China Studies in India—3
I feel deeply honoured to have been invited to deliver the Keynote Address at this Fourth All-India Conference of China Studies (2011), held this time at the University of Hyderabad, an institution for which, over several years of association in various capacities, I have developed a strong affection. I also feel humble in this present company of accredited China scholars. Although my first two academic degrees were in Chinese Studies—in fact, old-style language/literary studies that went by the now unfashionable and politically incorrect title of ‘Oriental Studies’—I have spent most of my professional life as a sociologist/socio-cultural anthropologist. I should say that the focus of Indian sociology, as with other social science disciplines in the Indian context, has been almost exclusively on India, the unwritten (and in my opinion misguided) assumption being that such inward-focused research is transparently of greater social relevance—to the ‘masses’ or to ‘policy-makers’, as the case may be. There is an old English idiom, deployed of course in a completely different context, that says: ‘Nothing so dead as an old flame’. My own continuing involvement with China Studies through all these years, albeit on the professional periphery, speaks to the contrary. But my attachment is not merely sentimental, fanning the dying embers of an erstwhile passion. I truly believe that a comparative perspective, born of familiarity with another society (besides Europe/the US which is invariably our default ‘Other’) may constructively renovate our sociological understanding of ‘Indian’ society. At the same time, I also fully believe that China Studies must engage fully and self-consciously
Sinology or Area Studies?
STUDIES OF one aspect or another of China has a somewhat long history in India. ’Checna Bhava n’ of Santiniketan University has been engaged in the study of Buddhist texts for nearly half a century now. Chinese language teaching has been going on at the universities of Calcutta, Allahabad, the Indian School of International Studies (now a part of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi), Santiniketan University and the School of Foreign Languages (Ministry of Defence, Delhi), for varying lengths of time. An ambitious programme combining ’Chinese studies’ and the teaching of Chinese language was started at the University of Delhi more than two decades ago; it has remained the largest programme of its kind
Similarities in protozoan and flatworm habituation behavior.
ONE problem in the study of habituation in protozoa is that similar results, given the same experimental manipulations, may not be obtained in metazoa. I shall compare habituation behaviour in the protozoan Spirostomum with that in the micrometazoan Rhabdocoel flatworm Stenostomum; it remains to be shown whether there is a correspondence between protozoa and metazoa both in behaviour and in their underlying chemical processes. Both these organisms contract in response to mechanical and touch stimuli: when subjected to repeated stimulation, they habituate1. Furthermore, the more intense the stimulus, the longer it takes for habituation to occur1.