Journal articles on the topic 'Tamil Religious literature'

Until the Sangam literary period (till 200 AD), Tamil language was secular and Tamil literature was created with an emphasis on virtue in both internal and external life. After that, religious literature started appearing in Tamil language. Tamil grammar texts are based on literature that appeared in different periods. Thus the “Pulamai ilakkanam” (grammar for scholarliness) composed by Vannacharabam Dantapani swami reveals the literary context that prevailed in the 19th century when he lived. Pulamai ilakkanam shows the author's religiosity and the religious beliefs and devotion in the field of education and literature at that time. Grammar is the rules for creating literature. If so, constructing Tamil scholarliness in relation to a particular religion would be tantamount to narrow down the breadth of the Tamil language. Based on the content of Pulamai ilakkanam and the literary context of the time, this article discusses the dominance of the religions over Tamil literature and the use oflanguage by religions for their development.

Tamil literature holds a broader research domain which still explores itself for the extensive researches. From time to time, discussions and researches occur in religious context. Even after Sangam literature, Jainism and Buddhism taught the virtues and then gradually converted to the literary forms as religious concepts. Following this vogue, Saivam / Vaishnavism used Tamil literature to promote their own religious concepts and also to oppose the other religions. Later, they dissolved their contraindication and united in order to oppose the other religions. This trend can be traced in “MUKOODARPALLU”. A comparative study between the early and later religious literature is done and a technique called SATIRE is spotted in the text and sketched its features in the introductory level.

The analysis of the religions of Tamilakam should be started from Sangam Age. Though there is no indication of established religion in the Sangam literature, there are plenty of data on established worship patterns. Researchers explain the changes in the social institutions according to the manufacturing relationship. When the social institutions get into changes, the tradition of religious culture too changes accordingly in support of them. As for as Tamil society is concerned, in every age, i.e., from the age of ethnic groups to feudal society, lots of political, economic religious, philosophical and cultural changes have occurred. This paper analyses the interruptions and impacts in the religious cultural tier of Tamils and the specific changes occurred as a result.

The Tamil word is basic ally from the grammar of the Tamil word. The grammar system that divides world life into 'Thinai' is a very important system in Tamil. Language changes are taking place in a scientifically functioning society. The cultivation and productivity of the foundation of society have an impact on the superstructure of the society, the art, literature and culture. The religious god thought is in the life classification of the Tamil grammar which is the basis for the creation of words. The tholkappiyam period of the resurrection of the collective life is a symbol of the non-religious protodravidian ism and directly links the doctrine of God to the people. The authors of the well developed landslide society, who wrote to tholkappiyam, have also incorporated the theory of God, based on the various religious and social contexts. The Veera Choliam with buddhist background and Neminatha with Jainism link the god sandals in the higher dina. The nannul also inscribes the sanskrit influence of the deity and the naraka of the sanskrit influence, and the sanskrit influential theory of the proto Dravidian grammar of the grammar, the devar and the narakar a number of religious theories.

Tamil devotional literature is composed as pathigangal and prabandangal. Most of the prabanda literature depends on Sittrilakiya Varieties. Pattiyal Grammar discusses about combining baithi and language god is portrayed as hero in such literatures. Devotional literature emphasize to get rid of worldly illusions and the ways to attain god. Paattiyal Grammar says certain conventions should be followed while writing hymns on God. This paper researches on the Paatiyal Grammar which has recorded that bakthi religious principles is formed on the basics of faith in God.

Pillaitamizh is a unique, short literary work in Tamil which stands out amidst the multiple short literary formats in Tamil language. Gods, Goddesses, Kings, Queens, nobles or learned teachers are personified as small children and the poetical work is structured as ten stages of growth starting from the first month after birth to about ten to twelve years of age. This format of poetry not only depicts the various beauties and nuances of Tamil language but also reflects upon the way of family life, different aspects of scientific thoughts, religious and philosophical norms, formats of worship, the psychology of the mother and the child to name a few. Some of these features are highlighted in this article and the conclusion that this is a complete and unique poetic structure par excellence is arrived at.

This paper explores the possibilities and challenges for ethno-religious reconciliation through secondary school education in post-war Sri Lanka, with a specific focus on the Muslim and Tamil communities in the Northern city of Jaffna. In doing so, we position our paper within the growing field of ‘education, conflict and emergencies’ of which there has been a growing body of literature discussing this contentious relationship. The paper draws from an interdisciplinary and critical theoretical framework that aims to analyse the role of education for peacebuilding, through a multi-scalar application of four interconnected dimensions of social justice: redistribution, recognition, representation and reconciliation (or 4 R’s, Novelli, Lopes Cardozo and Smith, 2015). We apply this framework to interpret primary data collected through an ethnographic study of two under-studied communities that have been disproportionately affected by the 1983 to 2009 civil war and displacement: the Northern Sri Lankan Muslims and Northern Sri Lankan Tamils. We find that structural inequalities in society are replicated in formal secondary school education and are perceived to be perpetuating ethno-religious conflict between Muslim and Tamil; second, through a multi-scalar analysis, formal peace education is perceived by respondents not to be meeting the needs of communities; and third, we observe how in response to failings of state peace education, an ‘unofficial’ Tamil–Muslim community education incorporating a social justice-based approach has emerged. This has facilitated a process of cross-community reconciliation between Muslim and Tamil through individual (teachers, students) and community (Muslim–Tamil community based organisations) agency. The paper concludes by offering suggestions for peace education policy and future research.

