Reframing Urban Ideals: Charles-Édouard Jeanneret’s 1915 Research on Land, Form, and Social Reform

<p>The scale of urbanization in China during the past 30 years is unprecedented in human history along with its fast economic growth, presenting profound impacts on socioeconomics, human well-being, and the environment. We quantified spatial patterns and temporal courses of urban land expansion for 32 major cities across China from the late 1970s to 2010 using multitemporal Landsat data of 1978, 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, and 2010, and further explored the effects of urbanization on climate (i.e., urban heat islands), and vegetation phenology and growth in these 32 cities, together with MODIS Land Surface Temperature (LST) and Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) products.</p><p>We found that rapid urban expansion was observed in these 32 major cities from 1978 to 2010, with an overall annual expansion rate of 6.8 ± 2.5 %. Chinese urban expansion does not fit urban expansion theory consistently over time and has transitioned from contradicting to conforming to Gibrat’s law, which states that the growth rate is independent of city size. The surface urban heat island intensity (SUHII) differed substantially between day and night and varied greatly with season. Spatial variability of the SUHII is ultimately controlled by background climate. The growing season started 11.9 days earlier and ended 5.4 days later in urban zones compared to rural counterparts. The phenological sensitivity to temperature were 9-11 days SOS advance and 6-10 days EOS delay per 1 °C increase of LST. For the first time, we developed a general conceptual framework for quantifying the impacts of urbanization on vegetation growth and applied it in 32 Chinese cities. Results indicated prevalent vegetation growth enhancement in urban environment and vegetation growth was enhanced at 85% of the places along the intensity gradient. This growth enhancement offset about 40% of direct loss of vegetation productivity caused by replacing productive vegetated surfaces with non-productive impervious surfaces. The urban environments, considered as the "harbingers" of global environmental change and "natural laboratories" for global change studies, shed new insights and approaches into global change science, and the urban-rural gradient provides an excellent experimental manipulations for global change studies.</p>

The scale of urbanization in China during the past three decades is unprecedented in human history, and the processes are poorly understood. Here we present an effort to map the urban land expansion processes of 32 major cities in China from 1978 to 2010 using Landsat satellite data to understand the temporal and spatial characteristics. Results showed that the urban extent of the 32 cities expanded exponentially with very high annual rates varying from 3.2% to 12.8%. Temporal fluctuation in urban expansion rates in these 32 cities was obvious, with unexpected and alarming expansion rates from 2005 to 2010 that drastically exceeded their expectation, which was calculated from the long-term trend between 1978 and 2005, by 45%. Overall, we found that the growth rates of cities during the entire study period were inversely related to city size, contradicting the theory or Gibrat's law, which states that the growth rate is independent of city size. More detailed analysis indicated that city growth in China has transitioned from contradicting to conforming to Gibrat's law since 1995. Our study suggests that the urban expansion theory (i.e., Gibrat's law) does not fit Chinese expansion consistently over time, and the exact causes are unknown. Exploring the causes in future research will improve our understanding of the theory and, more importantly, understand the feasibility of the theoretical relationship between city size and expansion rate in guiding contemporary urban expansion planning.

<i>Boccaccio: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works</i>. Edited by Victoria Kirkham, Michael Sherberg, and Janet Levarie Smarr. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013. Pp. xix+555.

