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Via: ARNAB CHATTERJEE

Dear Readers,
Sorry for being a bit late but
for reasons even you would surely recognize and
consider my apology with sentimental biology that's
needed.
You’ll remember where we parted: the
promise was to begin with the history of the personal.
I had made a short detour charting this history in
telegraphic terms-from the monarch to the dictator --
taking Gandhi’s desire as drive. And now after so much
of empirical historical lesson I think the choices are
pretty clear : people wanting to interpret the world
would go for so called democracy, liberalism and so
forth; people wanting to change the world would go
for either Fascism or revolutionary Communism—there is
no other way, perhaps. And my version of pure politics
will inform as a rider over this that any person or
programme can cheat or made to deceive: morality does
not come with a warranty. And this failure being
irreducible, it was illuminated by Hegel when he said
that there are two ways to achieve a moral world :
utopia or terror. Even such a grand ‘deontologist’
philosopher as Kant uses a phrase like “moral
terrorism” and proposes a “terroristic” conception of
“history”; but Hegel’s copula is more illuminating.
Terror rejects an immediate place; utopia regulates a
non-place—they can never, never be estranged. And with
Fascism and communism it is more futile to undertake
such an exercise. But you might have noticed a sharp
difference : while in Fascism you have dictatorship in
the person-al form, in Marx you have dictatorship of a
whole class –even if universal or not. Now, if it is a
collective whole embodied in the one person of the
monarch -- which is the dictatorial example of the
first, it is basically the group personality of the
class that could act as the dictatorial unity,
reflective of a single will, in the second case. Now,
my intention this time is to refer the reader to an
extension of my argument stated previously. First is
the person taken as a singular-collective; the second
is a collective-singular. First is the spontaneous
natural personality; the second is an artificial
personality masquerading as a legal fiction whose
origins have been traced back to the Roman Law.
I’ll come to the second when I deal with the
Hiralal Haldar -- Mactaggart debate. In this post I’ll
address only the first part—that too a bit
cryptically.




(1)

RECEIVED HISTORY

The public/private binary -whose historical roots have
been traced to classical Greece acquired its modern
meaning through the mediations of medieval Roman Law
and 18th century Europe. Aristotle made a distinction
between household (oikos) and the space of the city
state (polis) where through deliberation (lexis) and
common action (praxis) a shared, common and in a loose
sense “public” life beyond bare essentials or
necessities was sustained. The private realm of
necessities (subsistence, reproduction) was the
household. Therefore property, “and the art of
acquiring property” was considered a part of “managing
the household” (Aristotle, 1988: 5) and participation
in the polis was restricted by one’s status or rank as
a master of oikos.
In the medieval age in Roman Law one encounters terms
like publicus and privatus but without the standard
usage (Habermas, 1996:5) because everything
public/private ultimately resided in the person of
the monarch (more on this latter.) However, in Roman
Law-the first systematic legal document-- the privacy
of the home (domus) was sanctioned ( Black, 1988: 593)
and Roman Law itself was “private law” in that it
would have application only for individuals or
relations of coordination. Public law would administer
affairs of the state or relations of domination. But
similar to the Greek city state, it was the status of
the individuals that determined their participation in
the medieval public sphere. We enter modernity when
men entered the realm of contract from that of
status, from duties to that of rights ( 18th century
enlightenment and the French revolution remain the
canonical examples). Formal equality of persons was a
prerequisite of such a contract. Particularly, at the
break of the medieval age, in the wake of civil or
commercial law in 18th century Europe, a democratic
climate was created where apparent equality of all
before the law and the market was preempted. And the
public sphere was thus -in a sense-- opened to all.
This meant the formation of public opinion through the
media ( enabled at that time by the advent of print
capitalism) and institutionalization of state
sovereignty which would rest, henceforth, with the
people or the public. A new category of legitimacy was
created. This also engendered the rise of civil
society where the subjects would fulfill two roles at
the same time: as a property owner or bourgeois he
would pursue his private interests and as a citizen
in the public sphere he would bear equal rights
granted by the state. This also-- as a part of the
public sphere, ensured the separation of society
(family) from the state and that the state would not
intervene in societal matters and expectedly, privacy
would be located in the societal realm hence forth.
(Separated from the state, classically, the church was
the first private to have imparted the secular colour
so characteristic of modernity.) The state would
ensure privacy, but would not intervene; its closest
analogy was the market: the state would ensure a free
market by itself not intervening in it and the free
market was not only of commodities but a great market
place of ideas and exchange of opinion in which,
irrespective of birthmarks and the stink of status
anybody could participate. The modern public sphere
had arrived. It was just a step further when Marx
would denounce universal suffrage and invoke the
proletariat as the class with “universal suffering”
(Marx, 1983:320) and would mock this artificial
equality of publics before the law and the market
(alleging that they masked real inequalities) and
thought of smashing the private /public divide by
abolishing private property- which he thought was at
the core of this suffering. The rest is history and
its repetition. No wonder that the public/private
divide has been considered as the core of our modern
existence.


