Description: This article explores the role of social capital. Investments in public libraries in developing countries have been made based on the idea that libraries contribute to societal democratization. Yet scholarly understanding of the relationships between public libraries and democratization is sharply limited. In this article the authors review historical studies of national public library systems that cast doubt on widely held assumptions that a positive relationship necessarily pertains between the establishment of public libraries and democracy. Based on this historical review and on sociological theories of social capital (e.g. Bourdieu 1986), the authors develop a theoretical framework intended to facilitate systematic investigation of the contributions public libraries may make to democracy. Using comparative historical and ethnographic methods, the authors analyze the relationship between public libraries and democratic systems of government in Namibia, Nepal, and Malawi, and find that in all three cases public libraries were established mainly during democratic regimes. However, they were not necessarily established by democratically elected governments directly, but rather because democratic regimes proved to be relatively open to the influence of diasporas and global civil society. The authors only find evidence of public libraries contributing to societal democratization, as the authors conceptualize the process, in Nepal ...

Description: This presentation is part of the faculty lecture series UNT Speaks Out on HIV/AIDS. This presentation discusses HIV and AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.

Description: This presentation is part of the faculty lecture series UNT Speaks Out on the Food We Eat. This presentation discusses heirloom seeds and covers information about the Foundation of Local Food Systems.

Description: This encyclopedia article describes the devastating effects of a chemical disaster that took place in Bhopal, India in 1984. It describes the effects of the chemical disaster and the events that followed.

Description: This paper is about reinterpreting yajna as Vedic sacrifice. Vedic rituals, yajnas, were one of the most important socio-religious activities in Vedic India. In this article, the author endeavors to problematize the term "sacrifice," which is often used to translate the word yajna in Indological writings. Although Monier-Williams (MW) dictionary defines yajnas as - "worship, devotion, prayer, praise; act of worship or devotion, offering, oblation, sacrifice (the former meanings prevailing in Veda, the latter in post-Vedic literature)", some of the primary meanings of the word yajna seem to have been sidelined with the scholarly emphasis on "sacrifice" as the chief interpretation. Several Vedicists have already expressed their disapprovals with equating yajna with sacrifice.