Abstract This short notice suggests an explanation of mwrh and kmāšyr, two opaque terms which are occasionally referred to in Arabic pharmacognostic literature, but whose etymology and meaning have not yet been established.

Abstract Contributing to the growing literature on fandom, this study investigates the political fan imagery in Tamil Nadu of the past AIADMK chief-minister J. Jayalalitha (1948–2016) that arouse popular devotion in her followers as if she was a Hindu deity (Hills 2002; Porter 2009; Duffett 2013). During Jayalalitha’s reign, her AIADMK followers, often called bhaktas, pursued her favour by making divine-like icons of her as well as by performing extreme physical acts for her attention that may be reproduced as visual narratives in the local press. The Tamil karate star Shihan Hussaini crucified himself on a cross wearing a t-shirt with Jayalalitha’s political nickname on it, the MLA representative M.V. Karuppaiah floated in a swimming pool holding an AIADMK flag in his mouth for forty-eight hours, and minister Sellur Raju organized huge ritual processions derived from local traditions, repurposed for Jayalalitha’s praise. These bhakti images involve a transactional visuality between iconic depictions of Jayalalitha and supportive narratives featuring her devotees’ unusual actions that serve as defining symbols of their political participation.

Vedic and non-Vedic religions spread their ideas directly, through songs and sermons. A sense of devotion was sown by making a connection between God and Human. In particular, devotional literature is designed to convey the flexibility of the structural definitions of religions. This can be seen by examining the background of all the devotional literatures and religious epics. The reading method, which was in the state of “Telling – Listening” have been changed into the state of “Seeing – Reading”. Thus, there was a significant place for paintings and pictures in journalism. Paintings and pictures were considered as tools to impress the readers. So, the magazines had the custom of drawing up a chart for the stories. Religious institutions changed the forms of expression as time went on. All the myths and Epics of poems were made into prose stories after the advent of journalism. Stories created as a series of illustrations (Sequential Art) throughout were put forward to explain the doctrine of Devotion. “Amarchitra Katha” is a globally recognized magazine that symbolizes the Indian comic book tradition. Similarly, the magazine ‘Sri Ramakrishna Vijayam’ made a significant contribution in Tamil. All the stories published in this way have been published as pamphlets under the name of “Kathaimalar”. Thus, this Article explores the notion that 'such magazines, which are based on devotion, treat religious virtues especially from evidences of the Epics”. Further, this article goes on to point out the way in which these stories have carried the doctrine of Devotion of religious institutions to the contemporary generation.

The Science of Anthropology in separate Human Being understand the relationship between the various Human being along Faith, Custom, not written in law and religious belief- Women is most important in human being – In women whore is study the all kinds of Arts and proud in her life – Most beautiful women of whore only bought pariaum in her life – Silapathigaram – Manimegalai letter to Kovalan is the best one in Tamil literature- Now-a –Day these women’s are well in her life style – these women are good manner and popular in Novel Literature.

The English edition of the Bibliotheca Malabarica, a manuscript catalogue of the Tamil works collected by the young Lutheran missionary Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg during his first two years in India (1706-8), attests to his prodigious effort to acquire, read, and summarize all the works of the “heathens” of South India that he could possibly get hold of. Most of this literature seems to have originated from local Śaiva mattams. Besides epics and puranas, the collection included many popular works on ethics, divination and astrology, devotional poetry, or folk narratives and ballads. Ziegenbalg seems to have acquired these through his Tamil teacher in Tranquebar—an elderly schoolmaster—and his son. In this respect, a focus on the social and cultural dynamics by which local knowledge was transmitted to Europeans is no less important than identifying the literary sources for their interpretation of Hinduism. A fascinating work, the Tamil correspondence conducted between 1712 and 1714 by the Lutheran missionaries with a number of learned Hindus reveals their desire to embark on a kind of inter-religious dialogue as a foundation for their Christian apologetics. The replies received from his “heathen” correspondents would inform much of Ziegenbalg’s interpretation of Śaivism as a form of natural monotheism. Translated into German and published in Halle, they also became part of the Pietist propaganda concerning the mission, exerting a much wider impact than Ziegenbalg’s unpublished monographs about Hindu doctrines and theology. But how authentic were these Tamil voices? Close analysis suggests that even if we conclude with the editors that the letters were what they claim to be, that is a direct translation of the work of many independent Tamil correspondents, the extent to which there was a religious “dialogue” based on reciprocity is open to question.