The purpose of this article is to discuss the socio-economic reforms and results that Lula had done during his presidency. Issues of Brazil's state role and economic reform are also discussed. This article mainly holds 2 analytic framework:1. Relationship of mutual intersection of economic and government characters；2. Economy is at the same time embedded in social totality of Brazil and neo-liberal globalization. This thesis is to analyze the key point of Lula's economic and social reform by the social embeddedness conceptual framework, and limitations of recent Brazilian economic democracy and social democracy. From 1964 to 1980, Brazil has entered the second phase of import-substitution industrialization, and has also accepted the structural reform plan provided by international economic organizations such as World Bank. This greatly imports foreign investments and technology, in order to accelerate economic growth. Debt development strategy indeed accomplished the “Brazilian Economic Miracle”, but which also invoked the external debt crisis that occurred in 1980. After Cardoso was elected President in 1995, he adopted the neo-liberal route, promoted various important economic and social strategies. In the economic aspect, the economic reform is mainly financial liberalization, which also adopts new development modes based on market functions and modes that lessen government roles. This includes cutting down public expenditure, attract foreign investments, balancing exports and imports, and stabilizing commodity price etc. However, unemployment, social inequality, poverty, trade deficit, and issues coming from external debt interests still exist. After Lula was elected as President in 2003 during the new millennium, he continuously adopted the neo-liberal economic strategy. In 2007, he proposed the neo-developmentalist strategy, intending to make suitable redistributing strategy, to improve economic and social development. He also intends to rope in local capitalists and foreign capital to accomplish economic development. However, the issues of disparity between the rich and the poor and poverty have still not been solved. During Lula's role, he pays attention to social reform, putting the reform key point on Bolsa Familia Program, the land reform, education, employment and social security. The results of the reform include that the middle class population increases, Bolsa Familia Program benefits f of the national population, children of poor families can receive education, and the poverty class gets the opportunity to improve their social status. Also, the implementation of Bolsa Familia Program also directly influences the enrollment rate of children and teenagers. Land reform also benefits farmers that do not own any land and establishes an indigenous residential area. The result of employment reform includes that the labor-force participation rate increases, working class besides receives a raise in their minimum wage, employees with formal contract increase, unstable unemployment rate decrease, average real income of the 6 major metropolitan areas increases, social security contribution rate of hired laborers increases. Furthermore, due to state finance considerations, Lula also conducts social protection reform. However, if Lula's the socio-economic reform achievement is inspected by the economic democratic and social democratic aspects, there are still many limitations. There are still expectations of continuous future socio-economic democratic reform of Brazil. The research findings of this thesis include: 1. Brazil's government role and economic development benefit each other, with the country aggressively stepping in between economy and society；2. Brazil's economy is embedded in the social totality and external neo-liberal globalization. Looking to the future, the whole economic development of Brazil must be embedded in the social totality. Therefore, the continuing growth of Brazilian economy besides having to depend on enterprise investments, middle class and the production and consumption of all laborers are of equal importance. How national strategy completely incorporates to the needs of the middle class and all labor, is the issue that President Rousseff must face when she comes into power.

Hispanic Cities on Film: Urban Theory in the Freshman Seminar Susan Divine (bio) and Benjamin Jones (bio) Dedicated to the students of WSM L, 2010 Introduction The freshman seminar, now ubiquitous across US campuses, is designed to introduce the typical freshman to the rigors of college life; namely, to the higher level of reading, writing, and critical thinking that will be required in all their future college level classes. The purpose of this essay is to map out a successful freshman seminar that was exceptionally interdisciplinary in nature through the combination of Hispanic Cultural Studies, Film Studies, and the diverse field of urban theory. My intention is to showcase the process of the course (selections of what we read, what we viewed, what we wrote) as a way of not only meeting the demands of the macro concept of the freshman seminar—which at my institution, Westminster College, is to teach critical thinking and citizenship in a global community—but also of introducing students to the micro concerns involved in the title of the course “Hispanic Cities on Film.” My objective for the end of the seminar itself was that the students would leave my classroom with the understanding that the world is connected through a structure, i.e. neo-liberal capitalism, that in turn replicates itself in the places where we live, in the lives of individuals, and in all of our thought processes. [End Page 61] Rather than hear the world’s connectedness described as “neo-liberalism,” students will more often hear this process described as ‘globalization.’ I approached this polemic term from two angles. First, I introduced the students to the various understandings of globalization (economic, political, and cultural) through a geographer’s lens as found in Globalization and Diversity: Geography of a Changing World. Secondly, and more importantly, given that this is a concept that freshmen will no doubt encounter throughout their academic and professional lives, I wanted their first higher education experience with the notion to be one that also emphasized humanistic empathy. Especially at an institution whose explicit mission is to “educate students to be leaders in a global community,” I wanted to define the relationship between that global community and the United States as interdependent and move away from harmful or biased stereotypes about national or cultural superiority. To achieve something akin to “humanistic empathy,” I did not present the historical, political, and social processes in a disinterested manner. Instead, by placing ethical, moral and even aesthetic value on the range of human experience from economics, to music, to narrative, to the plastic arts, and then asking questions that were aimed at eliciting empathy, my intention was that the course would work as a catalyst to push the students toward an active interest in social justice. This is not to say that there was intent to have the students engage in forms of resistance. Instead, I wanted to begin the process of consciousness formation through reading and hearing multiple perspectives on the situations presented in the films. It is only by first understanding the human consequences of economic systems on all factors of life that paths of resistance may be formed. In this way, my pedagogy follows closely geographer David Harvey’s imperative that abstract ideas of economy or culture never be separated from the real life issues of social injustice, nor disassociated from personal experience. As Harvey has theorized, this urban process influences not only how we view ourselves and our place in our world, it has the power to dictate our interactions at various scales of experience that include the individual, family, community, class, and state (Urban 231). Consequently, these interactions extend far beyond the realms of the campus, the coffee shop, or the neighborhoods that the sixteen freshmen in my course would call home. Moreover, through the lens provided by Hispanic film directors who situated their stories in major urban centers, students might be able to distinguish aspects of the urban experience common to various international cities. Indeed, what binds the potentially divergent experiences of both the domestic and the international students to the Hispanic cities represented through film is the urban process that all in the classroom undoubtedly have...

