Mostafa Mahmud Naser

Mostafa M. Naser is currently teaching in the Department of Law of the University of Chittagong, Bangladesh as a Assistant Professor. He completed LLB (Hons.) and LLM from the same University. His research interests include International Human Rights Law, International Humanitarian Law, Refugee and Migration Law.

Veena Das

Veena Das is Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology and Professor of Humanities at the Johns Hopkins University. Her most recent book is Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary, California University Press, 2006. She has worked on themes of violence, social suffering, health and disease, and anthropology of the everyday. Currently she is engaged in a longitudinal study of urban neighbourhoods in Delhi. Das is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Academy of Sciences for Developing Societies. She has received several honours including the Andrez Retzius Prize of the Swedish Society of Anthropology and Geography and an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from the University of Chicago.

Deepak Mehta

Deepak Mehta is Reader at the Department of Sociology. He is the author of Work, Ritual, Biography: A Muslim Community in North India, 1997 (OUP) and co-author of Living With Violence: An Anthropology of Events and Everyday Life, 2007 (Routledge). He is currently working on the afterlife of the destruction of the Babri Mosque.

Introducing Professor George H. Gadbois, Jr

Professor George H. Gadbois, Jr is professor emeritus (political science) at the University of Kentucky. Over the years he has published extensively dealing mainly with Indian Supreme Court. At present, Professor George H. Gadbois, Jr is completing a book-length manuscript dealing with the first 93 judges (1950-1989).

SEMINAR POST

WOMEN'S STUDIES PROGRAMME
and
CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF LAW AND GOVERNANCEinvites you to a seminar

"Playing Off Courts: Negotiating Divorce and Violence In Courts, Police and Mediation Boards in Kolkata"


by

Dr. Srimati Basu
Associate Professor, Gender & Women's Studies
University of Kentucky


DATE: 30TH SEPTEMBER, 2008
TIME: 3.00 P.M.
VENUE: COMMITTEE ROOM NO.2, SSS-II.



The Indian State's management of divorce and domestic violence is enacted through a number of potentially contradictory fora, including civil and criminal remedies and formal and informal mediation. This paper focuses on Section 498 of the Indian Penal Code which legislates against "torture" and has been the primary criminal law governing domestic violence. It is a criminal provision of legendary notoriety, believed variously to be emblematic of the crux of feminist dystopia or of toothless symbolic legislation. Analyzing the discourse of litigants, judges, police and mediators in Family Courts, Women's Grievance Cells and Mediation Boards, this paper delineates the significance of domestic violence in the political economy of marriage: the tensions between looking to marriage for economic sustenance and undoing marriage through invocations of violence, the salience of social class in claiming the harm of violence, and the radical potential of laws of gender justice that may be contrarily deployed to secure dominant notions of domestic order. Existent criminal provisions may be used to leverage socioeconomic needs, but simultaneously, litigants construct violation differently than legal categories and seek complex remedies.


ALL ARE WELCOME

SEMINAR POST

Centre for International Legal Studies
School of International Studies
JNU
cordially invites you to a talk
on
The Ethics of Humanitarian Intervention
by
Dr. Namrata Goswami
Associate Fellow
IDSA
Time: 11 a.m.
Date: 19 September 2008 (Friday)
Venue: Room No. 117 (First Floor), SIS
All are cordially invited
:

SEMINAR POST

Centre for International Legal Studies
School of International Studies
JNU
cordially invites you to a talk
on
The Ethics of Humanitarian Intervention
by
Dr. Namrata Goswami
Associate Fellow
IDSA
Time: 11 a.m.
Date: 19 September 2008 (Friday)
Venue: Room No. 117 (First Floor), SIS
All are cordially invited
:

James Jaffe: Introducing Myself

I received my Ph.D. From Columbia University in New York in 1984 with a specialty in modern European history. Since then, I have written two books on industrial relations in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Britain and edited a third, the diary of a famous political activist from that period. This work helped to develop a special interest in the history of alternative dispute resolution, especially the history of arbitration, which is now the focus of my research. I have published on the history of arbitration in Britain, but more recently I have spent the last two years expanding this research into the history of arbitration in colonial India. Currently, I am working on a monograph exploring the adaptation and contestation of Indian and British forms of arbitration to resolve civil disputes in colonial Bombay. More generally, the monograph will address competing and complementary concepts of justice and fairness during the colonial era.

