Environmental Studies - Page 2

Understanding Women-Nature Dynamics: Eco-consciousness as a Quest for Identity in Selected Texts from Assam

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339 views

Paloma Chaterji

Research Coordinator in Organic Studies at M.G.gramudyog. E-mail: chaterjipaloma@yahoo.in, ORCID: 345382637

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s15n1

Abstract

My paper will explore the constantly changing dynamics of women-nature relationship through social and cultural history of Assam. I will gradually explore the eco-consciousness and the changing principles of my subjects as I shift my focus from the Shakti cult, to the Vaishnavite, to the modern urbanised subjects of the texts. The women characters in these texts will be the primary focus of this study as I begin to explore how they struggle to recognize their individual identity and how their association with nature comes as a response to accommodate what has been rendered passive by patriarchy. I will reflect on how the ever ideal and nurturing image of nature is problematic. The place-specific behavior of the characters in my study will offer a better vision of how women combat the ever presence patriarchal horrors through interaction with nature. Such an interaction reveals how nature actually makes women conscious of their individuality. This study will convey how free spirited nature helps these women overcome their limited space laced with patriarchal beliefs of selfless nurturing where the self is denied. Building on postcolonial critics like Chandra Mohanty, I would like to explore the discursive limits set by the processes of homogenization to which Assamese women have been subjected by a range of texts. This paper will explore the changing configurations of these limits and their implications, especially with regard to their interpellation in patriarchy. Through gendered readings of representative texts like Indira Goswami’s The Man from Chinnamasta and The Moth Eaten Howdah of the Tuskar and Mitra Phukan’s The Collector’s Wife, I will try to dismantle the essentialist binaries of nature/culture, men/women. Finally, this paper aims to dilute the ‘feminine’ and the ‘masculine’ principles and looks beyond the gynocentric essentialism of both nature and women.

Keywords: Nature, Gynocentrism, Eco Consciousness, Patriarchy, Postcolonialism

Tragedy and Ecophobia: A Study of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth and J.M. Synge’s Riders to the Sea

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327 views

Thakurdas Jana

State Aided College Teacher-I, Department of English, Bhatter College, Dantan, E-mail: thakurdas0901@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s10n7

 Abstract

Terry Eagleton’s humorous question of “how a tragedy differs from a congress of global warming” echoes the tragic and traumatic life of human beings facing increasing violence of nature. In a tragedy, the protagonist does not have biophilia as conceptualized by Edward O. Wilson to explain the innate tendency of human beings to find connections with nature and other forms of life, rather experience with themselves of an ecophobia, ‘antipathy towards nature’ as defined by Simon C. Estok. In a tragedy, “the unfathomable agencies of Nature”, to Eagleton, create ecophobia among the characters of tragedies written in most of the periods of literature. It is experienced in a Renaissance tragedy Macbeth by the Bard of Avon with the appearance of ‘nature’s mischief’ as well as in a modern tragedy Riders to the Sea by J.M. Synge with the destructive sea devouring Maurya’s five sons, husband, and husband’s father creating an antipathy towards nature as shown in Macbeth’s fear of the ‘unruly’ and ‘rough’ night and the ambiguous movement of the Brinamwood, and Maurya’s desperate request to resist Bartley to travel by sea to the Galway fair. Their ecophobia has created an unhinged personality among them. With all these perspectives this paper aims to re-establish a connection between ecophobia and tragedy and examine how ecophobia has been internalized among the characters of the aforementioned play.

 Keywords: ecophobia, biophilia, tragedy, Macbeth, Shakespeare, Riders to the Sea, J.M.Synge

Climate Change in India: A Wakeup Call from Bollywood

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Manvi Sharma1 & Ajay K. Chaubey2

1Research Scholar(English, National Institute of Technology, Uttarakhand, E-mail- manvi.sharma4779@gmail.com, ORCID ID 0000-0003-2708-4403

2Assistant Professor-I (English, National Institute of Technology Uttarakhand, E-mail- kcajay79@nituk.ac.in, ORCID ID 0000-0002-6413-798

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s10n2

Abstract

Amidst Bollywood’s romanticized landscapes and grandeur settings, depiction of the flora and fauna, roaring rivers and drought prone lands, is difficult to locate. But the new millennium has witnessed some new generation filmmakers, sensitized towards the ecological concerns, thus marking a shift from the illustration of idealised landscapes to the representation of nature’s wrath. Since, cinema in India, has a deep-rooted impact on the masses, these creators employ films as tools to sensitize the population towards the climate change threat which though as perilous as the COVID-19 crisis, is often ignored by a significant amount of population. Dawning upon themselves the responsibility of environmental awakening, Nila Madhab Panda and Abhishek Kapoor highlight in their movies, Kadvi Hawa(2017) and Kedarnath(2018), respectively, the horrors of human callousness, leading to drastic change in Climatic condition in India. Panda’s Kadavi Hawa, dealing with non-repayment of loans followed by suicides, portrays the heart-wrenching imagery of environmental degradation and Climate change that has rendered the Village of Mahua, arid and infertile. Kapoor’s Kedarnath on the other hand, appeals for action through horrifying imagery of the catastrophic floods that disrupted the holy town of Kedarnath, in 2013. Through a detailed analysis of the aforementioned visual portrayals, this article aims to emphasise as to how Films can play an important role in effectively addressing dealing with the issues related to Climate. Further, the rationale of this paper is to underscore the possibility of more such storylines, as a tool towards effective engagement and levitation of conscience.

