Vol. 1, No. 2, 2008
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Item Sex in Consumer Culture: the Erotic Content of Media and Marketing(East West University, 1/1/2008) Abedin, ManzoorulFreud might have overstated the case in claiming that everything people do can be linked to sex, but his ideas have had a deep impact on the development of theories and research models about sex and consumption patterns. Sexuality is a fundamental characteristic of people that influences their thoughts and behaviors, their orientation toward others, and life in general. Sex sells, it always has, beyond that cliche's inevitable appearance in media and marketing conversations. Despite the presence of sexual information in mainstream advertising, either in the form of sexual behavior, nudity, scantily-clad models, fetishism, or promises of sexual fulfillment and intimacy, few sources are available to those interested in studying this multifaceted phenomenon. Although sexual appeals are used to sell more products- and to boost popularity of media products such as television programming, films, magazines, music, and web sites-many scholars and consumers are still unable to describe "if" and "how" sex sells. Sex in consumer culture: the erotic content of media and marketing addresses these concerns by bringing together writers, thinkers, and researchers from several areas to examine what sex "is" in marketing, how it works, and how it may affect consumers and society.Item Socio-Demographic and Health Factors Affecting Maternal Mortality in Rural Bangladesh(East West University, 1/1/2008) Chaudhury, Rafiqul Huda; Chowdhury, ZafrullahThe present study examines the impact of non-biological factors such as age, birth-order, education, smoking, anaemia, and tetanus vaccination on maternal mortality using data on maternal deaths collected by Gonoshayastha Kendra (GK) from 592 villages of Bangladesh. The analysis of data reveals that further reducation in maternal mortality is possible in rural Bangladesh through vigorous campaigns against smoking, preventing births to women with four or more children, delaying first time childbearing, prevention and treatment of anaemia, and promoting full doses of tetanus vaccination for pregnant women.Item Target Needs of English for University Education and English Textbooks up to class XII: An Evaluation(East West University, 1/1/2008) Shahidullah, Md.English courses and textbooks are meant to cater to learners' academic and professional needs of English. However, this does not seem to happen in Bangladesh; university students in the country appear to have difficulties in reading their text and reference books in English. The present English syllabuses, and materials up to class XII do not seem to prepare them for the amount and level of reading skills they need for a meaningful university education, which means quality education that helps graduates acquire the best possible knowledge and prepares them for the job market of today's globalized world and not somehow to pass examinations and obtain a certificate in different areas of study in the present world. A lack seems to exist between the levels of English language proficiency needed for higher education, and the level English courses and materials up to class XII help them attain. This paper examines the nature of this lack, and recommends measures to fill it.Item Critical Discourse Analysis and the Rational Faculty(East West University, 1/1/2008) Haque, Md. ShahriarIn this age, the constant desire to be the best, to achieve the highest, to attain the most power, seems to be making us compromise our moral standards. The endeavor to strive and go to the next level may not always be practiced in a healthy manner. The present era poses its own problems, issues and challenges; complexities are part and parcel of social existence. In such an environment taking thing at face value could lead one to be beguiled, influenced or manipulated. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) offers a window of opportunities to make apparent the not so apparent issues of a society. Its objective is to empower people by making them conscious of the hidden structures that exist in the social makeup of a community. Once an individual or members of a community and or a society becomes aware of the issues that may have escaped them, they will be in a position to choose what to believe and what not to believe, what is authentic and what is doubtful or questionable. This paper aims to give a brief introduction to CDA and suggests how it can make the rational faculty more inquisitive outside and inside the academia.Item Shifting Identity of a Diasporic Subject: Jhumpa Lahiri's Lilia(East West University, 1/1/2008) Ahsanuzzaman, AhmedThe paper attempts an intensive reading of Jhumpa Lahiri's story, "when Mr. Pirzada came to Dine " with a view to placing its central character, Lilia, against the two forms of "mottled background', not in a 'harmonizing' relation, but in a process of 'becoming mottled'. It seeks to unearth the unstable nature of Lilia's diasporic identity that characterize, albeit differently, her parents as well. The essence of her identity is shattered by her shifting between the two forms or identities that coalesce in her without any balancing oppositions. The first refers to India which emerged as an independent nation along with Pakistan following the 1947 partition of the sub-continent by the raj. The second involves the United States where she is physically, culturally, linguistically and economically set. The unstable