This research investigates the issue of financial waste and its social effects during the reign of Caliph Umar Ibn Abdul Aziz (99-101 AH), a pivotal period in the history of the Umayyad state. Within just thirty months, Caliph Umar successfully implemented reforms to eliminate financial waste, resulting in significant positive changes in the social and economic fabric of the state. Despite thorough searches in historical, cultural studies, and modern databases, no prior research has specifically addressed the topic of financial waste and its social impacts during Umar Ibn Abdul Aziz’s rule, highlighting the unique contribution of this study to the Arab and Islamic scholarly literature. The study explores how Umar Ibn Abdul Aziz effectively reduced financial mismanagement, focusing on the extent of waste before his reforms and the improvements that followed. The research further examines the methods used by Umar to eliminate waste, the challenges he faced, and the long-term benefits of his actions for the subjects of the Umayyad state. Employing a descriptive, analytical, and critical methodology, this research synthesizes classic and contemporary historical sources, offering a comprehensive analysis that enriches existing knowledge on the financial practices and social reforms during the Umayyad period.

Urban land expansion in China's six megacities from 1978 to 2015

Religion, Pragmatism, and Dissent:Theodore Parker's Experience as a Minister John Kaag I. Introduction: American History and American Philosophy On October 16, 1859, John Brown led an unsuccessful raid on the Harpers Ferry Armory. He planned to seize the cache of weapons in order to arm local slaves, to march south, and to deplete Virginia of the slaves who supported its economy. While it failed to realize this objective, the raid succeeded in driving a wedge between the Union and the Confederate States. The rift that Brown helped create grew into the gaping wound of the Civil War. Four years later, Abraham Lincoln surveyed the site of the most gruesome aspect of that wound: Soldier's Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. His Gettysburg Address signaled a turn in the war and a turn in the Union's favor. It is remembered as a significant step in the project that had been initiated at Harper's Ferry. Today we regard these events as pivotal moments in American history. We tend to forget the fact that they were pivotal moments in, and embodied moments of, the American philosophical tradition. Behind each of these moments was the thinking and action of Theodore Parker (1810-1860), a Unitarian minister, transcendentalist, and social reformer who served as a forbearer to the American pragmatists. Parker was a member of the "Secret Six," a group of wealthy abolitionists who provided financial and political support to Brown in his activities in Kansas and West Virginia. Parker provided material support, but also a solid ideological underpinning for the abolitionist movement. This ideology was developed while serving as a Unitarian minister in the West Roxbury neighborhood of Boston in the early 1840s. Parker was in the audience of Ralph Waldo Emerson's Divinity School Address in 1838 and took Emerson's [End Page 1] words to heart: "newborn bard(s) of the Holy Ghost,—cast behind you all conformity, and acquaint men at first hand with Deity" (Emerson, Essays 40). For Parker, casting off conformity involved being a vocal and reliable opponent of slavery, ecclesiastical sectarianism, and gender discrimination. It is with these concerns in mind that he addressed an audience at the New England Anti-Slavery Convention in 1850. In his talk, entitled "The Effects of Slavery on Men in America," Parker stated that, "Democracy is direct self-government, over all the people, for all the people, by all the people" (Collected Works 5: 106). Lincoln adopted this phrase in his 1864 address at Gettysburg, and it has achieved iconic status over the years, capturing the meaning and hope of a nation's founding. Parker's life has gained notoriety in recent years, largely due to Dean Grodzin's American Heretic: Theodore Parker and the Transcendentalists. The following article, however, attempts to approach this phrase not as the icon that Grodzin presents, but as a moment in the broader intellectual life of a Unitarian minister who championed a form of American philosophy in New England in the antebellum years. Most scholars of American intellectual history such as Cornell West, Louis Menand, and John Stuhr argue that American pragmatism stems from the work of Transcendentalist thinkers, most notably that of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau (West 9-41; Stuhr 1-7; Menand 9). Parker's work is routinely marginalized in this genealogy; rarely have scholars underscored the way in which Parker's thinking and social activism serves as a harbinger for the classical pragmatic tradition. Menand does treat Parker as an important figure in American intellectual history, but does not afford him the attention that might be necessary to explain the deep similarities between his work and the American pragmatic tradition. Remedying this oversight is important since Parker's work proves more practically oriented than the poetry and prose of his Concord colleagues. As Brent notes, Parker was a frequent visitor to Benjamin Peirce's Mason Street home in the 1840s, and his thinking permeated the walls and dwellings of other minds of the period (45). Many of his writings anticipate the positions that C. S. Peirce, William James, Josiah Royce, and John Dewey would later develop in regard to inquiry, religion, and metaphysics, and Parker's social...