This paper emphasizes the role played by the sculptural tradition in the elaboration of religious narratives that today are mostly studied through texts. It aims to demonstrate that according to the documents we know, the legend of Kṛṣṇa has been built through one continuous dialogue between different media, namely texts and carvings, and different linguistic areas, Indo-Aryan and Dravidian. Taking the motif of the butter theft as a basis, we stress the role played by the sculptural tradition and Tamil poetry, two elements less studied than others, at the foundation of a pan-Indian Kṛṣṇa-oriented heritage. We posit that the iconographic formula of the cowherds’ station as the significant background of the infancy of Kṛṣṇa led to the motif of the young god stealing butter in the texts, through the isolation of one significant element of the early sculpted images. The survey of the available documents leads to the conclusion that, in the southern part of the peninsula, patterns according to which stone carvings were done have been a source of inspiration in Tamil literature. Poets writing in Tamil authors knew texts transmitted in Sanskrit, Prākrit, and Pāli, and they certainly had listened to some others to which we have no access today. But we give reasons to assume that the authors of the said texts were also aware of the traditional ways of representing a child Kṛṣṇa in the visual domain. With these various traditions, poets of the Tamil country in the later stage of Tamil Caṅkam literature featured a character they may not have consciously created, as he was already existent in the visual tradition and nurtured by the importance of one landscape animated by cowherds in the legend of Kṛṣṇa.

In Sanskrit poetics, the defining characteristics of poetry, its very life breath, are the guṇas, ‘qualities’. They make up the phonetic and syntactic fabric of poetic language without which there would be nothing to further to ornament. Many of these intimate features are by necessity specific to the Sanskrit language and defined in terms of its peculiar grammar including phonology and morphology. In the present article, I will describe what happens to four of these guṇas when they are transferred to the Tamil language in the Taṇṭiyalaṅkāram, a close adaptation of Daṇḍin’s Kāvyādarśa. I wish to demonstrate that the Tamil Taṇṭi did not thoughtlessly accept the Sanskrit model but sought, in some cases, to redefine the qualities so that they are meaningful in the context of Tamil grammar and its poetological tradition. A partial translation of the Tamil text is included.

AbstractThree characteristic features of the Song of Songs are its (a) disjointed or absent plot, (b) gynocentrism and (c) lack of theocentrism. Recognition of these features facilitates a reassessment of the book's allegorical readings, be they ancient or modern, Jewish or Christian, religious or ostensibly secular. The principal readings discussed are Rabin's reconsideration of the Song's intrinsic allegorical properties with reference to Tamil love poetry; M. Cohen's on the Song and Jewish mystical literature (the Shiur Qomah and Hekhalot Rabbati); Murphy's position of reading mutually reflected human love and divine love in the Song; Pope's identification of the Song's assumed, single female protagonist as a black goddess; and Fox's rejection of allegory because of his definitions of metaphor, metaphoric distance and meaning. In conclusion, some reflections on the (ancillary) development of the Jewish allegorical tradition and its links with the Song's cannonization are offered.

It is mentioned that the epics should contain the four objectives worthy of human pursuit, namely, ‘aRam’ (ethics), ‘poruL’ (economy), ‘inpam’ (joy) and ‘viiDu’ (heaven). These four objectives are mentioned as ‘purusharthams’ in Sanskrit. Dharma, artha, kaama and moksha are the equivalents for aRam, poruL, inpam and viiDu. However, the concept of moksha is not found anywhere in the Sangam literature. It came into existence by the influence of Sanskrit and the literary writings of the northern writers. Raj Gowthaman is of the opinion that the ‘trivarkkam’ of the north tradition is called aRam, poruL and inpam in Tamil and the left out ‘moksha’ in ‘chaturvitha purushartham’, i.e., the four objectives of human pursuit did not exist as ‘viiDu’ during Sangam period. It could be said even clearly the concept of northern tradition based ‘moksha’ was not there with religious connotation in the Sangam society. Rebirth, heaven, elite, heavenly immortal, world of the dead, world of deities-all are included in the poet’s poetic tradition’. Including the objectives of human pursuits in epics, a rule was set in the grammar. ‘Seera puranam’ talks about the first three objective of human pursuit. Except in Buddhism and Jainism, the concept of heaven could be found in all the religions. It is discussed in Vedic religions. Islam refers heaven as ‘the world of the dead’. Seera puranam mentions, however, all the four objectives.

The article is devoted to the development of Indology at the University of Hamburg and analyzes the contribution of Hamburg Indologists to the study of ancient and medieval India and the study of modern languages and literature of India in the discipline’s development in the sister city of St. Petersburg. The authors note that the development of Indology has a long history in Germany and the uniqueness of the Hamburg school is observed. Germany had more than forty Indology departments in the 19th century, much more than Great Britain then had. The teaching of Indian languages in Hamburg began in 1914 in the classrooms of the university’s predecessor, the Hamburg Colonial Institute founded in 1908 and dissolved in 1919, soon after World War I. The University of Hamburg started as new and progressive institution of education in Weimar Germany, and continued for the next hundred years, where the teaching of Sanskrit, studying ancient medieval monuments of Indian literature, philosophy, and religious texts reached a global level thanks to outstanding Indologists, such as Walter Schubring, Ludwig Alsdorf, Albrecht Welzer, and Lambert Schmithausen. The article also considers the contribution to the development of Indology in Hamburg by current Professors Eva Wilden, Michael Zimmermann, Harunaga Isaacson et al. Thanks to the activities of these professors and their colleagues from Russia and India such as Tatiana Iosifovna and Ram Prasad Bhatta, the study and teaching of the languages and cultures of India within the framework of the Center for Culture and History of India and Tibet of the Institute of Asia and Africa now includes the study of Tamil language and literature as well as North Indian languages and literature.

