Columns & Discussion
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The social question, who cares?
While the Shining India operation in the preceding years had increased the wellbeing of the already better-off, the United Progressive Alliance committed itself to ensure ‘the welfare and well-being of all workers, particularly those in the unorganised sector, who constitute more than 93% of our workforce'. A National Commission set up in September 2004 reviewed the status of the unorganised/ínformal sector in India. The Commission — chaired by Arjun Sengupta and with only two members (K.P....
Bridging the academic-activist gap
Collaboration between academics and activists is essential to the promotion of pluralism in practice. Discussions on religion in the Dutch context center around individual freedom, which we consider to be the result of liberation from religious pressures. Liberal policies on abortion, euthanasia, same-sex marriage and soft drugs have given the Dutch the feeling that they live in the most progressive country in the world whose example will, sooner or later, be followed by others. Even though...
How facebook can spread the wings of cancer awareness
On Facebook, now acclaimed as one of the most popular social networking sites in the world, the one thing that almost all the users engage is, in updating their status updates. These updates can be varied – capturing personal moods and emotions, reporting on things that strike one in the course of a normal day, offering political opinions, suggesting movies and books to friends, and often making public announcements of important events in life. The updates appear as a live feed, updates in a...
Meet the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine
In the new year, 2010, one of the most startling stories was of mass suicides. About 50,000 people were affected. Legal cases were filed. The interwebz were abuzz with the tale of how they did it. There was talk about a website that was responsible for this. The blogosphere went into a frenzy discussing the ‘new lease of life’ that these suicides provided. Videos of people caught in the act found their way onto popular video distributing spaces. And for everybody who talked about it, it was...
Research on ongoing developments is on shifting sands
The fast pace of recent events in Iran illustrates that any research on ongoing developments is on shifting sands. It is extremely difficult to say anything about the leeway for civil society which will still hold true a few months later. That is the risk of doing future oriented research rather than historical studies. Political developments have also made it harder to do research in direct cooperation with researchers and activists in the two countries, something which has been an aim of t...
Muslims need a secular state
Sudanese thinker Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na`im has presented his thoughts on Islam, secularism and his own concept of civic reason during the Hivos-Kosmopolis Conference ‘Promoting Pluralism through Civic Reason? Rethinking Secularism’ May 2009, Utrecht, the Netherlands. Feel free to read through the essence of his presentation – reworked for the purpose of this discussion - and provide your comments below! Please note that comments that are not on-topic or abusive will be removed.
Column by Shobha Raghuram - Valuing Development Knowledges
Knowledges about development present to the publics unique multidimensional theories and narratives about the struggles of people world over to attain social justice, to set right the inequalities, and, resolve the contradictions that beset our lives. These knowledges underscore the inseparability of precepts and practices. Paul Hoebink and Alan Fowler raise foundational issues about development work, development aid and the politics of being faithful to one’s mission. I continue here the di...
Column by Alan Fowler: Aided development is a language industry
Aided development is a language industry. This opening sentence draws on the important messages to be found in Paul Hoebink’s column for the previous Newsletter. It does so from a novel and challenging way of looking at development cooperation which is emerging from the civic driven change (CDC) initiative hosted by the Institute of Social Studies.
Development cooperation is a knowledge industry
01/12/2008 Development cooperation is a knowledge industry. If I state that or write that down, it always looks if that is something very obvious, something that even the blind can see. Still I arrive from time to time in places where that is severely underestimated, where un-experienced and not-knowledgeable seems to be the internal rule to appoint people at places, more than the opposite. Or places where this statement is acknowledged and subscribed, but where it is assumed that knowledge is automati...Pluralism or Unitarianism?
Professor Nasr Abu Zayd gave his lecture entitled "Pluralism or Unitarianism? Perspectives from the Qur’an" on the 2nd of December 2008, in The Hague. Central question addressed in this lecture was to what extent the Qur’anic worldview endorses or inhibits Pluralism. Professor Abu Zayd presented and analysed the existing tension and contradictions in the Qur’an from a historical perspective. You can give your feed-back on the lecture and express your ideas here.