Keywords: Climate Change, Cultural Studies, Bollywood, Films, Eco-criticism etc

“In the mountains, we are like prisoners”: Kalinggawasan as Indigenous Freedom of the Mamanwa of Basey, Samar

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Apple Jane Molabola1, Allan Abiera2, & Jan Gresil Kahambing3

1 Professional Education Unit, Leyte Normal University, ORCID: 0000-0002-4568-9038

2 Social Science Unit, Leyte Normal University, ORCID: 0000-0002-8043-8832

3 Social Science Unit, Leyte Normal University, vince_jb7@hotmail.com, ORCID: 0000-0002-4258-0563

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s4n1 

Abstract

The Lumad struggle in the Philippines, embodied in its various indigenous peoples (IPs), is still situated and differentiated from modern understandings of their plight. Agamben notes that the notion of ‘people’ is always political and is inherent in its underlying poverty, disinheritance, and exclusion. As such, the struggle is a struggle that concerns a progression of freedom from these conditions. Going over such conditions means that one shifts the focus from the socio-political and eventually reveals the ontological facet of such knowledge to reveal the epistemic formation of the truth of their experience. It is then the concern of this paper to expose the concept of freedom as a vital indigenous knowledge from the Mamanwa of Basey, Samar. Using philosophical sagacity as a valid indigenous method, we interview ConchingCabadungga, one of the elders of the tribe, to help us understand how the Mamanwa conceive freedom in the various ways it may be specifically and geographically positioned apart from other indigenous studies. The paper contextualizes the diasporic element and the futuristic component of such freedom within the trajectory of liberation. The Mamanwa subverts the conception of freedom as a form of return to old ways and radically informs of a new way of seeing them as a ‘people.’ It supports recent studies on their literature that recommend the development of their livelihood rather than a formulaic solution of sending them back to where they were. The settlement in Basey changes their identification as a ‘forest people’ into a more radical identity.

Keywords: Mamanwa, Kalinggawasan, Indigenous, Freedom, Basey, Sagacity

“…and beyond/ Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night”: On the Humanities (in times of) Crisis

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219 views

Jeremy De Chavez

Department of English, University of Macau. ORCID: 0000-0003-0320-372X. Email: jeremydechavez@um.edu.mo

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s3n1 

Abstract

The history of the present is replete with the language of crisis, which has infiltrated various domains including the political, economic, social, environmental, and moral. Those various proclamations of collapse and disaster intersect somewhat in yet another crisis that we have become all too familiar with: the Humanities crisis. We are regularly reminded, and with intensifying pleas of urgency, that the Humanities are in peril. While various commentators have linked the troubling erosion of the Humanities to the present and impending failures of critical thought, democracy, and civic duty, the Humanities are still widely regarded as unable to measure up to the emerging dominant metrics of value. What then is to be done? How might we come to the defense of the Humanities without merely mouthing banal pieties or capitulating to the paralyzing force of cynical reason? Avoiding both prescriptive polemics and resignation to the corporate university’s remorseless logic of markets, I offer some reflections on what might constitute a valid defense of the Humanities. I suggest a plural form of defense that does not exacerbate what C.P. Snow has called “a gulf of mutual comprehension” between “two cultures” (1963, p. 4).

Keywords: humanities crisis, Nussbaum, liberal arts, two cultures

Bioterrorism & Biodefense: An Environmental and Public Health Preparedness

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321 views

Saira Gori1 & Anjani Singh Tomar2

1Gujarat National Law University. Email: sgori@gnlu.ac.in

2Associate Professor of Law, Gujarat National Law University, Gujarat

 Volume 12, Number 2, April-June, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n2.13

Abstract

Humans, plants and animals have always been susceptible to the threat of pathogenic microorganisms and their toxins which are present in the nature. Although these microorganisms occur naturally in the environment but they are unnaturally inflicted upon the society in the form of biological weapons. Bioterrorism is defined as the deliberate release of viruses, bacteria or other agents used to cause illness or death in people, and also in animals or plants. Biological weapons have often been referred to as the “poor man’s atomic bomb. Biological attacks are more likely to be covert. A covert attack is most disturbing because the event itself might be completely unnoticed until numerous victims fell ill and their common illness has been diagnosed. The spread of biological agent does not have an instantaneous effect because there is a delay between exposure and onset of the illness. Further, it is often very difficult for historians and microbiologists to differentiate natural epidemics from alleged biological attacks. The current concerns regarding the use of biological weapons result from the increasing number of countries that are engaged in the proliferation of such weapons and their acquisition by the terrorist organizations. The purpose of the present study is to analyse the growing threat of the bioterrorism in the world. It further entails to delineate the sub-sets of bioterrorism, which are agro-terrorism, environmental-terrorism. Further, the impact of bioterrorism on public health, environment is correctly spelled out. Major focus is also given on the current threat of bioterrorism on India and the legal framework which India possesses to counter such threat.

Keywords: Bioterrorism, public health, environment.

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