ONE OR TWO WORDS ON HOW THE PERSONAL LOST ITSELF IN
THE PRIVATE

An interesting part of recent academic discussions is
while there is a growing interest in the public and
the private, critical discourse on the personal nearly
draws a blank. (The state of the personal is somewhat
dubious and absent in all classic European discussions
--even in Jurgen Habermas and Hannah Arendt .)
Although Habermas does cursorily refer to the
process through which the “modern state apparatus
became independent from the monarch’s personal
sphere”, he rarely engages with it (Habermas 1996,
29). For instance here goes this recognition in the
form of a footnote to one of his famous articles: "The
important thing to understand is that the medieval
public sphere, if it even deserves this recognition,
is tied to the personal. The feudal lord and estates
create the public sphere by means of their very
presence." (Habermas 1974, 51) But the personal
sphere of the monarch-and what it means in the western
tradition is somewhat available in G.H Mead from the
standpoint of a social behaviorist. Mead meticulously
charts the components of this personal sphere where
the people within the same state “ can identify
themselves with each other only through being subjects
of a common monarch….” (Mead 1972, p.311) Mead traces
the phenomenon to the ancient empires of Mesopotamia
and observes, “It is possible through personal
relationships between a sovereign and subject to
constitute a community which could not otherwise be so
constituted….” In the Roman Empire through the
mediation of Roman law, Mead notes, while the
emperor-subject relationship was “defined in legal
terms”, through sacrificial offerings made to the
emperor-the subject was “putting himself into personal
relationship with him, and because of that he could
feel his connection with all the members in the
community”. … “It was the setting up of a personal
relationship which in a certain sense went beyond the
purely legal relations involved in the development of
Roman law.” (312) In India considering the King's
person as sacred, it was assumed that he had influence
over crops, cattle, rain and general prosperity. So
again, the subjects, in order to relate to cattle, the
mediation of the King was involved in a metonymic
gesture-through whose presence, people could relate
and be present to themselves. (Hocart 1927, 9)
Personal is that which predates both the public and
the private and what is historically interesting is to
discover when and why the collapsing of the personal
and the private began. For this last instance - we can
borrow from Max Weber the diffused origins of the
Public Law-Private Law distinction, which as Weber
shows was “once not made at all. Such was the case
when all law, all jurisdictions, and particularly all
powers of exercising authority were personal
privileges, such as especially, the “prerogatives” of
the head of the state.” …[Who was] “Not different
from the head of the household.” (Weber 1978, 643).
This world of the personal or as Weber calls it
“patrimonial monarchy” forms the prehistory of the
private /public distinction and again I repeat that
what is historically interesting is to discover when
and why the collapsing of the personal and the private
began to which today’s feminists are but victims.
Habermas therefore does away with a vast repertoire.
So far Arendt is concerned, commentators have tried to
make a case out of the feminist energy generated by
the latter’s ‘personal’ -previously having been at
pains to argue that the ‘political’ and the ‘personal’
during Arendt’s celebration of feminist moments later
had become the ‘public’ and the ‘private’.
“With the emergence of women’s liberation a decade or
so after The Human Condition appeared, the relation
between the “ political” and the “personal” moved to
the forefront of politics, and this eventually took
the form of the public and the private” (Zaretsky
1997, 214) with their corresponding emphasis on
‘personal life’ becoming a “third challenge to the
liberal dichotomy” (214) (ref. endnote 1) : really a
queer mix up in history. The reason perhaps is that we
tend to have a mix up between the private and the
personal and this is its contemporary moment(Nothing
could be more explicit an affirmation than from a
feminist superstar: Catherine Mackinnon, “The private
is the public for those for whom the personal is the
political.” (Mackinnon 1992, 359). This easy and
historic conflation of personal as private is perhaps
not the end of the story.


