Situating marriage payments
There are very few contextual accounts of bride-price payments among north Indian communities. Despite the paucity of ethnographic data, assumptions regarding transitions in the practice are commonplace. This article discusses marriage payments among the Bedia community within the broader context of their survival upon familial prostitution and focusses upon how they construe bride-price and dowry, both practiced under varied circumstances. I argue that Bedia marriage payments do not neatly fit into the prevailing assumptions regarding transitions from dowry to bride-price and are constructed differently under different conditions. The internal variations and contradictions in these constructions are interpreted in light of the social location and practices of Bedias.
Modernization, inter-caste marriage, and dowry: An analytical perspective
As economic growth and development occurs in India, it has been thought that dowry would decline as an institution. However, the practice of dowry has rapidly spread to regions in India where previously it was not extensively practiced and dowry inflation may be occurring. In this paper, a simple analytical model of dowry, based upon caste determined status differentials, is developed. The model assumes that some inter-caste marriage occurs. The implications of the model are that gross dowry inflation is fueled by economic growth, but net dowry remains unchanged. More importantly, unequal growth stimulates an expansion of the practice of dowry to lower castes.
The Open Mobile Alliance: Delivering Service Enablers for Next-Generation Applications
Apractical overview of OMA specifications and how they enable mobile multimedia services & much more ! The Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) is an industry forum, which develops open specifications to help in the creation of applications and services to be deployed over converged networks. The alliance is the leading industry forum for generating market-driven specifications for interoperable mobile service enablers that facilitate global user adoptions of mobile multimedia services. Members include traditional wireless industry segments, such as mobile operators mobile operators (e.g. AT&T, China Mobile, Orange, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, Telefonica, Vodafone), equipment and mobile systems manufacturers (e.g. Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia, Philips, Samsung, Siemens, Sony-Ericsson), and Information Technology vendors (e.g. BEA Systems, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle Corporation, Sun Microsystems and NEC). Since its formation in 2002, the OMA has made significant progress in areas such as push-to-talk over cellular, device management, presence and group management, and messaging. The Open Mobile Alliance: Provides a comprehensive overview of the service enablers published by the OMA, tying together all the different piece parts developed by the individual working groups Offers a thorough introduction to the OMA Service Environments (OSE) and the specification process for enabling technologies. Discusses enablers for services such as gaming, IMS, Parlay, mobile broadcast and web services. Contains contributions from all stakeholders in the mobile application value chain. The Open Mobile Alliance Alliance is an invaluable resource for OMA members, product managers, network architects and planners, standards managers, standards engineers and IT professionals. Advanced Students and lecturers on mobile application development and standardization courses will also find this book of interest."The success of OMA is due to its individual members' contributions, and this book is testament to their hard work. The individual members' efforts and the authors of this book are to be congratulated on their magnificent achievements." Mark Cataldo, Senior Advisor, Orange SA, OMA Technical Plenary Chairman