<p>Shiv Nadar University is a comprehensive, multidisciplinary, research-focused, and student-centric University offering a full range of academic programs at the undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral level. With state-of-the-art infrastructure, the University comprises of academic wings, sophisticated labs, international standard sports facilities, amphitheaters, auditorium, conference rooms and smart classrooms. The University&rsquo;s goal is to become internationally recognized for the quality of its research and creative endeavors and their applicability to improving quality of life, generating new insights and expanding the boundaries of human knowledge creativity. Committed to excellence in teaching, research and service, the University aims to serve the higher education needs of India and the world beyond.</p>

Shiv Nadar University

For decades, scholars have emphasized the power of the Western tourist gaze to construct Third World destinations as the ‘Exotic Other'. Scholars have also shown that ‘Third World’ tourism fuelled by media fantasies of the Other represents neo-colonization in the twenty-first century. However, considering all its intentions/claims of impartiality, tourism research has generally travelled in only one direction (from the West to the East). In this study, conducted in Goa and Puducherry, focusing on the social contexts in which people are viewed and photographed, we ask–what do the ‘Third World’ people think of Westerners gazing at them, and their surroundings? How do Western tourists react when photographed by domestic tourists? What are the power relations within which the photographer and the photographed are located? We recognize that no simplistic analyses are possible in the postcolonial context. Directing a critical lens at the tourist gaze, this essay moves from an understanding of the gaze as appropriating to that of the gaze as negotiated. © 2015 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

World University root node

Sociology

(SoHSS) School of Humanities and Social Sciences

Current Issues in Tourism

Situating the tourist gaze: from appropriation to negotiation

This article explores the ways in which long-term western spiritual practitioners settled in Puducherry, India reconstruct their selves as "connected" to the divine, the guru, and India through notions of "karma," "calling," and "surrendering." Current work on spirituality takes an either/or approach to spirituality and the self-either the self-oriented quest for metaphysical meaning-making is seen to be consumerist and individualistic, or it is seen to be experiential and ethical. Further, scholars on either side of the divide agree that contemporary spiritualities are primarily self-oriented, with one camp arguing that such self-orientation is consumerist and selfish versus the other arguing that such self-orientation challenges modern consumerism and can be an ethical alternative to consumerism. By contrast, I argue that contemporary spiritualities demonstrate the ways in which individualist, self-oriented experimentation with, and even consumption of, other religious ideas and practices is intertwined with attempts to go beyond the atomistic self. © 2018 The Author(s).

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Connecting their selves: The discourse of Karma, calling, and surrendering among western spiritual practitioners in India

Tourism and Ethnodevelopment: Inclusion, Empowerment and Self-determination

Exotic tourists, ethnic hosts: A critical approach to tourism and ethnodevelopment

American Anthropologist

Academic Freedom and the Future of Anthropology in India

This paper examines chakri as a distinct category of work in colonial Bengal. It traces the emergence of chakri in Bengal's encounters with colonialism, and the subsequent association of the category with "English education" and the bhadralok (literally, "respectable ones"). Chakri was and continues to be a referent of white-collar jobs in Bengal. In addition, it was crucial to consolidating respectability, as the bhadralok distinguished themselves from those who engaged in manual or menial labour (e.g., peasants, domestic workers etc.). However, a closer look at the terms chakure (employee) and chakor (servant) reveals differing connotations. Characteristics embedded in the notion of chakor - service, servitude and loyalty - noticeably blurred the lines that divided respectable work from manual-menial labour. Yet divisions between these two were maintained, even as the undertones of servant varied morally within the socioeconomic categories of chakure and chakor. At the same time, this study extends beyond immediate concerns of livelihood in order to encompass broader yet interrelated realms of citizenship and nation building. © 2013 by Studien Verlag Ges.m.b.H.