focuses on what words mean, semiotics is concerned with how signs mean (Sturrock 1986, 22). For C W Morris (deriving this threefold classification from Peirce), semiotics embraced semantics, along with the other traditional branches of linguistics:
semantics: the relationship of signs to what they stand for;
syntactics (or syntax): the formal or structural relations between signs;
pragmatics: the relation of signs to interpreters (Morris 1938, 6-7).
Semiotics is often employed in the analysis of texts (although it is far more than just a mode of textual analysis). Here it should perhaps be noted that a 'text' can exist in any medium and may be verbal, non-verbal, or both, despite the logocentric bias of this distinction. The term text usually refers to a message which has been recorded in some way (e.g. writing, audio- and video-recording) so that it is physically independent of its sender or receiver. A text is an assemblage of signs (such as words, images, sounds and/or gestures) constructed (and interpreted) with reference to the conventions associated with a genre and in a particular medium of communication.
The term 'medium' is used in a variety of ways by different theorists, and may include such broad categories as speech and writing or print and broadcasting or relate to specific technical forms within the mass media (radio, television, newspapers, magazines, books, photographs, films and records) or the media of interpersonal communication (telephone, letter, fax, e-mail, video-conferencing, computer-based chat systems). Some theorists classify media according to the 'channels' involved (visual, auditory, tactile and so on) (Nöth 1995, 175). Human experience is inherently multisensory, and every representation of experience is subject to the constraints and affordances of the medium involved. Every medium is constrained by the channels which it utilizes. For instance, even in the very flexible medium of language 'words fail us' in attempting to represent some experiences, and we have no way at all of representing smell or touch with conventional media. Different media and genres provide different frameworks for representing experience, facilitating some forms of expression and inhibiting others. The differences between media lead Emile Benveniste to argue that the 'first principle' of semiotic systems is that they are not 'synonymous': 'we are not able to say "the same thing"' in systems based on different units (in Innis 1986, 235) in contrast to Hjelmslev, who asserted that 'in practice, language is a semiotic into which all other semiotics may be translated' (cited in Genosko 1994, 62).
The everyday use of a medium by someone who knows how to use it typically passes unquestioned as unproblematic and 'neutral': this is hardly surprising since media evolve as a means of accomplishing purposes in which they are usually intended to be incidental. And the more frequently and fluently a medium is used, the more 'transparent' or 'invisible' to its users it tends to become. For most routine purposes, awareness of a medium may hamper its effectiveness as a means to an end. Indeed, it is typically when the medium acquires transparency that its potential to fulfil its primary function is greatest.
The selectivity of any medium leads to its use having influences of which the user may not always be conscious, and which may not have been part of the purpose in using it. We can be so familiar with the medium that we are 'anaesthetized' to the mediation it involves: we 'don't know what we're missing'. Insofar as we are numbed to the processes involved we cannot be said to be exercising 'choices' in its use. In this way the means we use may modify our ends. Amongst the phenomena enhanced or reduced by media selectivity are the ends for which a medium was used. In some cases, our 'purposes' may be subtly (and perhaps invisibly), redefined by our use of a particular medium. This is the opposite of the pragmatic and rationalistic stance, according to which the means are chosen to suit the user's ends, and are entirely under the user's control.
An awareness of this phenomenon of transformation by media has often led media theorists to argue deterministically that our technical means and systems always and inevitably become 'ends in themselves' (a common interpretation of Marshall McLuhan's famous aphorism, 'the medium is the message'), and has even led some to present media as wholly autonomous entities with 'purposes' (as opposed to functions) of their own. However, one need not adopt such extreme stances in acknowledging the transformations involved in processes of mediation. When we use a medium for any purpose, its use becomes part of that purpose. Travelling is an unavoidable part of getting somewhere; it may even become a primary goal. Travelling by one particular method of transport rather than another is part of the experience. So too with writing rather than speaking, or using a word processor rather than a pen. In using any medium, to some extent we serve its 'purposes' as well as it serving ours. When we engage with media we both act and are acted upon, use and are used. Where a medium has a variety of functions it may be impossible to choose to use it for only one of these functions in isolation. The making of meanings with such media must involve some degree of compromise. Complete identity between any specific purpose and the functionality of a medium is likely to be rare, although the degree of match may on most occasions be accepted as adequate.
The reader is reminded here of an observation by the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss that in the case of what he called bricolage, the process of creating something is not a matter of the calculated choice and use of whatever materials are technically best-adapted to a clearly predetermined purpose, but rather it involves a 'dialogue with the materials and means of execution' (Lévi-Strauss 1974, 29). In such a dialogue, the materials which are ready-to-hand may (as we say) 'suggest' adaptive courses of action, and the initial aim may be modified. Consequently, such acts of creation are not purely instrumental: the bricoleur '"speaks" not only with things... but also through the medium of things' (ibid., 21): the use of the medium can be expressive. The context of Lévi-Strauss's point was a discussion of 'mythical thought', but one would argue that bricolage can be involved in the use of any medium, for any purpose. The act of writing, for instance, may be shaped not only by the writer's conscious purposes but also by features of the media involved - such as the kind of language and writing tools used - as well as by the social and psychological processes of mediation involved. Any 'resistance' offered by the writer's materials can be an intrinsic part of the process of writing. However, not every writer acts or feels like a bricoleur. Individuals differ strikingly in their responses to the notion of media transformation. They range from those who insist that they are in total control of the media which they 'use' to those who experience a profound sense of being shaped by the media which 'use' them (Chandler 1995).
Norman Fairclough comments on the importance of the differences between the various mass media in the channels and technologies they draw upon.
The press uses a visual channel, its language is written, and it draws upon technologies of photographic reproduction, graphic design, and printing. Radio, by contrast, uses an oral channel and spoken language and relies on technologies of sound recording and broadcasting, whilst television combines technologies of sound- and image-recording and broadcasting...