Dr Ramanatham Memorial Meeting 2008

Peoples' Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR) invites you for the

Dr Ramanatham Memorial Meeting 2008

On
6th September 2008 (Saturday)
At:
INDIAN LAW INSTITUTE (opposite Supreme Court, Bhagwan Dass Road)
From:
3.30 pm to 6.30 pm


Friends,
Each year, PUDR has been conducting an annual public meeting in honour of Dr Ramanatham, Vice President of the Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee
(APCLC) and popular medical doctor, who was killed by the police in 1985.
This year, we are organizing a meeting on


JUDICIARY AND WORKERS' RIGHTS


The decade of the 1990s witnessed anti-poor economic reforms,
'globalization', greater contractualization and casualization of labour in
India, changing production practices, an attempt to undermine labour laws
and frequent physical attacks on struggling workers. This was accompanied by
a series of judgements and orders by the Supreme Court and lower courts -
including on the right to strike and to call for a bandh - that taken
together constitute the most serious political attack on workers' rights in
decades.

Our speakers will share their experience in their own areas, what how
workers and unions have coped with and responded to this assault by the
judiciary. The presentations will be followed by a discussion.


SPEAKERS:

1. SUDHA BHARADWAJ, CMM (Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha)
2. SANJAY SINGHVI, TUCI (Trade Union Congress of India)
3. ANIMESH DAS, IFTU (Indian Federation of Trade Unions)
4. NGR PRASAD, Advocate (Labour Lawyers Practioners Association, Chennai)

The meeting will be chaired by
KAMALA SANKARAN, Faculty of Law, Delhi University.

Please do attend and pass the word around.

In solidarity,

Nagraj Adve, Harish Dhawan
Secretaries, PUDR

Prem Chowdhry: A brief biographical note

A product of Delhi University ; Ph. D from the Jawaharlal Nehru University; taught in Miranda House, University college for women from 1966 to 1988 ; a senior fellow of the Indian Council of Social Sciences, 1983-85; a University Grants Commission fellow at Jawaharlal Nehru University from 1988-1994; a fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Teen Murti, New Delhi from 1994- 2006; author of Contentious Marriages, Eloping Couples: Gender, Caste and Patriarchy in Northern India, Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2007; Colonial India and the Making of Empire Cinema: Image, Ideology and Identity, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2000; The Veiled Women: Shifting Gender Equations in Rural Haryana, 1880-1990, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1994; and Punjab Politics, Vikas Publications, Delhi, 1984; Other publications include research articles on politics, society, popular culture and gender both in colonial and contemporary India, in edited works and reputed national and international journals.

Introducing Rishabh Sancheti

Rishabh Sancheti is presently an Associate at the Office of Assistant Solicitor General of India at the High Court of Judicature for Rajasthan. He is also a part-time faculty of law at the National Law University, India where his teaching portfolio includes Company Laws, Corporate Restructuring & Governance and Securitization laws. He has been a Law Trainee-cum-Research Assistant to Hon'ble Justice N. Santosh Hegde, at the Supreme Court of India. He completed European Master in Law and Economics with a full scholarship from the European Union as an Erasmus Mundus Scholar. He received LL.M. from University of Hamburg, Germany, Diploma di Master Universitario di I livello in Law and Economics from University of Bologna, Italy and LL.M. from University of Vienna, Austria. He graduated cum laude from the National Law University, India with S.R. Bhandari Memorial Gold Medal qualifying for B.B.A.-LL.B. (Hons.) with a specialization in the area of International Trade and Investment laws.

CALL FOR PAPERS

International Conference on Feminist Constitutionalism

Date: February 28 – March 1, 2009

Location: Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada

This conference intends to follow current debates in the intersection between constitutional law, constitutionalism, and feminist theory, both domestically and internationally. The discussions will address both rights and institutional issues and will welcome also the use of comparative methods and analysis.

Topics to be discussed include, but are not limited to: constitutional interpretation, popular constitutionalism, human rights, access to justice, multiculturalism, reproductive rights, and social and economic rights.

Key Note Speakers:

Professor Catherine MacKinnon, University of Michigan
Professor Reva Siegel, Yale University
Professor Jennifer Nedelsky, University of Toronto

The conference committee is seeking submissions of academic abstracts not exceeding 500 words. Our intention is to consolidate the papers presented and publish them in the format of an academic book (but the final decision on this will be made after the papers are submitted).