It is indicated that both economic and social reforms have been stalled in Ukraine for a long time. For example, 25 years have passed since the adoption of the Fundamentals of Legislation on Mandatory State Social Insurance, 19 years since the Law of Ukraine "On Mandatory State Pension Insurance" and the Law of Ukraine "On Non-State Pension Insurance" partially entered into force. However, the situation in the field of pension provision has not fundamentally changed. We are proud of the diversity of types of social security, but the size of many of them does not meet the requirements of the Law of Ukraine "On State Social Standards and Guarantees", the European Social Charter, the Convention on Minimum Norms of Social Security and other normative acts. One of the reasons is populism in the adoption of laws in the field of social security, lack of economic analysis of the state's ability to fulfill its positive obligations. The negative effects of this approach for the legal system have been repeatedly pointed out by both domestic and foreign scientists, for example Cass Sunstein in the well-known publication "Against positive rights".&#x0D; The idea of investing pension assets in land certificates did not materialize. However, investing in agricultural holdings is quite promising. The majority of Ukrainians are still against land reform and the open land market, as they fear that it will be used to steal land resources. If the population were sure that their savings would really be invested in the land business and they would receive their investment income from the results of economic activity in the agrarian sphere, then the emphasis of public opinion could be shifted in the direction of land reform.&#x0D; These are only separate and far from exhaustive areas of potential investment. But the full implementation of the above-mentioned ideas requires the real completion of social insurance reforms and, in particular, the pension reform. For its legislative completion, it is necessary to cancel individual clauses of the transitional provisions of the Law of Ukraine "On Mandatory State Pension Insurance", make changes to the "guarantees" section and immediately put them into effect together with a new well-thought-out economic strategy. At the same time, investment of pension assets in highly profitable sectors of the economy should be carried out in clear correlation with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the European Green Course.

The study selects three most representative megacity regions in China: Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta and Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao greater bay area to explore the spatio-temporal characteristics of the development of urban agglomerations in China. To do so, we employ the built-up area data from 1990 to 2020, and calculate three types of urban expansion indicators such as urban expansion dynamics, landscape expansion index, and urban ranking clock theory. The comparison of these indicators in the past three decades is further conducted. Moreover, the correlation analysis helps to find the driving factors of the growth of the three major urban agglomerations. To be specific, (1) The Beijing-Tianjin- Hebei urban agglomeration has entered a period of rapid urbanization, the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration has entered a period of steady expansion, and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao urban agglomeration has entered a period of slow maturation of expansion. (2) The expansion patterns of the three major urban agglomerations are mainly marginal expansions, while the enclave expansions are gradually decreasing; the expansion pattern is starting to move from diffusion to agglomeration, but the degree of agglomeration is still low, in the meantime, the degree of agglomeration in the Beijing- Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration is higher than that in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao and Yangtze River Delta urban agglomerations. (3) The changes of city order scale of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei city cluster and Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao city cluster show a decreasing trend, while the changes of city order scale of Yangtze River Delta city cluster show an obvious increasing trend. (4) Socio-economic factors are significantly and positively correlated with urban expansion, among which the increase of the proportion of tertiary industry in GDP is the most relevant to urban expansion, while factors such as policy and geographic location are also important factors .