These differences in channel and technology have significant wider implications in terms of the meaning potential of the different media. For instance, print is in an important sense less personal than radio or television. Radio begins to allow individuality and personality to be foregrounded through transmitting individual qualities of voice. Television takes the process much further by making people visually available, and not in the frozen modality of newspaper photographs, but in movement and action. (Fairclough 1995, 38-9)
Whilst technological determinists emphasize that semiotic ecologies are influenced by the fundamental design features of different media, it is important to recognize the importance of socio-cultural and historical factors in shaping how different media are used and their (ever-shifting) status within particular cultural contexts. For instance, many contemporary cultural theorists have remarked on the growth of the importance of visual media compared with linguistic media in contemporary society and the associated shifts in the communicative functions of such media. Thinking in 'ecological' terms about the interaction of different semiotic structures and languages led the Russian cultural semiotician Yuri Lotman to coin the term 'semiosphere' to refer to 'the whole semiotic space of the culture in question' (Lotman 1990, 124-125). The concept is related to ecologists' references to 'the biosphere' and perhaps to cultural theorists' references to the public and private spheres, but most reminiscent of Teilhard de Chardin's notion (dating back to 1949) of the 'noosphere' - the domain in which mind is exercised. Whilst Lotman referred to such semiospheres as governing the functioning of languages within cultures, John Hartley comments that 'there is more than one level at which one might identify a semiosphere - at the level of a single national or linguistic culture, for instance, or of a larger unity such as "the West", right up to "the species"'; we might similarly characterize the semiosphere of a particular historical period (Hartley 1996, 106). This conception of a semiosphere may make semioticians seem territorially imperialistic to their critics, but it offers a more unified and dynamic vision of semiosis than the study of a specific medium as if each existed in a vacuum.
There are, of course, other approaches to textual analysis apart from semiotics - notably rhetorical analysis, discourse analysis and 'content analysis'. In the field of media and communication studies content analysis is a prominent rival to semiotics as a method of textual analysis. Whereas semiotics is now closely associated with cultural studies, content analysis is well-established within the mainstream tradition of social science research. Whilst content analysis involves a quantitative approach to the analysis of the manifest 'content' of media texts, semiotics seeks to analyse media texts as structured wholes and investigates latent, connotative meanings. Semiotics is rarely quantitative, and often involves a rejection of such approaches. Just because an item occurs frequently in a text does not make it significant. The structuralist semiotician is more concerned with the relation of elements to each other. A social semiotician would also emphasize the importance of the significance which readers attach to the signs within a text. Whereas content analysis focuses on explicit content and tends to suggest that this represents a single, fixed meaning, semiotic studies focus on the system of rules governing the 'discourse' involved in media texts, stressing the role of semiotic context in shaping meaning. However, some researchers have combined semiotic analysis and content analysis (e.g. Glasgow University Media Group 1980; Leiss et al. 1990; McQuarrie & Mick 1992).
Some commentators adopt C W Morris's definition of semiotics (in the spirit of Saussure) as 'the science of signs' (Morris 1938, 1-2). The term 'science' is misleading. As yet semiotics involves no widely-agreed theoretical assumptions, models or empirical methodologies. Semiotics has tended to be largely theoretical, many of its theorists seeking to establish its scope and general principles. Peirce and Saussure, for instance, were both concerned with the fundamental definition of the sign. Peirce developed elaborate logical taxonomies of types of signs. Subsequent semioticians have sought to identify and categorize the codes or conventions according to which signs are organized. Clearly there is a need to establish a firm theoretical foundation for a subject which is currently characterized by a host of competing theoretical assumptions. As for methodologies, Saussure's theories constituted a starting point for the development of various structuralist methodologies for analysing texts and social practices. These have been very widely employed in the analysis of a host of cultural phenomena. However, such methods are not universally accepted: socially-oriented theorists have criticized their exclusive focus on structure, and no alternative methodologies have as yet been widely adopted. Some semiotic research is empirically-oriented, applying and testing semiotic principles. Bob Hodge and David Tripp employed empirical methods in their classic study of Children and Television (Hodge & Tripp 1986). But there is at present little sense of semiotics as a unified enterprise building on cumulative research findings.
Semiotics represents a range of studies in art, literature, anthropology and the mass media rather than an independent academic discipline. Those involved in semiotics include linguists, philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, literary, aesthetic and media theorists, psychoanalysts and educationalists. Beyond the most basic definition, there is considerable variation amongst leading semioticians as to what semiotics involves. It is not only concerned with (intentional) communication but also with our ascription of significance to anything in the world. Semiotics has changed over time, since semioticians have sought to remedy weaknesses in early semiotic approaches. Even with the most basic semiotic terms there are multiple definitions. Consequently, anyone attempting semiotic analysis would be wise to make clear which definitions are being applied and, if a particular semiotician's approach is being adopted, what its source is. There are two divergent traditions in semiotics stemming respectively from Saussure and Peirce. The work of Louis Hjelmslev, Roland Barthes, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Julia Kristeva, Christian Metz and Jean Baudrillard (b 1929) follows in the 'semiological' tradition of Saussure whilst that of Charles W Morris, Ivor A Richards (1893-1979), Charles K Ogden (1989-1957) and Thomas Sebeok (b 1920) is in the 'semiotic' tradition of Peirce. The leading semiotician bridging these two traditions is the celebrated Italian author Umberto Eco, who as the author of the bestseller The Name of the Rose (novel 1980, film 1986) is probably the only semiotician whose film rights are of any value (Eco 1980).
Saussure argued that 'nothing is more appropriate than the study of languages to bring out the nature of the semiological problem' (Saussure 1983, 16; Saussure 1974, 16). Semiotics draws heavily on linguistic concepts, partly because of the influence of Saussure and because linguistics is a more established discipline than the study of other sign systems. Structuralists adopted language as their model in exploring a much wider range of social phenomena: Lévi-Strauss for myth, kinship rules and totemism; Lacan for the unconscious; Barthes and Greimas for the 'grammar' of narrative. Julia Kristeva declared that 'what semiotics has discovered... is that the law governing or, if one prefers, the major constraint affecting any social practice lies in the fact that it signifies; i.e. that it is articulated like a language' (cited in Hawkes 1977, 125). Saussure referred to language (his model being speech) as 'the most important' of all of the systems of signs (Saussure 1983, 15; Saussure 1974, 16). Language is almost unvariably regarded as the most powerful communication system by far. For instance, Marvin Harris observes that 'human languages are unique among communication systems in possessing semantic universality... A communication system that has semantic universality can convey information about all aspects, domains, properties, places, or events in the past, present or future, whether actual or possible, real or imaginary' (cited in Wilden 1987, 138). Perhaps language is indeed fundamental: Emile Benveniste observed that 'language is the interpreting system of all other systems, linguistic and non-linguistic' (in Innis 1986, 239), whilst Claude Lévi-Strauss noted that 'language is the semiotic system par excellence; it cannot but signify, and exists only through signification' (Lévi-Strauss 1972, 48).