AbstractThis article uses the case of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to make a conceptual argument about sovereignty. Despite its aura of natural order, sovereignty is ultimately self-referential and thus somewhat arbitrary and potentially unstable. At the heart of this unsteadiness, we posit, lies the paradox between the systematic tenets of rational governance and the capricious potential of sublime violence. Both are highly relevant to the LTTE case: the movement created de facto state institutions to mimic governance, but simultaneously deployed an elaborate transcendental register of sacrifice, meaning, and intractable power wielded by a mythical leader. To capture this paradox, we connect the literature on rebel governance with anthropological debates about divine kingship. We conceptualize sovereignty as a citational practice that involves the adaptation, imitation, and mutation of different idioms of authority: political and religious, modern and traditional, rational and mythical. Understanding sovereignty in this way debunks the idea that insurgent movements are merely lagging behind established states. As sites of mimicry, bricolage, and innovation, they transform the way sovereignty is practiced and understood, thus affecting the frame that sovereignty is.

As far as Tamil literatures are concerned, most of the books belonging to the Saiva Vaishnavism. It is customary to say that Saiva Vaishnava religion such as Thevaram, Thiruvasagam and Four Thousand DivyaPrabandham. The thevara songs that arose during the Saivism renaissance are seen as a repository of music. During the period when Saivism was caught up in the closeness of other religions, Thirugnanasambandar and Upper Sundarar appeared and passionately dipped the classic Tamil songs into sweet hymns to make the world aware of the true glories of Saivism. They realized that music was popular and composed the songs accordingly. Religious ideas have made music flow into hymns and touch the minds of the people. If you sing them with joy, the mind will be conscious of God. This is the purpose of the Saivism Kuravas. Music helped them to fulfill this purpose. The Tamillsai of the time is best known through the songs of Thevara. The Period of Thevara can be considered as the period of musical upheaval of Tamils. In the natural senses of pleasure, the sense of music is intimately linked to the highest.

At the beginning of the 17th century, the Danish East India Company (Dansk Østindisk Kompagni) was established in Europe. The stronghold of the Danes in India was the city of Tranquebar (Dansborg fortress). At the beginning of the 18th century, the first Lutheran missionaries landed on the Coromandel Coast. They came to India from the German city of Halle. The University of Halle at this time was a center of pietism closely associated with the “Danish Royal mission” in Southern India. This mission was funded by king Frederick IV, but from the very beginning of its existence was staffed mainly by Germans. One of the first missionaries in Tranquebar was Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg. He lived in India from 1706 to 1719. His name is well known to modern orientalists, as he was among the first Europeans to study Indian languages and Indian culture. All the years of his life in Tranquebar, Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg was engaged in translating Christian literature into Tamil, and he also compiled the first grammatical reference of this language. A large number of the pastor’s letters to his friends and colleagues have been preserved. Most of these letters have been published for today. But part of it is still stored in the archives. Mainly in his letters, the pastor talks about the work of the mission: converting local residents to Christianity, creating a printing house and publishing Christian literature, opening a school for children in Tranquebar and working in it. Only a small part of the letters contains detailed stories about Tranquebar, local traditions, religious views of the natives, etc. This publication provides a translation of one of Ziegenbalg’s letters, which includes answers to questions about India that the pastor’s friends asked in their messages.

Abstract Popular writing has brought about an image of Hindu deities that are seen as a part of Hinduism only and Hinduism is also seen as a religion of the Indian subcontinent. While this may be largely true in many cases, it forces us to look at Hinduism in very Semitic terms as a closed religion. On the contrary we see that there was a considerable travel of gods and goddesses from other religions into Hinduism and vice versa. And thus negates the idea of Hinduism as a closed system. This therefore brings us to the problem of defining Hinduism which is by no means an easy task as there is no agreement on any singular definition. Pre-modern India had more contacts with her neighbours and thus central Asia and south East Asia emerge as some of the main regions where Indian influence is seen in many aspects of life. Even to a casual observer of both central Asia and South East Asia we see that there striking Indian influences in culture, religion and other aspects of life. All of them are not part of the textual literature that has become very nationalistic in the recent past and this tends to also dismiss the earlier writings as western Eurocentric. It is true that there is a great element of eurocentricism in the earlier writings but one point that needs to be highlighted is that these earlier writings also faithfully portrayed many aspects like iconography etc. in a very descriptive manner that focused on the measurements, likeness, colour and other associated characteristics of the statues. Such trends are clearly visible in the writings of Jas Burgess,E.B Havell etc. who were influenced by the dominant paradigm in contemporary Europe of the 1850‟s where the duty of the historian was to just record. Such an approach was informed by the writings of the German philosopher Leopold Von Ranke. Though there are certain value judgments at the end of the chapter, the main narrative is a dry as dust and it is easy to decipher the characteristics or reconstruct the iconographic programme in any shrine and by extension the religious practices. In the modern period , where the dominant forms of anti-colonial struggles led to a writing of nationalist history succeeded by Marxist influenced social histories in many parts of Asia, the identification of the national boundaries and national cultures also extended to religions and many aspects were either muted or totally obliterated in history writing to present a homogenous picture. Thus, we have a picture of Hinduism and Buddhism that fits in with the national narratives. Such a collapse of categories is there in the borderland of India where the cultural boundaries are not clearly marked as also h religious boundaries. One single example that illustrates this assertion is the portrayal of Sri Lanka as a Sinhala Buddhist region with the Tamil regions of Sri Lanka marked off as separate entity and both being largely exclusive. In the Buddhist temples of Sri Lanka, one finds firstly the statue of Ganesha and later the images of Karthikeya and also the god Shani or Saturn. This image of a Buddhist monastery sharply contrasts with the highly buddhistic space of a Sinhala Buddhist temple where non-Buddhist elements are not found.

