Sound and identity explored through the Indian Tamil diaspora and Tamil Nadu

Sound is very much a part of identity. While identities are neither singular nor stable, they can be expressed through sound in daily life. Scholars have used soundscapes in geography to understand urban environments within cities, rural national park systems, and provide musical insights into cultural landscapes. However, furthering discussion on the role of sound in identity can move concepts of soundscape and cultural landscape forward. The goal of this paper is to investigate how identity and culture, though they are dynamic, can be performed and stabilized through sound in particular moments and yet also exist banally. Soundscapes through both spoken language and music can give geographers further insights on identity and place. Sound can also show how non-dominant identities distinguish themselves from larger national identities. With research in Tamil Nadu, India and Cleveland, OH, this paper examines sound’s role in identity, belonging, and community through lived experience and performance. Focusing on intersections and tensions between soundscapes, this paper investigates how the Tamil soundscape is used to assert and perform identity.     

The assimilation of Dravidian loans to Konkani phonological and morphological patterns

After briefly reviewing the status of Konkani in the Dravidian area, and the extent of Dravidian influence on this Indo-Aryan language, the assimilation of Dravidian loan words to Konkani phonological and morphological patterns is examined in detail. In the process of accommodation, Dravidian loanwords have undergone various phonological modifications (such as syncope, apocope, vowel rounding, vowel raising, vowel lowering, palatalization, depalatalization, gemination, and degemination). They have undergone also various morphological modifications in order to adjust to a considerably different system of morphological classes and inflectional patterns. Finally, certain sociolinguistic factors are pointed out which might have enabled Konkani phonological and morphological patterns to withstand the pressures of the massive influx of Dravidian loans.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Oriental Society in 1975. Much of the data was collected by me during a 1967–68 field trip under an American Institute of Indian Studies junior fellowship. I have also consulted Katre 1942, Ghatage 1963, and Menezes 1967 for Konkani, Bhat and Kedilaya 1967 for Tulu, and Kittel 1894 for Kannada.     

Time and space in the Sri Lanka‐Tamil diaspora

Based upon fieldwork in Sri Lanka and among Tamil migrants in Norway, this article discusses the relationship between space, time and national identity. The author argues that in the Sri Lanka‐Tamil diaspora one finds two different conceptions of Tamil culture, the ‘traditional’ and the ‘revolutionary’. The first expresses a space‐time relationship that is nomadic and grounded in heritage; the second one is sedentary and historicist. The latter serves as a basis for Tamil separatism, the first does not. By propagating the ‘revolutionary’ model of culture, with its particular understanding of space and time, the Tamil separatist movement Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has adopted viewpoints that throughout this century have fuelled the nationalism of the Sinhalese majority in Sri Lanka. The author argues that instead of explaining social change historically, which is one trend within anthropological theory today, anthropologists should concentrate on exploring under which conditions historical explanations are seen as more valid than their alternatives.     

Takahashi,Takanobu, Tamil Love Poetry and Poetics

Indo-Iranian Journal -     

论西周汉语第三人称代词的句法功能

本文讨论了西周汉语第三人称代词“厥、其、之”的句法功能问题。认为“厥”主要作定语,其次是作主语,偶尔作兼语;“其”主要作定语,其次是作主语;“之”主要作宾语,偶尔作定语、兼语。“厥”和“其”的句法功能基本相同,两者是同义的新词和旧词的关系;“之”跟“厥/其”在句法功能方面则有分工。     

Body Language: The Somatics of Nationalism in Tamil India

The modern nation resides, literally and symbolically, in the bodies of its citizenry. These bodies in turn constitute the national body politic. The female embodiment of the nation is frequently the ground on which the two bodies intersect. This essay explores this intersection through the analytic of the ‘somatics of nationalism’, with examples drawn from Tamil-speaking India in this century. Through an analysis of how images of the shared womb, blood, milk, and tears of the female embodiment of the nation were circulated by nationalist narratives, the author suggests that these were somatic building blocks with which the nation and its constituency were constructed in southern India. In turn, Tamil citizens were called upon to demonstrate their loyalty by putting their own bodies on line, shedding their own blood and that of their enemies, for the sake of the embodied nation. Nations and citizen-patriots may relate to each other politically, materially and emotionally, but they also do so somatically.     

Property and Personal Crime in Istanbul

In recent studies on urban safety, close relationships between physical and demographic characteristics have been found in crime levels in cities. In many countries social, political and economic turmoil have been the main reasons for the increase in urban crime and violence in the last 50 years. In physically deprived environments, the most important factors that increase urban crime are socially isolated communities, economic discrimination and lack of equality in political citizenship rights. In developing countries, it is difficult to obtain data about crime and safety. For this reason, there are very few studies on crime compared to developed countries. In the research in this paper, the similarities and differences of crime ratios against property and persons in Istanbul are compared with those in other countries. For this purpose, the spatial distribution of crimes committed were analysed on a comparative basis between 1998–2002 in 32 districts displaying different characteristics in terms of distance to the centre, use of land, value of land, physical and demographic features. The research revealed that the crime rates in Istanbul against property and persons were in parallel with developed countries. The districts which have mixed use (residential and commercial, residential and industrial), high population increase, high number of households, high density and high land value, property and personal crime levels are high; when date of becoming a district is recent and the size of the district is large, property and personal crime levels are low.     

The Personal is Personal (Review Essay)

Book reviewed in this article:
John B. Boles (ed.), Autobiographical Reflections on Southern Religious History