Saussure saw linguistics as a branch of 'semiology':
Linguistics is only one branch of this general science [of semiology]. The laws which semiology will discover will be laws applicable in linguistics... As far as we are concerned... the linguistic problem is first and foremost semiological... If one wishes to discover the true nature of language systems, one must first consider what they have in common with all other systems of the same kind... In this way, light will be thrown not only upon the linguistic problem. By considering rites, customs etc. as signs, it will be possible, we believe, to see them in a new perspective. The need will be felt to consider them as semiological phenomena and to explain them in terms of the laws of semiology. (Saussure 1983, 16-17; Saussure 1974, 16-17)
Whilst Roland Barthes declared that 'perhaps we must invert Saussure's formulation and assert that semiology is a branch of linguistics', others have accepted Saussure's location of linguistics within semiotics (Barthes 1985, xi). Other than himself, Jean-Marie Floch instances Hjelmslev and Greimas (Floch 2000, 93). However, even if we theoretically locate linguistics within semiotics it is difficult to avoid adopting the linguistic model in exploring other sign systems. Semioticians commonly refer to films, television and radio programmes, advertising posters and so on as 'texts', and to 'reading television' (Fiske and Hartley 1978). Media such as television and film are regarded by some semioticians as being in some respects like 'languages'. The issue tends to revolve around whether film is closer to what we treat as 'reality' in the everyday world of our own experience or whether it has more in common with a symbolic system like writing. Some refer to the 'grammar' of media other than language. For James Monaco, 'film has no grammar', and he offers a useful critique of glib analogies between film techniques and the grammar of natural language (ibid., 129). There is a danger of trying to force all media into a linguistic framework. With regard to photography (though one might say the same for film and television), Victor Burgin insists that: 'There is no 'language' of photography, no single signifying system (as opposed to technical apparatus) upon which all photographs depend (in the sense in which all texts in English depend upon the English language); there is, rather, a heterogeneous complex of codes upon which photography may draw' (Burgin 1982b, 143).
We will shortly examine Saussure's model of the sign, but before doing so it is important to understand something about the general framework within which he situated it. Saussure made what is now a famous distinction between langue (language) and parole (speech). Langue refers to the system of rules and conventions which is independent of, and pre-exists, individual users; parole refers to its use in particular instances. Applying the notion to semiotic systems in general rather than simply to language, the distinction is one between between code and message, structure and event or system and usage (in specific texts or contexts). According to the Saussurean distinction, in a semiotic system such as cinema, 'any specific film is the speech of that underlying system of cinema language' (Langholz Leymore 1975, 3). Saussure focused on langue rather than parole. To the traditional, Saussurean semiotician, what matters most are the underlying structures and rules of a semiotic system as a whole rather than specific performances or practices which are merely instances of its use. Saussure's approach was to study the system 'synchronically' if it were frozen in time (like a photograph) - rather than 'diachronically' - in terms of its evolution over time (like a film). Structuralist cultural theorists subsequently adopted this Saussurean priority, focusing on the functions of social and cultural phenomena within semiotic systems. Theorists differ over whether the system precedes and determines usage (structural determinism) or whether usage precedes and determines the system (social determinism) (although note that most structuralists argue that the system constrains rather than completely determines usage).
The structuralist dichotomy between usage and system has been criticized for its rigidity, splitting process from product, subject from structure (Coward & Ellis 1977, 4, 14). The prioritization of structure over usage fails to account for changes in structure. Marxist theorists have been particularly critical of this. In the late 1920s, Valentin Volosinov (1884/5-1936) and Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) criticized Saussure's synchronic approach and his emphasis on internal relations within the system of language (Voloshinov 1973; Morris 1994). Volosinov reversed the Saussurean priority of langue over parole: 'The sign is part of organized social intercourse and cannot exist, as such, outside it, reverting to a mere physical artifact' (Voloshinov 1973, 21). The meaning of a sign is not in its relationship to other signs within the language system but rather in the social context of its use. Saussure was criticized for ignoring historicity (ibid., 61). The Prague school linguists Roman Jakobson and Yuri Tynyanov declared in 1927 that 'pure synchronism now proves to be an illusion', adding that 'every synchronic system has its past and its future as inseparable structural elements of the system' (cited in Voloshinov 1973, 166). Writing in 1929, Volosinov observed that 'there is no real moment in time when a synchronic system of language could be constructed... A synchronic system may be said to exist only from the point of view of the subjective consciousness of an individual speaker belonging to some particular language group at some particular moment of historical time' (Voloshinov 1973, 66). Whilst the French structuralist Claude Lévi-Strauss applied a synchronic approach in the domain of anthropology, most contemporary semioticians have sought to reprioritize historicity and social context. Language is seldom treated as a static, closed and stable system which is inherited from preceding generations but as constantly changing. The sign, as Voloshinov put it, is 'an arena of the class struggle' (ibid., 23). Seeking to establish a wholeheartedly 'social semiotics', Robert Hodge and Gunther Kress declare that 'the social dimensions of semiotic systems are so intrinsic to their nature and function that the systems cannot be studied in isolation' (Hodge & Kress 1988, 1).