Both in the History of Tamil Literature and Tamil Religions thinking Research emphasis the teachings of siddhars in the prime place. Theywere great in the field of medicine, chemistry, astrology, astronomy there also very skilled in the art of mandharas and Yogas. Through their songs revealed the ‘Guru’ concept and this Guru concept of the Bible very hand in a hand. Siddhars emphasis that a real or true ‘Guru’ must be God himself and he need to born as a man and teach the followers a good way the same teaching also found in the Bible. Jesus God himself born as a ‘Guru’ and thought his students or followers the eternal way of or path of eternal life.

The Greek Historian Arrian has said that the Indians worshipped Greek Herakles. So the myths related with Greek Herakles need to be compared with the myths of the Indian Gods. There are many myths related with Herakles. The myth related with Iole and Deianira has resemblance with the myth of Rama in Hinduism and Buddhism. The word Rama which is connected with sea is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. This word came into existence in the ancient Tamil literature called Sanga Ilakkiam through the trade that happened among the people of Greek, Hebrew and Tamil. The myths of Rama that occurred in the Tamil Sangam literature later developed as epics in Sanskrit, Tamil and other languages. Further the myths of Rama also found place in religions such as the Hinduism and the Buddhism. The resemblance between Herakles, in connection with Iole and Deianira, and Rama are synonymous. Hence the Greek Herakles is portrayed as Rama in Hinduism and Buddhism. Keywords: Arrian, Buddhism, Herakles, Rama, Tamil Sangam

The Indian entry into Islam is through Arab merchants, Sufis and various settlements. Islam used the classical literary forms of Tamils and folk literature as the main medium for its religious spread. The purpose of this article is to explore the issues of interaction within Islamic societies recorded in novels, contemporary literary forms of Islamic literature that continue to operate on such a historical surface.

Spiritual literature takes the foremost role in the history of literature. Spiritual literature has the tendency to impact our spirit and leads us afloat on the ocean of happiness. Every religion has been at certain points of time propounded by a teacher and later spread throughout the globe by their students. However some of the worship methods predate the era of literature. Islam is a religion that grew through the teachings of Nabi. Many saints have expressed the immense state of spiritual attainment by forsaking the material joys of the world through their songs. Many religions have used the Tamil language as a medium of expressing their ideology. All religions are unified by their emotive spirituality. Dhayumanavar and Gunangudiyar occupy a significant position in the history of literature. Eventhough their means to spirituality differs they express similar spiritual experiences. The purpose of this article is to research on the similarity observed in their mode of prayer and descriptions in each of their Paraparakkanni.

In Tamil Nadu, during the Sangam era, Vedic religion and other religions, namely, Jainism and Buddhism, were ideologically introduced. During that period, the social environment of the ethnic group was disintegrating, and the political spread of the Muventhar with the marginal kings was dominant. The land, symbolized by the Tamil language, is expanding and relating to politics. Rules and punishments created in the name of ethics were emphasized in the context of producing bodies that were pro-power. In the ethical texts, Thirukkural and Manu Dharma Shastra are important.The idea that lies in the aftermath of the Thirukkural rules that are celebrated as ethics is to be found. At the same time, the practice of Manu dharma, up and downs in the name of the birth, the inequality of the woman on the basis of gender. In Vedic religion the politics that have kept Bhramins at the top of the social stratum remain early to the present day. As far as Thiruvalluvar is concerned with the development of human beings, Manu has given rise to the social dominance of Varunasirama on the basis of birth. The essence of the article is the attempt to contain the political power that operates in the back of two different ethical literatures.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to highlight the issues and challenges in providing financing to the poor people based on the experience of Baitul Maal Wa Tamwil (BMT) in Indonesia. Design/methodology/approach – A series of structured interviews were conducted with the chairman and staff of the Central BMT (Induk Koperasi Syariah) in Jakarta which is the head-quarter of 382 BMTs throughout Indonesia, with additional chairman and shari’ah supervisory in Central BMT (Pusat Koperasi Syariah) in Makasar. Subsequently, the results from the structured interviews were analyzed using qualitative analysis to arrive at the model of the peculiarities of financing the poor in Indonesia. Findings – The findings show that the Central BMT has built specific products and empowerment mechanisms for the poor and has an ideal product to be applied in 382 BMT in Indonesia. There are two schemes of financing source in BMT, namely, social ministry (Kelompok Usaha Bersama) and private financing (national and international donor). Specifically, the peculiarities of financing given in BMT are not only in the term of capital but also in the term of providing infrastructure and training for the poor. Moreover, collateral must be provided as a screening process for the poor people to secure any form of financing. If there is no collateral, potential borrowers must opt for joint-liability financing. Furthermore, if the poor could not repay the financing, endowment coming from charity and compulsory Islamic tax (zakat, infaq and sadaqah) would play a vital role to cover for the financing default. Lastly, religious capacity building is also provided as a part of risk management aspect. Research limitations/implications – This study was only conducted in Indonesia which focussed on the peculiarities of financing for the poor people in Indonesia BMT. Despite this limitation, the findings of this study enable the construction of a model that highlights the issues and challenges that might arise in financing the poor in general. Originality/value – The paper adds to the literature on Islamic microfinance by enabling researchers and practitioners to understand the model of Islamic microfinance in Indonesia. It also contributes toward enriching the knowledge in the Islamic microfinance area.

