Can We Measure Politics and Political Development?
Measuring how countries perform is all the rage. Everyone from the World Bank to Bertelsmann to Africa’s most famous entrepreneur does it, producing indices on things like how competitive economies are, how hungry populations are, how free the press is, how risky investments are, and how corrupt public sectors are. Many of these indices are [...]
CORRUPTIION, ECONOMIC GROWTH and SOCIETY
Corruption, illegal and/or unethical conduct involving public and private sector transactions, has been a reality since the creation of institutions and the formation of government. Studying Medieval society in the Latin West, one can see that the entire feudal-manorial structure was predicated on a system of legalized corruption, or something akin to modern day mafia [...]
Mountain waters – elixir or envenom?
The pristine water quality of the mountains is under question despite bottled water manufacturers campaign to the contrary. This issue attempts to examine the dogma and the policy responses in India to protect environmental water quality of the mountains. Bottled water manufactures do a great job of enticing thirsty buyers to pick up a brand [...]
The poverty of dichotomous interpretations: Iran and beyond
One reason that Historiography is a requirement for graduate students is so that they learn the different methodological, ideological, political, nationalistic, religious, cosmopolitan, secular humanist, and other approaches to history. The nation-state under the Age of Absolutism and then the French Revolution and nascent nationalism are to a large degree responsible for the ‘varieties’ of [...]
Sex and food in Pagan Culture
From ancient pagan (pantheist) cultures that reflected the multidimensional nature of humans living in nature to more modern monotheistic religious cultures that are dogmatically dichotomous relegating people to good or evil categories, food and sex and inexorably linked. In pantheistic or monotheistic culture, food and sex reflect society and human nature that in some religions, [...]
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