Whilst Saussure may be hailed as a founder of semiotics, semiotics has become increasingly less Saussurean. Teresa de Lauretis describes the movement away from structuralist semiotics which began in the 1970s:
In the last decade or so, semiotics has undergone a shift of its theoretical gears: a shift away from the classification of sign systems - their basic units, their levels of structural organization - and towards the exploration of the modes of production of signs and meanings, the ways in which systems and codes are used, transformed or transgressed in social practice. While formerly the emphasis was on studying sign systems (language, literature, cinema, architecture, music, etc.), conceived of as mechanisms that generate messages, what is now being examined is the work performed through them. It is this work or activity which constitutes and/or transforms the codes, at the same time as it constitutes and transforms the individuals using the codes, performing the work; the individuals who are, therefore, the subjects of semiosis.
'Semiosis', a term borrowed from Charles Sanders Peirce, is expanded by Eco to designate the process by which a culture produces signs and/or attributes meaning to signs. Although for Eco meaning production or semiosis is a social activity, he allows that subjective factors are involved in each individual act of semiosis. The notion then might be pertinent to the two main emphases of current, or poststructuralist, semiotic theory. One is a semiotics focused on the subjective aspects of signification and strongly influenced by Lacanian psychoanalysis, where meaning is construed as a subject-effect (the subject being an effect of the signifier). The other is a semiotics concerned to stress the social aspect of signification, its practical, aesthetic, or ideological use in interpersonal communication; there, meaning is construed as semantic value produced through culturally shared codes. (de Lauretis 1984, 167)
This text outlines some of the key concepts in semiotics, together with relevant critiques, beginning with the most fundamental concept of the sign itself. I hope it will prove to be a useful companion to the reader in finding their own path through the subject. But before launching on an exploration of this intriguing but demanding subject let us consider why we should bother: why should we study semiotics? This is a pressing question in part because the writings of semioticians have a reputation for being dense with jargon: Justin Lewis notes that 'its advocates have written in a style that ranges from the obscure to the incomprehensible' (Lewis 1991, 25); another critic wittily remarked that 'semiotics tells us things we already know in a language we will never understand' (Paddy Whannel, cited in Seiter 1992, 1). The semiotic establishment is a very exclusive club but, as David Sless remarks, 'semiotics is far too important an enterprise to be left to semioticians' (Sless 1986, 1).
Semiotics is important because it can help us not to take 'reality' for granted as something having a purely objective existence which is independent of human interpretation. It teaches us that reality is a system of signs. Studying semiotics can assist us to become more aware of reality as a construction and of the roles played by ourselves and others in constructing it. It can help us to realize that information or meaning is not 'contained' in the world or in books, computers or audio-visual media. Meaning is not 'transmitted' to us - we actively create it according to a complex interplay of codes or conventions of which we are normally unaware. Becoming aware of such codes is both inherently fascinating and intellectually empowering. We learn from semiotics that we live in a world of signs and we have no way of understanding anything except through signs and the codes into which they are organized. Through the study of semiotics we become aware that these signs and codes are normally transparent and disguise our task in 'reading' them. Living in a world of increasingly visual signs, we need to learn that even the most 'realistic' signs are not what they appear to be. By making more explicit the codes by which signs are interpreted we may perform the valuable semiotic function of 'denaturalizing' signs. In defining realities signs serve ideological functions. Deconstructing and contesting the realities of signs can reveal whose realities are privileged and whose are suppressed. The study of signs is the study of the construction and maintenance of reality. To decline such a study is to leave to others the control of the world of meanings which we inhabit.
FORWARDED BY DR. AMIT SANYAL
If one goes into a bookshop and ask them where to find a book on semiotics one is likely to meet with a blank look. Even worse, one might be asked to define what semiotics is - which would be a bit tricky if one was looking for a beginner's guide. It's worse still if one does know a bit about semiotics, because it can be hard to offer a simple definition which is of much use in the bookshop. If he has ever been in such a situation, he will probably agree that it's wise not to ask. Semiotics could be anywhere. The shortest definition is that it is the study of signs. But that doesn't leave enquirers much wiser. 'What do you mean by a sign?' people usually ask next. The kinds of signs that are likely to spring immediately to mind are those which we routinely refer to as 'signs' in everyday life, such as road signs, pub signs and star signs. If he was to agree with them that semiotics can include the study of all these and more, people will probably assume that semiotics is about 'visual signs'. He would confirm their hunch if he said that signs can also be drawings, paintings and photographs, and by now they'd be keen to direct him to the art and photography sections. But if he is thick-skinned and tells them that it also includes words, sounds and 'body language' they may reasonably wonder what all these things have in common and how anyone could possibly study such disparate phenomena. If he gets this far they've probably already 'read the signs' which suggest that he is either eccentric or insane and communication may have ceased.
It is... possible to conceive of a science which studies the role of signs as part of social life. It would form part of social psychology, and hence of general psychology. We shall call it semiology (from the Greek semeîon, 'sign'). It would investigate the nature of signs and the laws governing them. Since it does not yet exist, one cannot say for certain that it will exist. But it has a right to exist, a place ready for it in advance. Linguistics is only one branch of this general science. The laws which semiology will discover will be laws applicable in linguistics, and linguistics will thus be assigned to a clearly defined place in the field of human knowledge. (Saussure 1983, 15-16; Saussure 1974, 16).
Thus wrote the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), a founder not only of linguistics but also of what is now more usually referred to as semiotics (in his Course in General Linguistics, 1916). Other than Saussure (the usual abbreviation), key figures in the early development of semiotics were the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (sic, pronounced 'purse') (1839-1914) and later Charles William Morris (1901-1979), who developed a behaviourist semiotics. Leading modern semiotic theorists include Roland Barthes (1915-1980), Algirdas Greimas (1917-1992), Yuri Lotman (1922-1993), Christian Metz (1931-1993), Umberto Eco (b 1932) and Julia Kristeva (b 1941). A number of linguists other than Saussure have worked within a semiotic framework, such as Louis Hjelmslev (1899-1966) and Roman Jakobson (1896-1982). It is difficult to disentangle European semiotics from structuralism in its origins; major structuralists include not only Saussure but also Claude Lévi-Strauss (b. 1908) in anthropology (who saw his subject as a branch of semiotics) and Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) in psychoanalysis. Structuralism is an analytical method which has been employed by many semioticians and which is based on Saussure's linguistic model. Structuralists seek to describe the overall organization of sign systems as 'languages' - as with Lévi-Strauss and myth, kinship rules and totemism, Lacan and the unconscious and Barthes and Greimas and the 'grammar' of narrative. They engage in a search for 'deep structures' underlying the 'surface features' of phenomena. However, contemporary social semiotics has moved beyond the structuralist concern with the internal relations of parts within a self-contained system, seeking to explore the use of signs in specific social situations. Modern semiotic theory is also sometimes allied with a Marxist approach which stresses the role of ideology.