In the western history itself there is also a
suppressed narrative (suppressed because it does not
suit the liberal project) where the two are not the
same; in fact they two cannot be the same. But first
I’ll take the opportunity to narrate how the
personal/private coalescence occurs and then I shall
try to excavate if the personal could be recuperated.

Then is it possible to appreciate
the fact that the appearance of the personal through
the sieve of the private is basically an historical
maneuver ?
This major point then needs mention:
the qualitative leap when personal came to be
identified with the private. Now, private property is
as old as Greek antiquity: Aristotle had argued in
favour of and Plato had wanted to abolish private
property. That is not the point; the first signs were
available in the natural law (or natural rights)
tradition and despite a lot of caveats, one of its
representative voice still remains John Locke. In this
tradition property, for the first time, is placed in
the person :
“Though the earth, and all inferior creatures be
common to all men, yet every man has a “property” in
his own “person”. This no body has any right to but
himself. The “labour” of his body, and the “work” of
his hands, we may say are properly his. Whatsoever…he
hath mixed his “labour” with, and joined it to
something that is his own, and thereby makes it his
“property”…that excludes the common right of other
men” (Locke, (1690) 1982 : [Sec. 27.]130).
“His property” or private property when derives from
personal capacities of labour, the first motivated mix
up between the personal and the private occurs. And
then having had its eighteenth century initiation, it
became a cornerstone of liberal theory where property
becomes an attribute of personality. If you take away
property from me, I become a non-person because
(private) property is in my person. Here there is
natural ownership before there is a legal ownership.
Here is a classical example in Hegel, “ Not until he
has property does the person exist as reason” (Hegel,
(1820) 1991: 73). Hegel goes at length to show how
property is required to supersede “the mere
subjectivity of personality”(73). In fact this is the
personal in Hegel invested with some kind of immediacy
but lacks in content i.e. Hegel’s “abstract
personality” in order to become concrete and objective
awaits a trick:
“ Since my will, as personal and hence as the will of
an individual [des Einzelnen], becomes objective in
property, the latter takes on the character of private
property…” (77).

This would be picked up by liberal capitalism and now
onwards property being in person and that which makes
objective, tangible personality possible, private
becomes the realm of liberty, reprieve and freedom.
Marx would fall heavily on all of this and in fact
this discourse finds its final resolution in Marx
only. His argument was just the reverse: in a society
without private property, the personal selves of men
freely blossom to enter the true realm of freedom.
Therefore this hyphenation between the private and the
personal is more an ideological investment necessary
for liberal history than a structurally indispensable
relation.


RECOVERING THE PERSONAL IN LOCKE, HEGEL, MARX AND OUR
TIMES

Now, having presented the anatomical, bare rudiments
of how the personal looses itself in the private, here
I’ll extrapolate how it could be recovered and allowed
to have a safe passage. Given the force of history, it
would be wise to start with Locke.

LOCKE

For Lockes’ allergy towards communal or collective
ownership, (see Macpherson, C.B. 1972, 197-221.) But
even in Locke it is possible to find an other
discourse of the personal besides property and the
private dominion. While discussing property as an
extension of the person, and particularly Adam’s
property as “private dominion” which is supposed to
have arisen from God’s “grant” or “donation” and that
of fatherhood from the act of begetting Locke
meditates on how this divine donation was made
“personally” to Adam to which his heir could have no
right by it. (Locke1982, 60-61) Locke argues that
even if it belongs to the parents “personally”,
after their death, their property does not go to the
common stock of mankind but is inherited by their
children as heirs because human have a natural
propensity to continue their creed (62). This power of
begetting in another form—and that what roots
continuity- founds inheritance. The point relevant to
our case, is, this “personal” belongingness is a
middle-term that appears with some autonomy and
mediates person and property—seen as an extension of
each other in Locke. And the mutual-extension argument
because, I guess, in itself cannot explain
inheritance, Locke is taking recourse to a different
premise; the “personal” appears to give a language to
this premise.