Please send abstract submissions to one of the conference organizers (below) by email.

Submission Deadline:
September 30, 2008

Notification of Acceptance:
October 15, 2008

Conference organizers:

Professor Beverley Baines, Queen’s University (bainesb@queensu.ca)
Professor Daphne Barak-Erez, Tel-Aviv University (barakerz@post.tau.ac.il)
Professor Tsvi Kahana, Queen’s University (kahanat@queensu.ca)

Invitation to the 12th International Consumer Law Conference, 25th to 27th February, 2009

We cordially invite you to participate in the "12TH INTERNATIONAL
CONSUMER LAW CONFERENCE jointly organized by International Association
of Consumer Law and NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad. The
conference will be held from 25th -27th February 2008 at NALSAR
University of Law, Hyderabad.

About the Conference:

The theme of the conference is 'CONSUMER LAW - GLOBALIZATION, POVERTY
AND DEVELOPMENT' and consumer law scholars from all parts of the world
are invited to participate. The general theme of the conference
includes numerous sub-themes. In the following some of the sub themes
are mentioned.

 Creating a Legal Infrastructure to Protect Consumers in a Global Economy
 Green and Ethical Consumerism in the Global Economy
 Vulnerable Consumers and Poverty as an Issue of Consumer Law
 Rights and Responsibilities of Service Providers, including Financial Services
 Adjudicating Bodies and Consumer Redress in a Global Economy

The description is not meant to be exhaustive, and other perspectives
to the issue at hand are welcome as well. The structure and programme
of the conference will be finalized after the deadline of the call for
papers.

This conference is organized once in every two years. Previous
conferences were held in various parts of the world including Brazil,
Malta, South Africa and various other European countries. This
conference is of international acclaim and has had participation from
the policy makers and renowned academicians around the world.

Interested participants can send in a short summary (½ page) of their
paper to the organizing committee in Hyderabad. Papers are to be sent
to Dr. Vidyullatha Reddy, (e-mail 12consumerconference@gmail.com/
vidyullathareddy@gmail.com ), as well as to the President of the IACL,
Professor Thomas Wilhelmsson (thomas.wilhelmsson@helsinki.fi ).

Final deadline for abstracts is September 30, 2008. Those selected
will be informed as soon as possible after submission of their
proposals. Finalized papers should be provided before December 31,
2008. The registration fee, that includes the conference material,
lunches during the conference and a dinner, is 250 USD for
participants from abroad and 5000 Indian rupees for participants from
India. Details of the conference venue and reasonable accommodation
facilities are provided at www.nalsar.ac.in.

About Hyderabad:

Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh consists of twin cities of
Hyderabad and Secundrabad and is a bustling 400 year old metropolis
which is famous as the former seat of the fabulously wealthy Nizams of
Hyderabad. Major attractions include the following:

 Charminar:
It consists of four graceful minarets, forty four prayer spaces and a
mosque. Charminar was built around 1591 at the centre of the original
city layout. It is as much the signature of Hyderabad as Taj Mahal is
of Agra and Eiffel Tower is of Paris.
 Golconda Fort:
It is one of the famous forts in India. It is famous for its
acoustics, palaces, ingenious water supply system and the famous
fatheh rahben gun, one of the canons used in the last siege of
Golconda by Aurangzeb, to whom the fort finally fell. Its past is
narrated effectively with the unique Sound and Light Show which shows
the past of Golconda.
 Mecca Masjid:
A two hundred yards south west of Charminar it is so named because the
bricks were brought from mecca to build the central arch. Mecca Masjid
is poetry in stone with a magnificent wall and 15 graceful arches.
Towards the southern end of the mosque lie the marble grave of the
members of the Azam Jahi Dynasty
 Birla Mandir:
This white marble temple of Lord Venkateswara floats on the city
skyline, on Kala Pahad. The idol in the temple is the replica of one
at Trirupati.
 Hussain Sagar Lake:
Excavated in 1562 by Hussain Shah Wali, the lake has one of the
world's tallest monolith statutes of the Buddha standing on the rock
of Gibraltar in the middle of the lake.
 Salarjung Museum:
This museum houses one of the biggest one-man collections of antiques
of the world by Mir Yousuf Ali Khan, Salarjung III. The objects
include Persian Carpets, Mughal miniatures, Chinese porcelain,
Japanese lacquerware, famous statutes including Veiled Rebecca and
Marguerite and Mephistopheles, a superb collection of jade, daggers
belonging to Queen Noor Jahan and Emperors Jahangir and Shah Jahan,
Aurangzeb's sword and many other fabulous items.
 Shiparamam Arts and Crafts village:
Situated at Madhapur is this 30 acre village which showcases arts and
crafts of the country. It hosts annual bazaars, artists and artisans
from all over the country exhibit their talent.
 Ramoji Film City:
A dream world created for the celluloid on a sprawling 1000 acres with
every imaginable set and location. Visitors can go around in conducted
tours.
 Other major destinations include Qutb -Shahi Tombs, Archeological
Museum, Nizam's Silver Jubilee Museum, Chow – Mohalla Complex, and
Lumbini Park