<p><em>Ngajaga-jaga ceremony is a religious ceremony performed as a sacrifice to Bhuta Kala which aims to get a good life and achieve happiness and harmony. But the difference that is known is very unique is the ceremonial infrastructure used in the ceremony Ngajaga-jagaused the cow, Isused only bone, tail, and to the burned cow, while the meat is made timbungan. Unique infrastructure, there are also other uniqueness that can be seen from the implementation of the Ngajaga-jaga ceremony, the head of the cow is stolen by a citizen, and who stole the head of the cow Is pursued by the sekaa line by using wood tlugtug. When the thief is captured, the thief will ask a ransom of 200 kepeng bucks.</em></p><p><em>The problems to be discussed include: (1) How is the procession of Ngajaga-jaga ceremony atDalem Temple, Adat Village Tiyingan, Petang District, Badung Regency? (2) What is the function of Ngajaga-jaga Ceremony atDalem Temple, Adat Village of Tiyingan, Petang District, Badung Regency? (3) What values of Hindu religious education are contained in the Ngajaga-jaga Ceremony at Dalem Temple, Adat Village Tiyingan, Petang District, Badung Regency? This research aims to (1) Know the procession of Ngajaga-jaga ceremony in DalemTemple Adat Tiyingan Village, Petang District, Badung Regency, (2) Understand the function of Ngajaga-jaga ceremony at Dalem TempleAdat Tiyingan Village, Petang Sub-district, Badung Regency 3) Describe the values of Hindu religious education contained in the Ngajaga-jaga ceremony at DalemTemple Adat Tiyingan Village, Petang District Badung Regency. Theories used to analyze the problem are: Structuralism Theory of Ratna, Theory of Functionalism of Kaplan, The Theory of Value of Max Scheler. This type of research is qualitative research. The research location is in Adat Village Tiyingan, while the determination of the informant using purposive sampling technique. The methods used to collect data are: observation, interview, document study, and literature study.</em></p><p><em>The results show (1) Ngajaga-jaga ceremonial procession consists of three parts, namely: preparation process, implementation process and final process. (2) The function of the Ngajaga-jaga ceremony are: (1) Religious Function, consisting of 3 parts: Purgatory Function, Function Offering, Nyomya Bhuta Kala Function, (2) Social Function, (3) Educational Function. (3) Educational Values contained in Ngajaga-jaga ceremonies include: (1) Tattwa Education Value, (2) Value of Ethics Education, (3) Value of Educational Ceremony, (4) Value of Aesthetic Education.</em></p>

Abstract This paper focuses on the situation of undergraduates from a conservative Muslim society (Kuwait), who opt to major in English Language and Literature. Informal observations are reported that indicate that this might present a disturbing predicament since it requires of such students an appreciation of values and traditions which are contrary to those upheld in their religion and practised in their society. Since, it is argued, this could have an inhibiting effect on mastery of their subject, particularly on the language front, a detailed questionnaire was administered to a group of students from the Department of English Language and Literature, Kuwait University, to ascertain the extent of the problem. Responses showed a high degree of religiosity among the students and considerable unease regarding some of the material they had to read, in spite of a fairly exacting standard of censorship already applied by the teaching staff. The nature of what disturbs them is gone into in some de-tail as are the ways that students reportedly cope with this problem. Since distancing seems a very common strategy used to maintain psychological equilibrium, this would seem to have adverse effects on the most commonly stated aim of these students which was to perfect their language and it is suggested that the concept of the English degree in such an environment may need to be re-thought. Finally, the question is raised of what kind of individual places himself in such a conflict situation and remains there. A personality test showed that the students taking part in the study scored highly on certain personality variables which suggests that these students may be unconsciously self-selected from a certain personality type and this, in turn, may explain how they are able to operate both within their field of study and their socio-religious traditions.