nature is sought not in the subject's different positionalities in terms race, gender and class but in the single sphere of race in order to show how the idea of the true or real identity of the diasporic subject keeps shifting in thay single sphere, unsettling the basis of her identity.Item Flory: a Pariah among the Anglo-Indians in Burmese Days(East West University, 1/1/2008) Malik, Tanvir HasanThis article attempts to explore the plight of the protagonist of George Orwell's Burmese Days. He is an Englishman feeling ill-at-ease in a Burmese outpost named Kyauktada during the Raj. Revolted by British racism and imperialism, disgusted by a native's knavery, disappointed in love, shunned by his countrymen, unable to come to terms with his lack of moral courage, and blemished by his surrounding until he is at the end of his tether. The drastic decision to end his own life appears a cowardly and an escapist act on his part but, at the same time, can be construed as his definitive protest against the wrong committed by the people around him. The influence of autobiographical elements of the author on the protagonist's character should be taken into account as should be other characters in some of the famous works in the novel's genre in establishing him as an outcast among his compatriots.Item Foucault on Resistance: Some Clarifications(East West University, 1/1/2008) Zayed, Hasan AlEdward Said's reading of Foucault essentializes the Frenchman's notion of resistance to a kind of fatalism that Foucault's writings cannot be reduced to. In two famous essays- "Traveling Theory" and "Foucault and the imagination of power"- Said criticizes foucault's analysis of power relations conceptualized in the 1970s. According to said, when foucault says power is omnipresent he actually means that power is omnipotent; that is to say, almost impossible to oppose. Foucault's notion of resistance, according to said, is too docile and incapable of altering the "unequal" interlocution between power and resistance. The Arab-American intellectual even argues that foucault did not take resistance seriously and made it appear as a dependent function of power. However, this paper intends to offer a substantively different interpretation of Foucault's power/resistance theory. This paper argues that as a thinker who opposed domination and authority, Foucault has no reason to perceive power to be all conquering. He has pointed at the vulnerability of power, indexing how resistance movements force power to change. To accuse that Foucault was reluctant to take resistance seriously is surely to essentialize the author's work. It is important to note the gradual transformation and the paradoxical nature of Foucault's works when one sets to critique his idices.Item "Change Agents"- Their Roles and Influnces in Organizations(East West University, 2/1/2008) Shirazi, HasanThe role and significance of " change agents" in organizations has become a subject of interest over the last decades. During the 1980s, the "change master" and "transformational leadership" literature presented leaders as charismatic heroes of radical corporate transformation that required destroying rigid and inflexible structures (Kanter 1983; Devanna and Tichy 1986; Bass 1990). Various extraordinary qualities, traits and attributes were associated with these change champions, including risk taking, and openness to new ideas. Unfortunately, this positive assertion of leadership was often conceived alongside the negative counter-image of traditional managerial roles (Caldwell 2003) played by them. This paper is going to focus on the role of the change agents and influence they have over the people and organizations.Item An analytical Study on Leadership Challenges for Human Service Administrators(East West University, 1/1/2008) Sen, Dr. Dilip Kumar; Khan, Sadana IslamThe present study addresses itself to the challenges that human service administrators face in maintaining and moving their organizations forward. The study has identified twelve leadership challenge dimensions, explored variations in these challenges across agencies and administrators, and finally draws a concluding line and discusses policy implications based on the findings of the study for leadership development programs targeted at human service administrators.Item Framework for Synthesis of Universal Networking Language(East West University, 1/1/2008) Choudhury, Md. Ershadul H; Ali, Md. Nawab YousufThis paper presents the specification of Universal Networking Language (UNL), a project undertaken under the auspices of the United Nation University (UNU) in Tokyo and for a framework for integration of Bangla language to UNL. The mission of the UNU project is to allow people across nations to access information on the internet in their own languages-a step bridge the digital divide. The core of the project is UNL, a language independent specification for serving as a common medium for documents in different languages. Researchers involved in this project from different countries have been developing UNL systems for their respective native language. The process basically involve i) building native language to UNL dictionary and ii) deriving language specific syntactic rules called analysis rules for parasing/translating native language corpora to UNL and vice versa. In this paper we present parallel work for developing a framework for synthesizing Bangla to UNL that involves building a bangla to UNL dictionary and parsing sentences to UNL. To the best of our knowledge, this is a pioneering work in Bangla.