Semiotics began to become a major approach to cultural studies in the late 1960s, partly as a result of the work of Roland Barthes. The translation into English of his popular essays in a collection entitled Mythologies (Barthes 1957), followed in the 1970s and 1980s by many of his other writings, greatly increased scholarly awareness of this approach. Writing in 1964, Barthes declared that 'semiology aims to take in any system of signs, whatever their substance and limits; images, gestures, musical sounds, objects, and the complex associations of all of these, which form the content of ritual, convention or public entertainment: these constitute, if not languages, at least systems of signification' (Barthes 1967, 9). The adoption of semiotics in Britain was influenced by its prominence in the work of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the University of Birmingham whilst the centre was under the direction of the neo-Marxist sociologist Stuart Hall (director 1969-79). Although semiotics may be less central now within cultural and media studies (at least in its earlier, more structuralist form), it remains essential for anyone in the field to understand it. What individual scholars have to assess, of course, is whether and how semiotics may be useful in shedding light on any aspect of their concerns. Note that Saussure's term, 'semiology' is sometimes used to refer to the Saussurean tradition, whilst 'semiotics' sometimes refers to the Peircean tradition, but that nowadays the term 'semiotics' is more likely to be used as an umbrella term to embrace the whole field (Nöth 1990, 14).
Semiotics is not widely institutionalized as an academic discipline. It is a field of study involving many different theoretical stances and methodological tools. One of the broadest definitions is that of Umberto Eco, who states that 'semiotics is concerned with everything that can be taken as a sign' (Eco 1976, 7). Semiotics involves the study not only of what we refer to as 'signs' in everyday speech, but of anything which 'stands for' something else. In a semiotic sense, signs take the form of words, images, sounds, gestures and objects. Whilst for the linguist Saussure, 'semiology' was 'a science which studies the role of signs as part of social life', for the philosopher Charles Peirce 'semiotic' was the 'formal doctrine of signs' which was closely related to Logic (Peirce 1931-58, 2.227). For him, 'a sign... is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity' (Peirce 1931-58, 2.228). He declared that 'every thought is a sign' (Peirce 1931-58, 1.538; cf. 5.250ff, 5.283ff). Contemporary semioticians study signs not in isolation but as part of semiotic 'sign systems' (such as a medium or genre). They study how meanings are made: as such, being concerned not only with communication but also with the construction and maintenance of reality. Semiotics and that branch of linguistics known as semantics have a common concern with the meaning of signs, but John Sturrock argues that whereas semantics focuses on what words mean, semiotics is concerned with how signs mean (Sturrock 1986, 22). For C W Morris (deriving this threefold classification from Peirce), semiotics embraced semantics, along with the other traditional branches of linguistics:
semantics: the relationship of signs to what they stand for;
syntactics (or syntax): the formal or structural relations between signs;
pragmatics: the relation of signs to interpreters (Morris 1938, 6-7).
Semiotics is often employed in the analysis of texts (although it is far more than just a mode of textual analysis). Here it should perhaps be noted that a 'text' can exist in any medium and may be verbal, non-verbal, or both, despite the logocentric bias of this distinction. The term text usually refers to a message which has been recorded in some way (e.g. writing, audio- and video-recording) so that it is physically independent of its sender or receiver. A text is an assemblage of signs (such as words, images, sounds and/or gestures) constructed (and interpreted) with reference to the conventions associated with a genre and in a particular medium of communication.
The term 'medium' is used in a variety of ways by different theorists, and may include such broad categories as speech and writing or print and broadcasting or relate to specific technical forms within the mass media (radio, television, newspapers, magazines, books, photographs, films and records) or the media of interpersonal communication (telephone, letter, fax, e-mail, video-conferencing, computer-based chat systems). Some theorists classify media according to the 'channels' involved (visual, auditory, tactile and so on) (Nöth 1995, 175). Human experience is inherently multisensory, and every representation of experience is subject to the constraints and affordances of the medium involved. Every medium is constrained by the channels which it utilizes. For instance, even in the very flexible medium of language 'words fail us' in attempting to represent some experiences, and we have no way at all of representing smell or touch with conventional media. Different media and genres provide different frameworks for representing experience, facilitating some forms of expression and inhibiting others. The differences between media lead Emile Benveniste to argue that the 'first principle' of semiotic systems is that they are not 'synonymous': 'we are not able to say "the same thing"' in systems based on different units (in Innis 1986, 235) in contrast to Hjelmslev, who asserted that 'in practice, language is a semiotic into which all other semiotics may be translated' (cited in Genosko 1994, 62).
The everyday use of a medium by someone who knows how to use it typically passes unquestioned as unproblematic and 'neutral': this is hardly surprising since media evolve as a means of accomplishing purposes in which they are usually intended to be incidental. And the more frequently and fluently a medium is used, the more 'transparent' or 'invisible' to its users it tends to become. For most routine purposes, awareness of a medium may hamper its effectiveness as a means to an end. Indeed, it is typically when the medium acquires transparency that its potential to fulfil its primary function is greatest.
The selectivity of any medium leads to its use having influences of which the user may not always be conscious, and which may not have been part of the purpose in using it. We can be so familiar with the medium that we are 'anaesthetized' to the mediation it involves: we 'don't know what we're missing'. Insofar as we are numbed to the processes involved we cannot be said to be exercising 'choices' in its use. In this way the means we use may modify our ends. Amongst the phenomena enhanced or reduced by media selectivity are the ends for which a medium was used. In some cases, our 'purposes' may be subtly (and perhaps invisibly), redefined by our use of a particular medium. This is the opposite of the pragmatic and rationalistic stance, according to which the means are chosen to suit the user's ends, and are entirely under the user's control.