Scholarship abounds on contemporary Hindu food offerings, yet there is scant literature treating the history of food in Hinduism beyond topics of food restrictions, purity, and food as medicine. A virtually unexplored archive is Hindu temple epigraphy from the time that was perhaps the theological height of embodied temple ritual practices, i.e., the Cōḻa period (ninth-thirteenth centuries CE). The vast archive of South Indian temple inscriptions allows a surprising glimpse into lived Hinduism as it was enacted daily, monthly, and annually through food offerings cooked in temple kitchens and served to gods residing in those temples. Through analyzing thousands of Tamiḻ inscriptions from the tenth through the fourteenth centuries CE, I have gleaned information concerning two distinct material cultural facets. (1) The practice of writing these rare but remarkable recipes which themselves are culinary textual artifacts has allowed us to access (2) Hindu food offerings of the past, also complex, sensory historical artifacts. In exploring these medieval religious recipes for the first time, I aim to show: the importance that food preparation held for temple devotees, the theological reality of feeding the actual bodies of the gods held in these temples, and the originality of the Cōḻa inscriptional corpus in bringing about a novel culinary writing practice that would be adopted more extensively in the Vijayanagara period (fourteenth-seventeenth centuries CE). This study, a radical new attempt at using historical sources inscribed in stone, sheds new light on medieval Hindu devotees’ priorities of serving and feeding god. The examination of this under-explored archive can help us move our academic analysis of Hindu food offerings beyond the hitherto utilized lenses of economics, sociology, and anthropology. Further, it contributes to our understanding of medieval temple worship, early culinary studies, and the history of food in India.

ABSTRACT: Character education in Islam has its own style, as well as the character values con- tained in various learning media for early childhood. This study is a follow-up study to find the effect of Movie Media with Islamic Character Values (M-ICV) in shaping "Ahlaqul Karimah" in early childhood. Using an experimental method with a control class, which involved 19 respondents of early childhood. Data shows that the ttest < t table (0.75 < 2.110), meaning that there is a significant difference in effect between the experimental class and the control class. The results conclude that M-ICV is able to form a child's "Ahlakul Karimah" slowly, because the child likes various movies with content interesting and easy to imitate. The implications of further research on movie content development for children are able to develop other aspects of children's development. Keywords: Early Childhood, Ahlakul karimah, Islamic Character Values Movie Media References: Al-Qardawi, Y. 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Menguak Karakter Bangsa. Jakarta: Grasindo. Rhodes, M. (2012). Naïve Theories of Social Groups. Child Development, 83(6), 1900–1916. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2012.01835.x Rossiter, G. (1996). Science, film and television: An introductory study of the “alternative” religious stories that shape the spirituality of children and adolescents. International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 1(1), 52–67. https://doi.org/10.1080/1364436960010108 Shihab, M. Q. (2001). Tafsîr al-Mishbâh. Jakarta: Lentera Hati. Sukardi, I. (2016). Character Education Based on Religious Values: an Islamic Perspective. Ta’dib, 21(1), 41. https://doi.org/10.19109/td.v21i1.744 Tamuri, A. H. (2007). Islamic Education teachers’ perceptions of the teaching of akhlāq in Malaysian secondary schools. Journal of Moral Education, 36(3), 371–386. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057240701553347 udir.no/rammeplan. (2017). Framework Plan for Kindergartens (p. 64). p. 64. Norwegian: Directorate for Education and Training. 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The Sangam literature provides very valuable information on the social, economic and political life of the Tamil society. Sanga kaalam (Sangam age) is considered to be the Golden Age of Tamil Literature. The study aims to collect and quantify the scales found in the decimal texts and to classify their types such as verbal, melody, and verbal scales, to distinguish the scales from the following places first, middle, and last, and to look at the measurements at the high level and to identify and measure the measurements in the decimal. The Ten Idylls, known as Pattuppāṭṭu or Ten Lays, is an anthology of ten longer poems in the Sangam literature – the earliest known Tamil literature. They range between about 100 and 800 lines, and the collection includes the celebrated Nakkīrar's Tirumurukāṟṟuppaṭai (lit. "Guide to Lord Murukan"). The collection was termed as "Ten Idylls" during the colonial era, though this title is considered "very incorrect" by Kamil Zvelebil – a scholar of Tamil literature and history. He suggests "Ten Lays" as the more apt title. Five of these ten ancient poems are lyrical, narrative bardic guides (arruppatai) by which poets directed other bards to the patrons of arts such as kings and chieftains. The others are guides to religious devotion (Murugan) and to major towns, sometimes mixed with akam- or puram-genre poetry.

A variety of historical information’s has been derived and obtained from the various forms of inscriptions existing worldwide. Regional languages of certain selected sources have been employed in the inscription writing procedures. One such regional language with a wealthy literature and heritage that can be suitably opted for the inscription writing process is ‘Tamil’. Encryption of the writing was done with the help of certain materials such as metals, conch shells, stones, palm leaf, and copper plate. These are found to be rich in the data contents related to the fields of history, religious, administrative, astronomy, culture, economic tax and educational conditions. This paper incorporates certain feature extraction methods like Shape and Hough transform and Gradient Boosting tree as classifiers for identifying the ancient Tamil script.