This paper reports on a study of visual autobiographies produced in art workshops conducted in a variety of social contexts in East London with 19 research participants 11 women and girls, 8 men and boys – ranging from 10 to the 50s. From narrative analysis of the images, associated interviews, and field notes on the production and exhibition of the images, the paper argues that the study of cultural activity can allow us to identify cultural-spatial positionings related to, but also distinct from, socio-spatial positionings. Those cultural-spatial positionings indicate and in some cases produce cultural and symbolic resources that might not be discernable from other non-visual research data, that may differ importantly from participants’ socioeconomic resources, and that could usefully receive more attention. The study also suggests that transnationalism is strongly tied to people's narratives of their cultural lives within global cities, is critically articulated, and can be under-recognised when it is rooted in family.

Reviewed by: Beckett before Beckett: Samuel Beckett’s Lectures on French Literature Ben McFry Brigitte Le Juez, Beckett before Beckett: Samuel Beckett’s Lectures on French Literature, Trans. Ros Schwartz London: Souvenir Press, 2008, 80 pp. Brigitte Le Juez’s Beckett before Beckett (trans. Beckett avant la lettre) illuminates Samuel Beckett’s theories of modern French literature, particularly of Racine and Gide, at a pivotal moment in his development during his last lectures as a teacher and before he wrote his first novel. The book is a study and contextualization of a notebook from one of Beckett’s students, Rachel Burrows, during his lectureship at Trinity College Dublin from 1930 until 1931. In essence, Le Juez reconstructs Beckett’s lectures from Burrows’s notes and an interview with Burrows herself. Le Juez also uses Beckett’s own contemporary writings and his sources for those writings in her reconstructive effort. With a brief introduction of the relevant biographical facts appended, the organization [End Page 188] of Beckett before Beckett follows that of the course taught to Burrows, beginning with a discussion of the novel and ending with one of drama. Beckett’s chief question concerning the novel is “how to apprehend the real” without distorting “the incomprehensibility of the real” (30). To answer that question, Beckett compares Balzac, Stendhal, Flaubert, and Proust (with Balzac representing the least successful) before moving on to an extended discussion concerning the influence of Gide and Dostoevsky on Beckett himself. Citing in particular Lafcadio’s Adventures, The Counterfeiters, The Immoralist, and Gide’s eponymic essay on Dostoevsky, Beckett concludes that in Gide there is a “development from Nietzsche through Dostoevsky to Racine—from assertion of moi to renunciation of moi to independence of moi” (35). In the section on drama, Beckett contrasts Corneille with Racine, asserting that unlike Corneille, who was “utterly artificial” and who “was distorting the real by his heroics, showing people as they were meant to be,” Racine “painted men as they were” (53). Beckett asserts that Racine’s use of “liminal consciousness” made him “extraordinarily modern” in “the framework of classicism” and allowed him to express the repressed passion without destroying “the integrity of the real”(53). Through Burrow’s notes, Le Juez explores Beckett’s lectures on Andromaque, Phédre, and Bérénice, observing how Beckett “draws a parallel between Gide and Racine” by demonstrating how the “dramatist uses the dialogue between the protagonist and their confidants to reveal the main characters’ divided selves. The confidants’ questions, exclamations and objections echo the misgivings in the minds of the protagonist, forcing them to confront these misgivings” (59–60). Le Juez gives a candid portrait of a young, unsuccessful artist trying to explain his aesthetic theory before beginning a long and fruitful career. For those interested in Beckett as both a man and an author, Beckett before Beckett presents an intriguing personal and professional perspective through the eyes of one of his students. Le Juez skillfully broadens this perspective by contextualizing (and in some cases even correcting) these notes through the use of other contemporary sources. Even for those whose interests do not normally lie along Beckettsian lines, the content of the lectures themselves is of great value to any student of literature—the volume proves both engaging and enlightening. [End Page 189] Ben McFry Shorter College Copyright © 2009 Southern Comparative Literature Association

Previous articleNext article No AccessNew Biological BooksA Modern Introduction to Philosophy. Readings from Classical and Contemporary Sources. Paul Edwards , Arthur Pap James J. HillJames J. Hill Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Quarterly Review of Biology Volume 33, Number 4Dec., 1958 Published in association with Stony Brook University Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/402484 Views: 1Total views on this site PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