An awareness of this phenomenon of transformation by media has often led media theorists to argue deterministically that our technical means and systems always and inevitably become 'ends in themselves' (a common interpretation of Marshall McLuhan's famous aphorism, 'the medium is the message'), and has even led some to present media as wholly autonomous entities with 'purposes' (as opposed to functions) of their own. However, one need not adopt such extreme stances in acknowledging the transformations involved in processes of mediation. When we use a medium for any purpose, its use becomes part of that purpose. Travelling is an unavoidable part of getting somewhere; it may even become a primary goal. Travelling by one particular method of transport rather than another is part of the experience. So too with writing rather than speaking, or using a word processor rather than a pen. In using any medium, to some extent we serve its 'purposes' as well as it serving ours. When we engage with media we both act and are acted upon, use and are used. Where a medium has a variety of functions it may be impossible to choose to use it for only one of these functions in isolation. The making of meanings with such media must involve some degree of compromise. Complete identity between any specific purpose and the functionality of a medium is likely to be rare, although the degree of match may on most occasions be accepted as adequate.
The reader is reminded here of an observation by the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss that in the case of what he called bricolage, the process of creating something is not a matter of the calculated choice and use of whatever materials are technically best-adapted to a clearly predetermined purpose, but rather it involves a 'dialogue with the materials and means of execution' (Lévi-Strauss 1974, 29). In such a dialogue, the materials which are ready-to-hand may (as we say) 'suggest' adaptive courses of action, and the initial aim may be modified. Consequently, such acts of creation are not purely instrumental: the bricoleur '"speaks" not only with things... but also through the medium of things' (ibid., 21): the use of the medium can be expressive. The context of Lévi-Strauss's point was a discussion of 'mythical thought', but one would argue that bricolage can be involved in the use of any medium, for any purpose. The act of writing, for instance, may be shaped not only by the writer's conscious purposes but also by features of the media involved - such as the kind of language and writing tools used - as well as by the social and psychological processes of mediation involved. Any 'resistance' offered by the writer's materials can be an intrinsic part of the process of writing. However, not every writer acts or feels like a bricoleur. Individuals differ strikingly in their responses to the notion of media transformation. They range from those who insist that they are in total control of the media which they 'use' to those who experience a profound sense of being shaped by the media which 'use' them (Chandler 1995).
Norman Fairclough comments on the importance of the differences between the various mass media in the channels and technologies they draw upon.
The press uses a visual channel, its language is written, and it draws upon technologies of photographic reproduction, graphic design, and printing. Radio, by contrast, uses an oral channel and spoken language and relies on technologies of sound recording and broadcasting, whilst television combines technologies of sound- and image-recording and broadcasting...
These differences in channel and technology have significant wider implications in terms of the meaning potential of the different media. For instance, print is in an important sense less personal than radio or television. Radio begins to allow individuality and personality to be foregrounded through transmitting individual qualities of voice. Television takes the process much further by making people visually available, and not in the frozen modality of newspaper photographs, but in movement and action. (Fairclough 1995, 38-9)
Whilst technological determinists emphasize that semiotic ecologies are influenced by the fundamental design features of different media, it is important to recognize the importance of socio-cultural and historical factors in shaping how different media are used and their (ever-shifting) status within particular cultural contexts. For instance, many contemporary cultural theorists have remarked on the growth of the importance of visual media compared with linguistic media in contemporary society and the associated shifts in the communicative functions of such media. Thinking in 'ecological' terms about the interaction of different semiotic structures and languages led the Russian cultural semiotician Yuri Lotman to coin the term 'semiosphere' to refer to 'the whole semiotic space of the culture in question' (Lotman 1990, 124-125). The concept is related to ecologists' references to 'the biosphere' and perhaps to cultural theorists' references to the public and private spheres, but most reminiscent of Teilhard de Chardin's notion (dating back to 1949) of the 'noosphere' - the domain in which mind is exercised. Whilst Lotman referred to such semiospheres as governing the functioning of languages within cultures, John Hartley comments that 'there is more than one level at which one might identify a semiosphere - at the level of a single national or linguistic culture, for instance, or of a larger unity such as "the West", right up to "the species"'; we might similarly characterize the semiosphere of a particular historical period (Hartley 1996, 106). This conception of a semiosphere may make semioticians seem territorially imperialistic to their critics, but it offers a more unified and dynamic vision of semiosis than the study of a specific medium as if each existed in a vacuum.
There are, of course, other approaches to textual analysis apart from semiotics - notably rhetorical analysis, discourse analysis and 'content analysis'. In the field of media and communication studies content analysis is a prominent rival to semiotics as a method of textual analysis. Whereas semiotics is now closely associated with cultural studies, content analysis is well-established within the mainstream tradition of social science research. Whilst content analysis involves a quantitative approach to the analysis of the manifest 'content' of media texts, semiotics seeks to analyse media texts as structured wholes and investigates latent, connotative meanings. Semiotics is rarely quantitative, and often involves a rejection of such approaches. Just because an item occurs frequently in a text does not make it significant. The structuralist semiotician is more concerned with the relation of elements to each other. A social semiotician would also emphasize the importance of the significance which readers attach to the signs within a text. Whereas content analysis focuses on explicit content and tends to suggest that this represents a single, fixed meaning, semiotic studies focus on the system of rules governing the 'discourse' involved in media texts, stressing the role of semiotic context in shaping meaning. However, some researchers have combined semiotic analysis and content analysis (e.g. Glasgow University Media Group 1980; Leiss et al. 1990; McQuarrie & Mick 1992).
