Death without weeping: The violence of everyday life in Brazil Rating: 4 out of 5 Author: Nancy Schepper-Huges Year: 1992 Category: Anthropology, hunger, violence, poverty Publisher: University of California Press Death without weeping is an ethnographic study of a town in North-Eastern Brazil. The theme of the book is hunger, child deaths and ‘every day violence’ in Brazil. The work is situated in a town she calls ‘Bom Jesus da mata’ in Pernambuco district of N.E. Brazil. The author visited the place first as a volunteer in 1964, and continued her association with the town ever since. After her training […]
Monthly Archives: February 2007
My publications on Tamil Nadu's public services, right to food and other issues.
List of publications
Google scholar and specialized bibliography services like Econlit and JSTOR seem to have different strengths and should be used in different ways I started using Google Scholar with a vengeance when it started. It has an ease that other providers do not: there is no need to log in, there is no need for subscription and it seems to pull out articles that other service providers just did not. In no time, Google Scholar also started providing links to my citation manager – Refworks. But soon I started realising various limitations of Google Scholar. Here’s a brief assessment of the […]
Comparing Google Scholar and specialised bibliographic search engines
This bibliography covers most of the recent and classic works in institutional economics. I’ve included some reviews in the book review section. My other bibliographies can be seen under the bibliography category. Abraham, Anita, and Jean-Philippe Platteau. 2004. Participatory development: Where culture creeps in. In . Acemoglu, Daron. 2005. Politics and economics in weak and strong states. Journal of Monetary Economics 52, (7) (October): 1199-1226. Acemoglu, Daron, and James A. Robinson. 2006. Economic origins of dictatorship and democracy. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press. Alston, Lee J., Thráinn Eggertsson, and Douglass Cecil North. 1996. Empirical studies in institutional change. […]
Bibliography of Institutional Economics (downloadable)
I had written a note about using wordnet lexical database that could be used in content analysis. I just stumbled on a lexical database in Hindi. I am yet to try it, but am excited that such a tool is available in an Indian language, specially when I am planing a media study with a friend.
Wordnet lexical database in Hindi
A tool to generate conceptually related set of words for content analysis Wordnet is a lexical database maintained by Princeton university. It is described as: “WordNet® is a large lexical database of English, developed under the direction of George A. Miller. Nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are grouped into sets of cognitive synonyms (synsets), each expressing a distinct concept. Synsets are interlinked by means of conceptual-semantic and lexical relations. The resulting network of meaningfully related words and concepts can be navigated with the browser” When we with to do autocoding with NVivo or other qualitative research (or content analysis) software, […]
Using Wordnet lexical database with content analysis software
NVivo Rating: 4 out of 5 I started using NVivo – a qualitative research and content analysis software – last year when I worked on a content analysis project. NVivo’s purposes are simple – it allows us to assemble different documents (including pictures) and code them. The codes can be arranged in a hierarchy or individually. While most coding is manual, some of it can be automated (see below). The best part of NVivo is that it allows us to review contents carrying a particular code with ease. For example, I was looking at newspaper articles on contracting and wanted […]
NVivo: Useful content analysis tool
It has snowed a lot in Syracuse last night, and the forecast is that it will snow a lot more. My walk to the school was fun like never before – loads and loads of snow all around, submerged cars (no sadism here – but it was just incredible to see it all), and an entirely new look and feel to the whole city/town/village (not sure what Syracuse is). On top of all this fun, they’ve advanced the women’s basket ball game and have announced that there will be no entry fees! Having done my masters in Economics, I know […]
Snow is beautiful & I hope no one in Syracuse ...
I used to go to the library to listen to this talk earlier – till I discovered it in You Tube. A link is provided below to this great speech. Text of the talk Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity. But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic […]
I have a dream – Video of Martin Luther King’s ...
“I put all my shoes in front of me and polished them”, “I cleaned my curtains”, “My house was never as clean as it was when I had to write my dissertation”. These were the most interesting revelations by a panel on surviving the dissertation that was organised as a part of a course I audited recently. The tendency to putt-off writing is just incredible. I never feel prepared enough, and when I do get to writing, I never quite feel as if I’ve done a job good enough. Every now and then I do a reasonable outline but never […]
Putting-off the writing work: Can this be helped
The Princess Bride Year: 1987 Writer: William Goldman Length: 98 Category: Children’s Rating: 1 out of 5 I was in a mood for a romantic comedy and chose this highly rated movie from rotten tomatoes. I am not sure if the movie was aimed at children, at any rate it completely failed to convince me. I almost lost some friends when I told them that I did not like it. Two of them almost started rattling off all the dialogues in the movie! Obviously, it seems to be a hit with some people. I should confess though that I liked […]
Princess Bride by Rob Reiner: A popular movie I did ...
This documentary by Jan Madhyam Productions gives a very good introduction to the right to information campaign in India and on how RTI is used with social audits to combat corruption. In case you have trouble viewing it, please go to the permanalink by clicking the title above, or here http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3238128636848285898
Documentary on MKSS and right to information campaign
Many talks and interviews with well known people are now available online. I’ve put together a series of them that I have specially enjoyed. To see the rest, click here This is a wonderful lecture by Edward Said on Samuel Huntington’s idea about “Clash of civilizations”. In this lecture Edward Said analyses in detail the arguments of Samuel Huntington in his paper on Clash of civilizations (with a question mark) that ultimately became his book (this time without a question mark!). Edward Said incisively analyzes Huntington’s notion that differences in culture between the ‘West’ and ‘Islam’ will lead to conflicts […]
Edward Said’s talk on ‘Clash of Civilizations’ by Samuel Huntington
Visualising ones ideas is a great way to think through complex issues or arguments. Here are three free utilities to put our ideas into neat pictures Last year I used a mind-mapping software called FreeMind productively. Mind maps start with a simple core from which one can have multiple nodes that lead to multiple nodes and so on. Free mind allows the user to link different nodes, make comments on certain nodes, link them to files, insert a number of images, etc. Last year I did a course on Social Movement Theory. Towards the end of the semester a friend […]
Visualise ideas with Mind Maps, Concept Maps and Diagraming tools
Hi: I am Vivek. If you insist, I am S. Vivek and I don’t have a surname. If you wish to be formal, you can call me Mr. Vivek, which in my culture is quite appropriate. My identity cards in the US specify my name as Vivek Srinivasan and I get quite a few polite letters calling me Mr. Srinivasan; which happens to be my father. Much as I like him, I find it odd that he gets the credit for things I do. For example, a local newspaper reported a talk I gave at Syracuse as ‘Srinivasan said this […]
Look, I don’t have a surname
I recently tried using an online utility to find a suitable date for all students in my programme to meet. Normally, this is a hugely time consuming affaire. This time around, I tried an online utility called MeetingWizard.com and it turned out to be fantastic. It’s a simple utility that works like a poll. The organizer can choose an initial list of times and send invitations to chosen people. The invitees just have to click a link and choose merely click on the times that suit them. The site offers a lot of other useful features too. For example, apart […]
Online tool to schedule meetings among many participants
Todo sobre mi madre Year: 1999 Director: Almodovar Length: 101 minutes Category: Drama Rating: 5 out of 5 Almodovar continues to dazzle. After her son dies in a road accident Manuela starts looking at his diary and discovers his thoughts about his father whom he has never met. With this she begins her search for the father whom she had left behind when the child was born 17 years ago. The story then develops into a maze of relationships starting with Manuela’s friend who’s a transexual prostitute, later joined by a young Nun who is pregnant. I will not go […]
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