A work covering the Buddha’s life titled Sugata Saurabha (The Sweet Fragrance of the Buddha) was written by Chittadhar Hridaya (b. 1906–d. 1982), 20th-century Nepal’s most famous and accomplished writer in the Tibeto-Burman language, Nepal Bhasa (Newari in Western sources; Newa in now preferred contemporary use). This long work in nineteen chapters (spanning 354 printed pages) was originally published in 1948 and reissued after the poet’s death in 1982. During the early 1940s, Hridaya was arrested by the Rana government for publishing a poem regarded as subversive; while jailed for this, he wrote this poetic masterpiece, which he had to smuggle out of prison, at times using gaps in the metal storage boxes that families provided to supply provisions for the imprisoned. Features of the text convey the richness of intention and poetic ambition in Sugata Saurabha, and the genius of Hridaya is evident in the blending of both traditional and modern-Western influences. The work is an epic in kāvya style, yet written in Newari—albeit with a vast Sanskrit vocabulary. The kāvya center of Sugata Saurabha is clear in its other core features: stanzas composed in over twenty-five classical Sanskrit meters, the elaborate forms of ornamentation in verse and word choices (alamkāra), the constant reliance on similes and tropes from the Sanskrit tradition (e.g., “lotus-like feet”), and the use of puns (śleṣa) conveying dual meanings. The poet, through many traditional conventions, also seeks to convey a deep feeling for the subject matter by evoking basic aesthetic ideals or rasas. And yet while varying the number of syllables placed in each line, according to Sanskrit rhythmic forms, Hridaya followed the Western poetic tradition of ending each couplet with rhyming suffixes, a possibility that the vowel endings of Newari and Sanskrit words facilitated. The other mark of Western influence in Sugata Saurabha is the use of punctuation and indentation to mark quotations and the ends of couplets, mixed with more traditional devanāgari forms. Hridaya’s Sugata Saurabha conveys major events in the great teacher’s life, yet simultaneously, through his treatment of characters, the description of natural spaces, and by filling in the place and ethnic details that remain unmentioned or underdeveloped in the canonical accounts, the narrative also celebrates his own Newar cultural traditions. In places, the author expresses his own views on political issues, ethical principles, literary life, gender discrimination, economic policy, and social reform. Sugata Saurabha reflects the breadth and wealth of Buddhist ideas in circulation among Newar Buddhists in the first half of the 20th century—a contending realm of Newar Mahayana incorporating tantric practices; a reformist and missionary Theravadin faction in touch with advocates in Sri Lanka and India; a more subdued presence of Tibetan Buddhism mediated by Newar Lhasa traders; and the intellectual, modernist scholarly presence of Indian scholars, particularly Rahul Sankrityayan, who mediated the Pali and Tibetan canonical sources through Hindi translations. Hridaya’s reformist influences are woven through Sugata Saurabha. First, Buddhism is about social reform, intended to reform caste prejudice and uplift the entire society. Second, meditation is at the center of Buddhist spirituality and is for everyone. And third, Buddhism is compatible with rationality; that is, behind historical legends lies a demythologized empirical truth. So Sugata Saurabha has no miracles. Among a two-millennium-long lineage of Buddha biographies, we can place Chittadhar Hridaya’s Sugata Saurabha. He, too, draws upon classical sources, but as mediated by their rendering in two vernacular languages of South Asia (Newari and Hindi). An extraordinary poetic biography of the Buddha, Sugata Saurabha blends a rich awareness of Indic textual culture, Brahmanical and Buddhist, composed masterfully using a host of rhythmic patterns and end rhymes. It is a work that—where the classical sources are silent—creatively inserts details of the Buddha’s material life and urban culture drawn from the author’s own Newar context. It is an epic that eruditely describes the Shakya sage’s life and teachings, inflected through a prism of modernism. Making this work even more extraordinary is that it was composed in prison, smuggled out, and, with yet another more subtle purpose of defending the integrity of the author’s own cultural traditions, offers a positive vision of Newar life and for Nepal as well. Sugata Saurabha deserves a place among the great literary accomplishments of Buddhist history and modern world literature.

Dr. B.R. Ambedkar is widely recognized as the principal architect of the Indian Constitution and a social reformer, but his contributions as an economist remain relatively underexplored. His economic ideas, rooted in social justice, state intervention, and planned development, played a crucial role in shaping India’s financial and industrial policies. His work in monetary economics, public finance, labor rights, and land reforms laid the foundation for an inclusive economy. Ambedkar believed that economic justice was integral to social justice, and this is reflected in his contributions to constitutional provisions such as the Directive Principles of State Policy. His economic vision remains relevant in contemporary discussions on economic growth, poverty alleviation, and sustainable development. Keywords B.R. Ambedkar, Economic Thought, Monetary Policy, Public Finance, Agriculture, Labor Rights, Inclusive Growth