Some commentators adopt C W Morris's definition of semiotics (in the spirit of Saussure) as 'the science of signs' (Morris 1938, 1-2). The term 'science' is misleading. As yet semiotics involves no widely-agreed theoretical assumptions, models or empirical methodologies. Semiotics has tended to be largely theoretical, many of its theorists seeking to establish its scope and general principles. Peirce and Saussure, for instance, were both concerned with the fundamental definition of the sign. Peirce developed elaborate logical taxonomies of types of signs. Subsequent semioticians have sought to identify and categorize the codes or conventions according to which signs are organized. Clearly there is a need to establish a firm theoretical foundation for a subject which is currently characterized by a host of competing theoretical assumptions. As for methodologies, Saussure's theories constituted a starting point for the development of various structuralist methodologies for analysing texts and social practices. These have been very widely employed in the analysis of a host of cultural phenomena. However, such methods are not universally accepted: socially-oriented theorists have criticized their exclusive focus on structure, and no alternative methodologies have as yet been widely adopted. Some semiotic research is empirically-oriented, applying and testing semiotic principles. Bob Hodge and David Tripp employed empirical methods in their classic study of Children and Television (Hodge & Tripp 1986). But there is at present little sense of semiotics as a unified enterprise building on cumulative research findings.
Semiotics represents a range of studies in art, literature, anthropology and the mass media rather than an independent academic discipline. Those involved in semiotics include linguists, philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, literary, aesthetic and media theorists, psychoanalysts and educationalists. Beyond the most basic definition, there is considerable variation amongst leading semioticians as to what semiotics involves. It is not only concerned with (intentional) communication but also with our ascription of significance to anything in the world. Semiotics has changed over time, since semioticians have sought to remedy weaknesses in early semiotic approaches. Even with the most basic semiotic terms there are multiple definitions. Consequently, anyone attempting semiotic analysis would be wise to make clear which definitions are being applied and, if a particular semiotician's approach is being adopted, what its source is. There are two divergent traditions in semiotics stemming respectively from Saussure and Peirce. The work of Louis Hjelmslev, Roland Barthes, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Julia Kristeva, Christian Metz and Jean Baudrillard (b 1929) follows in the 'semiological' tradition of Saussure whilst that of Charles W Morris, Ivor A Richards (1893-1979), Charles K Ogden (1989-1957) and Thomas Sebeok (b 1920) is in the 'semiotic' tradition of Peirce. The leading semiotician bridging these two traditions is the celebrated Italian author Umberto Eco, who as the author of the bestseller The Name of the Rose (novel 1980, film 1986) is probably the only semiotician whose film rights are of any value (Eco 1980).
Saussure argued that 'nothing is more appropriate than the study of languages to bring out the nature of the semiological problem' (Saussure 1983, 16; Saussure 1974, 16). Semiotics draws heavily on linguistic concepts, partly because of the influence of Saussure and because linguistics is a more established discipline than the study of other sign systems. Structuralists adopted language as their model in exploring a much wider range of social phenomena: Lévi-Strauss for myth, kinship rules and totemism; Lacan for the unconscious; Barthes and Greimas for the 'grammar' of narrative. Julia Kristeva declared that 'what semiotics has discovered... is that the law governing or, if one prefers, the major constraint affecting any social practice lies in the fact that it signifies; i.e. that it is articulated like a language' (cited in Hawkes 1977, 125). Saussure referred to language (his model being speech) as 'the most important' of all of the systems of signs (Saussure 1983, 15; Saussure 1974, 16). Language is almost unvariably regarded as the most powerful communication system by far. For instance, Marvin Harris observes that 'human languages are unique among communication systems in possessing semantic universality... A communication system that has semantic universality can convey information about all aspects, domains, properties, places, or events in the past, present or future, whether actual or possible, real or imaginary' (cited in Wilden 1987, 138). Perhaps language is indeed fundamental: Emile Benveniste observed that 'language is the interpreting system of all other systems, linguistic and non-linguistic' (in Innis 1986, 239), whilst Claude Lévi-Strauss noted that 'language is the semiotic system par excellence; it cannot but signify, and exists only through signification' (Lévi-Strauss 1972, 48).
Saussure saw linguistics as a branch of 'semiology':
Linguistics is only one branch of this general science [of semiology]. The laws which semiology will discover will be laws applicable in linguistics... As far as we are concerned... the linguistic problem is first and foremost semiological... If one wishes to discover the true nature of language systems, one must first consider what they have in common with all other systems of the same kind... In this way, light will be thrown not only upon the linguistic problem. By considering rites, customs etc. as signs, it will be possible, we believe, to see them in a new perspective. The need will be felt to consider them as semiological phenomena and to explain them in terms of the laws of semiology. (Saussure 1983, 16-17; Saussure 1974, 16-17)
Whilst Roland Barthes declared that 'perhaps we must invert Saussure's formulation and assert that semiology is a branch of linguistics', others have accepted Saussure's location of linguistics within semiotics (Barthes 1985, xi). Other than himself, Jean-Marie Floch instances Hjelmslev and Greimas (Floch 2000, 93). However, even if we theoretically locate linguistics within semiotics it is difficult to avoid adopting the linguistic model in exploring other sign systems. Semioticians commonly refer to films, television and radio programmes, advertising posters and so on as 'texts', and to 'reading television' (Fiske and Hartley 1978). Media such as television and film are regarded by some semioticians as being in some respects like 'languages'. The issue tends to revolve around whether film is closer to what we treat as 'reality' in the everyday world of our own experience or whether it has more in common with a symbolic system like writing. Some refer to the 'grammar' of media other than language. For James Monaco, 'film has no grammar', and he offers a useful critique of glib analogies between film techniques and the grammar of natural language (ibid., 129). There is a danger of trying to force all media into a linguistic framework. With regard to photography (though one might say the same for film and television), Victor Burgin insists that: 'There is no 'language' of photography, no single signifying system (as opposed to technical apparatus) upon which all photographs depend (in the sense in which all texts in English depend upon the English language); there is, rather, a heterogeneous complex of codes upon which photography may draw' (Burgin 1982b, 143).