HEGEL
As established earlier, the reading that entails Hegel
as a canonical case where the personal private mix up
receives the force of an argument, is not wrong and as
rendered by Marx, it carries an immense sway with it.
But it is as well possible to discover in Hegel a
curious personal impatient not to be suppressed by the
interested world of the private. Take for instance
the distinction between real property and personal
property that could be traced to the Roman Law from
which Kant borrowed his interesting theory of rights
and where we find personal appearing with a rider
“personal rights of a real kind”. Hegel made a
critique of Kant’s formulation; drawing on that
critique, let me here try to illuminate the
distinction which I think was unconsciously made by
Hegel himself.
Deriving from the Justinian Roman legal division of
right into rights of persons, things, and actions,
Kant in 1797 had proposed, taking into account the
“form” of the rights, a threefold division, “a right
to a thing; a right against a person; a right to a
person akin to a right to a thing .” (Kant 1999, 412).
The first is a property right, the second is a
contract right, and the third is a “personal right of
a real kind” (Hegel 1991, 71); in other words, it is a
right about “ what is mine or yours domestically, and
the relation of persons in the domestic condition…”
[including] “…possession of a person.” (Kant 1999,
426) like the rights of spouses over one another, the
rights of parents over their children etc. The third
is the most interesting because it resembles what
today we call Personal Laws supposed to distribute
“private” affairs within a household. And this is what
Hegel attacks; Hegel thinks that the division is a
confusing one; secondly, while family relationships
form the content of “personal rights of a real kind” ,
in actuality family relationships are based on the
“surrender of personality.” (Hegel 1991, 72) Hegel
further notes that

“For Kant personal rights are those rights which arise
out of a contract whereby I give something or perform
a service…Admittedly, only a person is obliged to
implement the provisions of a contract, just as it is
only a person who acquires the right to have them
implemented. But such a right cannot therefore be
called a personal right; rights of every kind can
belong only to a person…” (73)

What is interesting in Hegel’s engagement -relevant to
our project is the way he extricates the personal
from being stamped with the badge of household rights
or the power to accomplish a civil contract ( See
Endnote 2) in brief personal right not masquerading
as a private right. In brief, what Hegel may have
argued here could be that there are no “personal
rights of a real kind.” But let us underline this
binary: Personal vs./ and real, which is significant
and requires of us to reiterate that a distinction
between real property and personal property was
strongly a feature of English Law. Real property was
that which had “some degree of geographical
fixity”.[Reeve, 1986, 80-81] In order to examine this
distinction in the form that it is found in a 1827
tract I think the notions of the personal still could
be recovered in a very different sense. In personal
property “the general rule is, that possession
constitutes the criterion of title;…hence the vendor
of personal chattels is never expected to show the
origin of his right. … [but] real property like land
is held not by possession but by title requiring “the
production of documents.” (Mathews 1827, 27). Please
note the somewhat loose coverage that personal
property requires compared to real property. Now if it
is pointed out that personal property does have
property as a signified even if in a loose sense, it
may be rebutted by saying that in the same text
Mathews goes on to mention “peculiarities personal”
or as to how “personal disability” may be enough to
“repel the presumption of a grant”. (14) Does this
personal call for documents or is a means to
establishing a title? No, in fact these are blatant
uses appropriate to our cause existing in a legal
tract meant to discuss property personal or real.

