The Future Almost Arrived
The Future Almost Arrived

Author: Itai Nartzizenfield Sneh

Publisher: Peter Lang

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 9780820481852

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This book is a study of Jimmy Carter's career, his approach to human rights, his formulation of goals, and his practices before, during, and after his presidency, with a focus on the extent to which the promotion and protection of human rights influenced his actions at home and abroad. Historians underestimate the uniqueness of the juncture in the 1970s when Carter missed an opportunity to change priorities in American diplomacy, a misreading that might be explained by the disparity between Carter's agenda and the reality created by his administration's record. This book identifies and examines how Carter's ambitious words and promising ideals did not translate into policy, though his intentions were noble. At a pivotal moment, his administration adopted human rights as a tenet for foreign policy, but Carter did not design imaginative guidelines or prescribe new practices to advance this theme. The Future Almost Arrived illuminates how, had Carter succeeded in recruiting senior staff to support and implement an innovative agenda, the result might have been an overhaul of U.S. foreign policy, with human rights at its center - which, by improving his chances for re-election, would have changed the course of history.

Women's Lives, Women's Rituals in the Hindu Tradition
Women's Lives, Women's Rituals in the Hindu Tradition

Author: Tracy Pintchman

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2007-03-29

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0198039344

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In this book, Tracy Pintchman has assembled ten leading scholars of Hinduism to explore the complex relationship between Hindu women's rituals and their lives beyond ritual. The book focuses particularly on the relationship of women's ritual practices to domesticity, exposing and exploring the nuances, complexities, and limits of this relationship. In many cultural and historical contexts, including contemporary India, women's everyday lives tend to revolve heavily around domestic and interpersonal concerns, especially care for children, the home, husbands, and other relatives. Hence, women's religiosity also tends to emphasize the domestic realm and the relationships most central to women. But women's religious concerns certainly extend beyond domesticity. Furthermore, even the domestic religious activities that Hindu women perform may not merely replicate or affirm traditionally formulated domestic ideals but may function strategically to reconfigure, reinterpret, criticize, or even reject such ideals. This volume takes a fresh look at issues of the relationship between Hindu women's ritual practices and normative domesticity. In so doing, it emphasizes female innovation and agency in constituting and transforming both ritual and the domestic realm and calls attention to the limitations of normative domesticity as a category relevant to many forms of Hindu women's religious practice.