We will shortly examine Saussure's model of the sign, but before doing so it is important to understand something about the general framework within which he situated it. Saussure made what is now a famous distinction between langue (language) and parole (speech). Langue refers to the system of rules and conventions which is independent of, and pre-exists, individual users; parole refers to its use in particular instances. Applying the notion to semiotic systems in general rather than simply to language, the distinction is one between between code and message, structure and event or system and usage (in specific texts or contexts). According to the Saussurean distinction, in a semiotic system such as cinema, 'any specific film is the speech of that underlying system of cinema language' (Langholz Leymore 1975, 3). Saussure focused on langue rather than parole. To the traditional, Saussurean semiotician, what matters most are the underlying structures and rules of a semiotic system as a whole rather than specific performances or practices which are merely instances of its use. Saussure's approach was to study the system 'synchronically' if it were frozen in time (like a photograph) - rather than 'diachronically' - in terms of its evolution over time (like a film). Structuralist cultural theorists subsequently adopted this Saussurean priority, focusing on the functions of social and cultural phenomena within semiotic systems. Theorists differ over whether the system precedes and determines usage (structural determinism) or whether usage precedes and determines the system (social determinism) (although note that most structuralists argue that the system constrains rather than completely determines usage).
The structuralist dichotomy between usage and system has been criticized for its rigidity, splitting process from product, subject from structure (Coward & Ellis 1977, 4, 14). The prioritization of structure over usage fails to account for changes in structure. Marxist theorists have been particularly critical of this. In the late 1920s, Valentin Volosinov (1884/5-1936) and Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) criticized Saussure's synchronic approach and his emphasis on internal relations within the system of language (Voloshinov 1973; Morris 1994). Volosinov reversed the Saussurean priority of langue over parole: 'The sign is part of organized social intercourse and cannot exist, as such, outside it, reverting to a mere physical artifact' (Voloshinov 1973, 21). The meaning of a sign is not in its relationship to other signs within the language system but rather in the social context of its use. Saussure was criticized for ignoring historicity (ibid., 61). The Prague school linguists Roman Jakobson and Yuri Tynyanov declared in 1927 that 'pure synchronism now proves to be an illusion', adding that 'every synchronic system has its past and its future as inseparable structural elements of the system' (cited in Voloshinov 1973, 166). Writing in 1929, Volosinov observed that 'there is no real moment in time when a synchronic system of language could be constructed... A synchronic system may be said to exist only from the point of view of the subjective consciousness of an individual speaker belonging to some particular language group at some particular moment of historical time' (Voloshinov 1973, 66). Whilst the French structuralist Claude Lévi-Strauss applied a synchronic approach in the domain of anthropology, most contemporary semioticians have sought to reprioritize historicity and social context. Language is seldom treated as a static, closed and stable system which is inherited from preceding generations but as constantly changing. The sign, as Voloshinov put it, is 'an arena of the class struggle' (ibid., 23). Seeking to establish a wholeheartedly 'social semiotics', Robert Hodge and Gunther Kress declare that 'the social dimensions of semiotic systems are so intrinsic to their nature and function that the systems cannot be studied in isolation' (Hodge & Kress 1988, 1).
Whilst Saussure may be hailed as a founder of semiotics, semiotics has become increasingly less Saussurean. Teresa de Lauretis describes the movement away from structuralist semiotics which began in the 1970s:
In the last decade or so, semiotics has undergone a shift of its theoretical gears: a shift away from the classification of sign systems - their basic units, their levels of structural organization - and towards the exploration of the modes of production of signs and meanings, the ways in which systems and codes are used, transformed or transgressed in social practice. While formerly the emphasis was on studying sign systems (language, literature, cinema, architecture, music, etc.), conceived of as mechanisms that generate messages, what is now being examined is the work performed through them. It is this work or activity which constitutes and/or transforms the codes, at the same time as it constitutes and transforms the individuals using the codes, performing the work; the individuals who are, therefore, the subjects of semiosis.
'Semiosis', a term borrowed from Charles Sanders Peirce, is expanded by Eco to designate the process by which a culture produces signs and/or attributes meaning to signs. Although for Eco meaning production or semiosis is a social activity, he allows that subjective factors are involved in each individual act of semiosis. The notion then might be pertinent to the two main emphases of current, or poststructuralist, semiotic theory. One is a semiotics focused on the subjective aspects of signification and strongly influenced by Lacanian psychoanalysis, where meaning is construed as a subject-effect (the subject being an effect of the signifier). The other is a semiotics concerned to stress the social aspect of signification, its practical, aesthetic, or ideological use in interpersonal communication; there, meaning is construed as semantic value produced through culturally shared codes. (de Lauretis 1984, 167)
This text outlines some of the key concepts in semiotics, together with relevant critiques, beginning with the most fundamental concept of the sign itself. I hope it will prove to be a useful companion to the reader in finding their own path through the subject. But before launching on an exploration of this intriguing but demanding subject let us consider why we should bother: why should we study semiotics? This is a pressing question in part because the writings of semioticians have a reputation for being dense with jargon: Justin Lewis notes that 'its advocates have written in a style that ranges from the obscure to the incomprehensible' (Lewis 1991, 25); another critic wittily remarked that 'semiotics tells us things we already know in a language we will never understand' (Paddy Whannel, cited in Seiter 1992, 1). The semiotic establishment is a very exclusive club but, as David Sless remarks, 'semiotics is far too important an enterprise to be left to semioticians' (Sless 1986, 1).
Semiotics is important because it can help us not to take 'reality' for granted as something having a purely objective existence which is independent of human interpretation. It teaches us that reality is a system of signs. Studying semiotics can assist us to become more aware of reality as a construction and of the roles played by ourselves and others in constructing it. It can help us to realize that information or meaning is not 'contained' in the world or in books, computers or audio-visual media. Meaning is not 'transmitted' to us - we actively create it according to a complex interplay of codes or conventions of which we are normally unaware. Becoming aware of such codes is both inherently fascinating and intellectually empowering. We learn from semiotics that we live in a world of signs and we have no way of understanding anything except through signs and the codes into which they are organized. Through the study of semiotics we become aware that these signs and codes are normally transparent and disguise our task in 'reading' them. Living in a world of increasingly visual signs, we need to learn that even the most 'realistic' signs are not what they appear to be. By making more explicit the codes by which signs are interpreted we may perform the valuable semiotic function of 'denaturalizing' signs. In defining realities signs serve ideological functions. Deconstructing and contesting the realities of signs can reveal whose realities are privileged and whose are suppressed. The study of signs is the study of the construction and maintenance of reality. To decline such a study is to leave to others the control of the world of meanings which we inhabit.
FORWARDED BY DR. AMIT SANYAL
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