Stree – förlag

Everywhere, as the author states, capitalism is triumphant and Marxism seems irrelevant'. Yet, not that long ago, many had thought that capitalism would collapse, owing to its own inherent contradictions, and be replaced by a just and egalitarian world order, following the ideals of Marxism. Anuradha Roy argues that it is important to understand this failure at the very roots, which were responsible for a huge gap between Marxism's promise and practice, leading to its downfall. A communist party, the CPI (M) had been elected in Bengal and ruled for 34 years until it came to an abrupt end in 2011, now on its way to disappearing from the public space all over India. Yet India has much poverty and deprivation still; remaining fertile ground for ideas of equality and social justice. This book, on Marxian thought in Bengal rather than a history of the Marxist movement, discusses the different shades of Bengal Marxism, also including oppositional views. The Marxists believed that the revolution would take place in the realm of culture, narrowly defined, creating an unbridgeable distance from the masses. Many of the sources have been taken from well-known Bengali journals, not available in English, earlier. Roy points out that it was the non-Marxist intellectuals who did justice to Marxism by acknowledging its possibilities and questioning its inadequacies. The author discusses how many scholars have reinvented Marxism as a modifier to disciplines like literature, history, sociology and political science, often combining Marxism with postmodernism. Roy argues that if we think of Marxism as a tradition, not as a doctrine offering an all-embracing explanation of the past and the present and capable of predicting the future, we shall derive much valuable inspiration from it.

In South Asia, political liberation resulted in the partition of states, leading to huge flows of refugees who faced horrific, indescribable violence. In addition there are the internally displaced people (IDPs), religious and ethnic minorities, indigenous people, dalits and the urban poor who get displaced many times over. Persecution and discrimination occur together. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) responded with a Ten-Point Plan of Action for Refugee Protection and Mixed Migration. This was the focus of a two-day dialogue on Protection Strategies in South Asia' organised by Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group (MCRG), resulting in this comprehensive collection, compiled by social scientists, media analysts and activists. It offers an analysis of the principles of protection, their inadequate implementation; the disparity between economic growth and human development indices that leads to massive human flows: refugees, IDPs or economic migrants.

This book brings critical voices to bear upon the relationship between science, gender and patriarchies, critique science and reclaim it with equal passion. Feminist critiques of science have uncovered the ideological biases in scientific discourse and also begun reforming and reinventing disciplinary canons. Many such critiques have been developed in the West; the significance of the Indian contribution to this debate is that it offers a different perspective, drawing upon the experience of how science and technology has impacted the lives of Indian women, their work and their bodies. The contributors, from different disciplinary locations in the social sciences, the humanities and the natural sciences, raise a variety of issues in science criticism, presenting feminist positions in fields including health, pedagogy, livelihood and sexuality. The two volumes offer a pioneering and valuable contribution to science studies and women's studies in India.