Seven voices contribute to this rare glimpse of the work being done on the front lines of the fight for social change in India. Playing with Fire is written in the collective voice of women employed by a large NGO as activists in their communities and is based on diaries, interviews, and conversations among them. Together their personal stories reveal larger themes and questions of sexism, casteism, and communalism, and a startling picture emerges of how NGOs both nourish and stifle local ...

Experts often assume that the poor, hungry, rural, and/or precarious need external interventions. They frequently fail to recognize how the same people create politics and knowledge by living and honing their own dynamic visions. How might scholars and teachers working in the Global North ethically participate in producing knowledge in ways that connect across different meanings of struggle, hunger, hope, and the good life?Informed by over twenty years of experiences in India and the Unite...

Investigates the theory and practice of transnational feminist approaches to scholarship and activism.Provocative, timely, and global, this volume offers a critical and grounded engagement with transnational feminism through the lens of praxis-the juncture of theory and practice. In so doing, it grapples with questions of power and representation while remaining deeply committed to radical critiques and agendas of transnational and postcolonial feminisms. Long-time...

This collection examines the power and transformative potential of movements that fight against poverty and inequality. Broadly, poverty politics are struggles to define who is poor, what it means to be poor, what actions might be taken, and who should act. These movements shape the sociocultural and political economic structures that constitute poverty and privilege as material and social relations. Editors Victoria Lawson and Sarah Elwood focus on the politics of insurgent movements agai...

What's Wrong with Sex?How to Drive Your KarmaConsciousness CommodifiedThe Karma of FoodThe Three Poisons, InstitutionalizedWhy We Love WarThese are just some of the chapters in this brilliant book from David R. Loy.In little time, Loy has become one of the most powerful advocates of the Buddhist worldview, explaining like no one else its ability to transform the sociopolitical landscape of the modern world....

At one time or another, most of us have experienced an all-consuming desire for a material object, a desire so strong that it seems like we couldn't possibly be happy without buying this thing. Yet, when we give in to this impulse, we often find ourselves feeling frustrated and empty. Advertisers, of course, aim to hook us in this way, and, from a global perspective, our tendency to get hooked fuels the rampant over-consumption that is having a devastating impact on the world's stability a...

The most essential insight that Buddhism offers is that all our individual suffering arises from three and only three sources, known in Buddhism as the three poisons: greed, ill-will, and delusion. In The Great Awakening, scholar and Zen teacher David Loy examines how these three poisons, embodied in society's institutions, lie at the root of all social maladies as well. The teachings of Buddhism present a way that the individual can counteract these to alleviate personal sufferin...

Engaged Buddhism is founded on the belief that genuine spiritual practice requires an active involvement in society. Engaged Buddhism in the West illuminates the evolution of this new chapter in the Buddhist tradition - including its history, leadership, and teachings - and addresses issues such as violence and peace, race and gender, homelessness, prisons, and the environment.Eighteen new studies explore the activism of renowned leaders and organizations, such as Thich Nh...

Appropriately Indian is an ethnographic analysis of the class of information technology professionals at the symbolic helm of globalizing India. Comprising a small but prestigious segment of India’s labor force, these transnational knowledge workers dominate the country’s economic and cultural scene, as do their notions of what it means to be Indian. Drawing on the stories of Indian professionals in Mumbai, Bangalore, Silicon Valley, and South Africa, Smitha Radhakrishnan explains...

Identity movements, based on ethnicity, caste, language, religion and regional identity, have become increasingly significant in Nepal, reshaping debates on the definition of the nation, nationalism and the structure of the state. This book analyzes the rapid rise in ethnic and nationalist mobilization and conflict since 1990, the dynamics and trajectories of these movements, and their consequences for Nepal.From an interdisciplinary perspective, the book looks at the roots of mobi...

From Feng Shui to holistic medicine, from aromatherapy candles to yoga weekends, spirituality is big business. It promises to soothe away the angst of modern living and to offer an antidote to shallow materialism.Selling Spirituality is a short, sharp, attack on this fallacy. It shows how spirituality has in fact become a powerful commodity in the global marketplace - a cultural addiction that reflects orthodox politics, curbs self-expression and colonizes Eastern beliefs....

The cultural imagination of Hindu India is the subject of this book. Anyone interested in the prehistory of present-day tensions between Hindus and Muslims will find it exceptionally valuable. Charu Gupta shows how gendered notions about women's sexuality and Muslim debauchery were used to pull together a heterogeneous populace into a coherent Hindu community in colonial north India. She traces the deliberations of (largely male) publicists on how to make Hindu women 'pure', on how to distanc...