MARX

The common knowledge now that the key to understanding
modernity is the public/private divide and a
corresponding failure to find a way beyond the binary
would find—if considered carefully—an approval with
dignity in Marx because Marx curiously is a symptom of
both: he said for the first--"the state is founded
upon the contradiction between public and private
life" (Marx, 1961, p.222) and for the second : "if the
modern State wished to end the impotence of its
administration it would be obliged to abolish the
present conditions of private life. And if the State
wished to abolish these conditions of private life it
would have also to put an end to its own existence,
for it exists only in relation to them." (p.223) Now,
throwing in the fact that private property is just a
singular and an isolated moment in the discourse of
private life, Marx's agenda --I guess- looks readily
defamiliarised here.
Marx would fall heavily on all of this and in fact
this discourse finds its final resolution in Marx
only. It is not a fact that in a system without
private property and a sanction against ‘unlimited
appropriation’ all are non persons and there would be
nothing personal. Therefore this hyphenation between
the private and the personal is more an ideological
investment necessary for liberal history than a
structurally indispensable relation. Let us document a
few discursive fragments where this collapsing has
been done away with. Now, notwithstanding the will to
go beyond private/public divide, it may rightly be
asked, could Marx be used to endorse the personal that
I'm proposing? Yes! And choosing only one instance --
love , we may document this flower unfolding in Marx.

"Assume man to be man and his relationship to
the world to be a human one: then you can
exchange love only for love, trust for trust, etc...
if you want to exercise influence over other people,
you must be a person with a stimulating and
encouraging effect on other people. ...If you love
without evoking love in return that is, if your loving
does not produce reciprocal love; if through a living
expression of yourself as a living person you do not
make yourself a beloved one then your love is impotent
-- a misfortune" ( cited in Geras 1990, 14).

Isn't this the personal in Marx -- which --I'm sure
--he would willingly exclude from the domain of
private life he wanted to abolish for history? I
think the reader agrees.

A CONTEMPORARY EXAMPLE

Marx apart, curiously, the Human Rights
discourse does have, it may be pointed out, a phrase
like ‘personal property’. What does it qualify? In
fact it endorses the distinction that we are making
between the personal and the private. A theorist of
such rights comments, “ By personal property” I mean
individual ownership and control of possessions such
as clothing, furniture, food, writing materials,
books, and artistic and religious objects.
Considerations of personal freedom provide strong
reasons for instituting and protecting personal
property. These reasons are related not to production
but to the requirements of developing and expressing
one’s own personality. Ownership of personal property
is a matter of personal liberty, not a
production-related right ( see endnote 3) .”(Nickel
1987, 152)
Therefore it is possible to attempt a historical
reconstruction of the personal where the personal
could be said to have filtered through the monarchical
metonymy right down to human rights discourses via
Roman Law, Kant, Hegel and English Common law. While
the prehistorical personal comes to be contaminated by
the private, the human rights discourse is significant
in its attempt to do away with this conflation. While
it tries to do away with the infiltration,
genealogically it perhaps proves the point that there
was this contamination or over determination.

CONCLUSION
I conclude with a sense of disgust. I could share 1/6
th of the material I've amassed. This is not
surprising since there are whole books on each of the
strands to which I've referred. Consider Roman Law :
Read Duff's Personality in Roman Private Law or
Richard Tuck's path breaking works on Natural Rights
and Natural Law debates on themes surrounding that
what I'm trying to pursue. A further limitation is
I've bound myself to narrating bits of western history
of the personal and left out our own cultural
cognitive histories of the personal. Let that be some
time else. Nevertheless,with this our narrative of
historical recovery or historical demystification of
the personal reaches a benchmark and awaits if the
personal-private distinction can be theoretically
grounded as well. We’ll pursue that in the next
post—early next month. Thank you.

ENDNOTES
1. For consideration of the failure of this appraisal
in its true light and that the personal-private
distinction could be read unto Arendt, judge the
following comments of Craig Calhoun, “Arendt would
never endorse social engineering and, against such
threats, certainly would protect privacy. Even more,
she would protect the personal and the distinctive
from absorption into the impersonal. But she would not
assimilate the notion of the personal to that of the
private as Zaretsky does.” (Calhoun 1997, 237). The
point is if it could be correct for Arendt, it could
be correct for Habermas as well.
2. Carole Pateman does not agree that Hegel is
successful in his attempt and according to her he is
rather limited to transcending just one part of the
Kantian argument which saw personal right, among
others, in the manifest act of pointing out “this is
my wife” where a “thing” is, accidentally, a person. (
Pateman1996, 212-213). But I disagree with Pateman and
reiterate that there is a moment of personal in Hegel
which precedes the contamination of property.
3. The ownership of means of production is called in
this discourse ‘private productive property’ (Nickel
1987, 152).