Hyderabadi Cuisine

Hyderabad was known for the spectacular way its aristocracy
entertained. The cuisine owes its origin to the Mughali style of
cooking of the Asaf Jahi Period. There is a variety of Biryani's (rice
and meat preparation seasoned with spices and flavoring) kababs in
many different styles such as Boti, Jhammi, Kalmi, Shikampur, Sheek
and Legan- ke kababs, Dum- ke- kababs, Kurmas and Lukhmi (pastry).

Soliciting your participation at this Conference

Yours Sincerely

Dr. Vidyulatha Reddy

For, Organizing and Co-ordinating Team
12th International Consumer Law Conference
NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, India

Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya

Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya is a Fellow in Political Science at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. He works on issues related to democracy, governance, and the politics of the Left in India. His fieldwork primarily takes shape in rural West Bengal. At present, he is also working on a study that compares Kerala and West Bengal on various aspects including social mobilization, political participation and institutional performance especially in relation to the population below the poverty line.

POSITIONS AVAILABLE

The Cultural and Material life of Media Piracy is a three year project carried out by the Sarai programme of the CSDS in collaboration with the Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore. We begin with the premise that piracy is widespread in places where a media-saturated modernity meets severe inequalities of purchasing power for books, software, recordings, videos and other knowledge products. One of the key aims of this research project will be to understand this media environment as it unfolds itself in diverse contexts. The main research node is in India with comparative work in China and Pakistan. The Sarai-ALF teams of researchers work in tandem with an international project on media piracy with fellow researchers in Brazil, South Africa and Russia. The larger study is coordinated by the SSRC (New York).

The project seeks to open different debates on piracy other than simply that of enforcement and criminality. Through research, we hope to generate discussions of cultural needs, community practices of sharing and circulation in societies of high inequality. We will also look at media industry approaches to piracy and enforcement strategies. In addition, there will be ethnographic and quantitative work on media use in neighbourhoods. The study of piracy offers a unique vantage point to study the media environment, through the sites of media and its movement across limits set by law, the complexity of user-bases, and the diversity of cultural delivery platforms.

We are looking for bright, energetic and qualified researchers who can work in collaboration with a regional and international team. Applicants must demonstrate abilities to research and write on the subject. A familiarity with the debate on piracy and the creative commons is preferable. Social science and Humanities applicants should have completed post graduate degrees and law students a four year programme.

Researcher One: Delhi
The researcher will be looking at fieldwork material on media piracy in the Sarai archive, as well as conduct neighbourhood surveys slate to begin in 2009. Work will include research papers presentations and collaborative work with the team.



Researcher Two: Mumbai
The researcher will be looking at the range of piracy strategies pursued by media industries in the film and music sectors. Research will span the larger media companies as well as the smaller companies. Work will include research papers presentations and collaborative work with the team. Applicants from outside Mumbai are also welcome to apply for this position, although Mumbai based work will be significant.



Remuneration will be Rs 28000/ a month. Interested applicants may send their CV and a written research sample to researchjobs@sarai.net by September 20, 2008.
Applications without a written research sample will not be entertained.



Links
SSRC piracy project: http://programs.ssrc.org/ccit/ip/
Sarai, CSDS : http://www.sarai.net/research/knowledge-culture/knowledge-and-culture
ALF: www.altlawforum.org
_____________________________________
The Newsletter of the Sarai Programme,
29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054, www.sarai.net
Info: dak@sarai.net.To subscribe: send a blank email to
newsletter-request@sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header.
Directions to Sarai: We are 10 minutes from Delhi University, and 5 mins. from the Civil Lines Metro Station.

See Calendar and Newsletter online:
http://www.sarai.net/about-us/newsletter