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES

Aristotle, 1988: The Politics, Transl. Benjamin
Jowett, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Black, A., 1988 : The Individual and Society. In
J.H Burns (Ed.), The Cambridge History of Medieval
Political Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Pres, 588-606.

Calhoun, Craig. 1997. ‘Plurality, promises, and
Public Spaces’ In Calhoun and Mc Growan. eds. 1997.
232-259.

Calhoun, Craig, and John Mc Growan. eds. 1997. Hannah
Arendt and the Meaning of Politics, Minneapolis,
London: University of Minnesota Press.

Geras, Norman, 1990 : 'Seven types of Obloquy:
Travesties of Marxism' in Socialist register, Eds.
Ralph Miliband, Leo Panitch & John Saville, pp.1-34,
The Merlin Press : London.



Habermas, J. 1974. : The Public Sphere: An
Encyclopedia article. In New German Critique, 3(
51.), 49-55.

------------------1996 : The Structural
Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a

category of Bourgeois Society, T. Berger (Trans.),
Great Britain: Blackwell
Publishers & Polity Press.

Hegel, G.W.F. ,1991: Elements of the Philosophy of
Right,. Trans. H.B. Nisbet. U.K: Cambridge
University Press.

Hobbes, T.,1997 : Leviathan, New York : W.W. Norton
& Company.

Hocart, A.M. ,1927 : Kingship, London: Oxford
University Press.

Kant, Immanuel. 1999. Practical Philosophy. UK:
Cambridge University Press.

Locke, John. (1924)1982. Two Treatises Of Government.
J.M Dent & Son’s Ltd. (Everyman’s Library): London.

Mackinnon, Catharine A. 1992. “ Privacy v. Equality:
Beyond Roe V. wade” In Ethics: A Feminist Reader.eds.
Elizabeth Frazer, Jennifer Hornsby and Sabina
Lovibond. 351—363. Oxford: Blackwell.

Macpherson, C.B. 1972. “The Theory of Property Right”,
in his The Political Theory of Possessive
Individualism, Hobbes to Locke. 197—221.London: Oxford
University Press.

Marx, Karl, 1961. Selected Writings in Sociology and
Social Philosophy, Eds. T.B. Bottomore and M.Rubel,
Penguin Books: Harmondsworth.

------------------------1983 : A Contribution to the
Critique of Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Right’ (1843) In
L.S.Stepelevich (Ed.) The Young Hegelians: An
Anthology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
310-322.

Mathews, John H. 1827. Treatise On The Doctrine of
Presumption and Presumptive Evidence As Affecting The
Title To Real and Personal Property. London: Joseph
Butterworth and Son, Law Booksellers.

Mead, George H. (1934) 1972. Mind, Self, and Society,
>From the standpoint of a social behaviorist. ed.
Charles W. Morris. Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press.

Monahan, Arthur. 1994. From Personal Duties towards
Personal Rights: Late Medieval and Early Modern
Political thought, 1300-1600. Montreal: McGill Queens
University Press.

Nickel, James W. 1987. Making Sense of Human Rights
:Philosophical Reflections on the Universal
declaration of Human Rights. Berkeley: University Of
California Press.

Pateman, Carole.1996. ‘Hegel, Marriage, and the
Standpoint of Contract’ in Feminist Interpretations of
G.W. F. Hegel. Ed. Patricia Jagentowicz Mills.
209-223. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State
University Press.

Reeve, Andrew. 1986. Property, London : Macmillan.


Weber, M. , 1978 : Economy And Society :An Outline of
Interpretive Sociology. Vol.II. Guenther Roth and
Claus Wittich, (Eds.), Berkeley : University of
California Press.

Zaretsky, Eli. 1997. “Hannah Arendt and the Meaning of
the Public/Private distinction” In Calhoun and Mc
Growan 1997. 207-231.

Via: Gora Mohanty

On Sat, 2007-06-30 at 09:17 +0545, Dr. Prem Prasad Sharma wrote:
> Could you please send the information regarding community radio.
[...]

Um, whom exactly are you asking here?

Depending on what exactly you are looking for, the community radio
mailing list, which you can subscribe to at
https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/cr-india might be more
relevant to you.

Regards,
Gora

Via: "Dr. Prem Prasad Sharma"

Via: Vani Asharira

Via: bangali_ mnb

Via: "Jankees Boer"

Via: "Chitra Venkataramani"

I have reached a point where, the draft of the book is complete and a
substantial number of pages have been drawn. In order to finish the
book, I still need to draw a lot more, collate the data I already
have, and start making drawn parts of the book ready for print. This
implies formatting, adding text- either on the computer or handwritten
text.

Though the structure of the book largely remains the same, the two
main stories have merged to form one larger story.

Like manga forums that post chapters every week to read I plan to post
one page from this main story every day on a blog, so it can be read
as it gets drawn and put together. I expect this to go on till the
first week of august.

Pages from the book can be found here:

http://hygienebook.blogspot.com

Via: "Shiju Sam Varughese"

Dear Friends, my posting for this month is about the increasing
importance of modern science in our daily life and the emerging
picture of a new 'mass-mediated science'.
We are living in a world where modern science and media are
influencing our daily lives in a deeper manner. It is a 'risk society'
we live in, according to Ulrich Beck (1992. Risk Society: Towards a
New Modernity. London, New Bury Park and New Delhi: Sage). Because of
the presence of risk as a factor in our society, modern science and
technology also turns to be of extreme importance as producer and
regulator of risk. There is a growing public distrust in modern
science because of the risks generated by its applications as well as
due to its failure in managing hazards successfully. Hagendijk ("The
Public Understanding of Science and Public Participation in Regulated
Worlds". Minerva, 42/1:41-59, 2004.) argues that this kind of a new
relationship between publics and modern science in the context of risk
leads to the origin of a new 'mass-mediated science'. Here the
argument is that the making of such a 'new science', wherein publics
are no more merely appreciators of the greatness of modern science but
providing staunch critique of the functioning of S&T, is largely
influenced by the mass media. Hagendijk uses the concept of 'regulated
social world' to understand this peculiar relationship between
science, media, and the publics. The 'social world' is defined by him
as "the constructed and volatile order of everyday life and social
experience" and 'regulation' is used "to stress how everyday life
around the globe has become subject to almost infinite, yet
heterogeneous techno-scientific regulation, standardisation, and
representation" (ibid: 54). Everyday life has been subject to all
sorts of regulation and control and coordination through different
manifestations of science including agriculture, food, health,
education, industry, transport, communication etc. and all of them are
based on scientific knowledge, technical standardisation and
regulation (ibid). He points out that the diversity and heterogeneity
of regulated worlds and their internal inconsistency and opaqueness
demand 'agency' and 'responsibility' from individuals. However, much
of the decision-making related to these issues that affect our daily
life eludes public review and hence the architecture and maintenance
of our regulated worlds are in the hands of scientific, technical and
legal experts (ibid).
In this context the media seems to play a significant role in making
these issues public. Hagendijk opines that most of the citizens start
paying attention to such issues only when it appears in the media and
after that the systems of regulation become subject to public scrutiny
and consequently involve public agencies along with scientific,
technical and legal experts. For him "[t]he mass media and related
forms of communication provide the lenses through which the
disempowered citizens of regulated worlds actually look at themselves.
Regardless of the scepticism one may entertain with respect to the
media as arenas for rational debate and informal communication, mass
media are key vehicles of large-scale reflexive modernisation, turning
citizens and consumers 'on' and 'off' according to new 'logics'"
(ibid: 57-58). Therefore, he contends that research on Public
Understanding of Science should not concentrate merely on public
surveys and ethnographic studies but such studies should be combined
with analyses of science and science-related issues as represented and
narrated by the media. Thus Hagendijk makes it clear that the mounting
distrust and loss of authority of science is because of the changing
institutional configuration of science and a subsequent mass media
involvement in the scientific and technical issues that manifest in
the regulated worlds of people.
Therefore it can be seen that media has an important role in
contemporary science, especially in the context of aggravating
environmental and industrial risks. In Indian context, the emergence
of such a new situation in the context of a growing distrust among the
publics on modern science and its applications began with the Bhopal
Gas tragedy and Narmada Sagar Dam project. The social movements
emerged in the context of such hazards proposed a new politics which
seriously criticised the role of modern science and technology in
creating the disasters. It can be seen that mass media also played a
crucial role in this context. Therefore it is very crucial to
understand and promote the new politics emerging in the context of an
increasing regulation of our social worlds by modern science and
technology.

Via: PREETU NAIR

Asmi's marriage to Raja is an indication of a new
liberation that's sweeping the women who had so far
led a life of prolonged violence and self-destructive
behaviour as commercial sex workers. Economically
rehabilitated, she is the third woman who has changed
the rules and her life, reports PREETU NAIR.


VASCO: Asmi married Raja in a low profile ceremony in
a temple in Vasco on Friday. The wedding ceremony was
performed, Raja applied sindoor on Asmi's forehead and
they took seven pheras, legitimizing their
relationship of last 4 years.

Their marriage may have been planned in heaven, but it
needed courage and self-belief for the couple to break
the shackles of tradition and say "I do" on the big
day in their life. With this ceremony, Asmi has broken
the age-old cultural taboo that prohibits a "Devdasi"
from entering the wedlock.

Asmi was dedicated to Goddess Yellama at the age of 12
and forced into prostitution as a Devadasi in Goa.
Devadasi is a religious practice, whereby parents
marry a daughter to a deity or a temple. The marriage
usually occurs before the girl reaches puberty and
requires the girl to become a prostitute. A Devadasi
is forbidden to enter into a real marriage.

The mass demolition of cubicles in Baina's unofficial
red light area on June 14, 2004, didn't change her
situation, but in fact worsened it. With no economic
rehabilitation in sight, she was forced to travel to
other parts of the state for "business".

The real opportunity to transform her life came when
she was economically rehabilitated by ARZ, an NGO
working with trafficked victims in Goa, as part of its
economic rehabilitation programme. She started working
in a fully mechanized laundry unit, "Swift Wash", at
Sancoale Industrial estate, which provides employment
to 40 trafficked victims like her, mostly from Baina.

While the employment programme made women financially
self-sufficient, marriage has given them social
acceptance. Asmi is the third woman working at Swift
Wash to tie the nuptial knot.

"I am very happy. I feel liberated and hope to inspire
other women like me. Its nice to marry the man you
love," reveals Asmi. Her act reflects a growing
confidence among the women, who were once trafficked
into the flesh trade and exploited everyday. Besides
being a moment of great emotional and personal
satisfaction, it is also a moment of realization for
other girls like her: the onus of changing their lives
is on them.

However, it wasn't easy for Asmi. Among the many tests
she went through was refusal by her "parents" to
except the relationship and Raja's initial resistance
to commit. Asmi's "parents" were aghast that their
daughter had dared to break the social tradition. "We
have realized that our love for each other is more
important than anything else. Initially, I was
reluctant to marry, but now I am happy that I married
Asmi," said Raja.

Seeing women resettled and doing well is the most
rewarding part for Arun Pandey, Director, ARZ.
"Economic rehabilitation has empowered trafficked
victims who no more want to be in a relationship that
is exploitative. They are increasingly emphasizing on
marriage, which not only has legal sanctity but also
social acceptance, which helps them in joining the
mainstream," says Pandey.

This newfound confidence and inspiration would
definitely help the survivors of the country's worst
social tradition to pick up the threads of their lives
by breaking the socio-economic compulsions.

(Name of the couple changed on request)
(An earlier version of the article appeared in GT
Weekender, Panaji edition, 24 June 2007)

Via: Malavika Vartak

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