ObjectiveTo develop a risk assessment tool to assess the public health and environmental risks associated with religious mass gathering events of Tamil Nadu, a state in the southern part of IndiaIntroductionIn spite of the fact that mass gatherings are an undeniably regular element of our society attended by huge crowds yet such occasions are not very well understood. Even though such gatherings are accumulations of "well people", vast number of people associated with mass gatherings can put a serious strain on the entire health care system1.The public health implications of mass gathering events include a potential increased risk for disease transmission because of the variability and mobility of those attending the event and increased media attention. Risk assessment for mass gathering events is crucial to identify the potential health hazards which aids in planning and response activities specific to the event2. Preparing for mass gatherings offer an opportunity to improve health service delivery, enhance health promotion and strengthen public health systems3.In India, many of the religious festivals are observed with mass gatherings and prayers. Large crowd participate in such festivals as participants to observe the unique rituals and also as spectators. Literature indicates that in India, we might be well equipped for response activities but the scientific concept of risk assessment i.e., to understand the existing risks, identify the risks, characterize the risks and plan for risk reduction strategies accordingly are at an infant stage .The little that has been done in the field of mass gatherings has generally focused on description of preparedness activities of single event, crowd control, prevention of stampedes with little attention to public health preparedness. The present project is an attempt to systemize the process of risk assessment by developing a risk assessment tool consisting of characteristics peculiar to planned religious mass gatherings of Indian context.MethodsQualitative approach was followed to identify the risks associated with mass gathering events and to identify the domains and items to be included in the risk assessment tool. Firstly, an extensive review of literature about the risks associated with the mass gathering events was done. Secondly, Key Informants (n=20) involved in planning and management of religious mass gathering events in the State of Tamil Nadu, India were purposively identified and interviewed using a semi structured interview guide. Principle of redundancy was followed. Content/Thematic analysis was done using Atlas.ti software. Currently, the project is in the phase of obtaining content validity of the developed tool. Followed by this, a mobile application based upon the validated tool will be developed which will be further field tested for feasibility in a selected mass gathering event in Tamil Nadu. Using a self administered content validity questionnaire, the experts will be asked to assess the relevance of the items of the tool. Agreement proportions between the experts will be calculated. S-CVI (Scale Content Validity Index), index for inter-rater agreement (agreement proportion) and Kappa agreement coefficient will be calculated.ResultsA sum total of 48 unique health risks have been identified. Stampedes, fire accidents, structural collapse, drowning, outbreak of communicable diseases, exacerbation of existing medical illnesses (like cardiac diseases, asthma etc) etc are the some of the health risks identified. Six domains (characteristics related to event, participant, environment, disaster preparedness, medical service preparedness and pre event planning activities) and 21 items have been generated from the content analysis of key informant interviews and literature review.ConclusionsSome special events and unforeseen events occur in places of mass gatherings besides fixed places of worshipping .Such events cause more damage to human beings and property. Special events like idol procession, chariot pulling, fire walking, animal sacrificing happen pulling larger crowds within the mass gatherings. In order to inform all planning and delivery activities it is essential to understand the mass gathering context and risk assessments. This tool can be used by public health managers to identify key public health and environmental risks at the planning stage before the event takes off. At the planning stage, use of this tool will help in putting the required measures in place in order to address the potential risks identified. The tool can be used as a guiding instrument during and after the event as well. The investigators further plan to develop a mobile based app from this risk assessment tool and test it out in a selected mass gathering event of the state of Tamil Nadu located in southern part of India. Feedback from public health managers about the mobile based risk assessment tool can be instrumental in further modifying the tool. By contributing to public health preparedness activities during mass gathering events in a country with poor resources like India, this research activity is an initiative that is expected to lead to health systems strengthening.References1. Arbon P. The development of conceptual models for mass-gathering health. Prehospital and Disaster Medicine. 2004 Sep;19(3):208-12.2. World Health Organization. Public health for mass gatherings: Key considerations. Geneva: WHO; 2015.3. Tam JS, Barbeschi M, Shapovalova N, Briand S, Memish ZA, Kieny MP. Research agenda for mass gatherings: a call to action. The Lancet infectious diseases. 2012 Mar 31; 12(3):231-9.

Abstract Background The absence of census data on religious identification in Nigeria since 1963 leaves much uncertainty about the most basic religious composition of the country. It is generally accepted that identification with traditional worship declined over the middle of the twentieth century as identification with Islam and Christianity increased, leaving these the two dominant religious groups in the country. The current relative proportions of Christians and Muslims has often been the subject of conjecture, guesswork and assertion, as have trajectories of growth or decline. Purpose Where researchers have used sound data to address this question, they have often drawn on a single survey, or, if on multiple data sources, it is unclear how the different estimates the data provides are reconciled. This paper seeks to address these gaps to construct a better picture of the religious composition of Nigeria, and to consider the trajectory of change. Methods This study presents data from 11 nationally representative surveys of adults conducted between 1990 and 2018. Surveys include four waves of the World Values Survey, five waves of the Afrobarometer survey, The Pew Tolerance and Tension survey, and the Nigerian General Household Survey of 2010. Results The results show that identification with Christianity is likely to have been the majority among Nigerian adults through this period. Evidence suggests that identification with Christianity was still growing in the first half of the 1990s, to a high point of 69% of the adult population. This growth was associated with the tail of the decline of identification with traditional worship. Thereafter identification with Christianity has declined in proportional terms as identification with Islam has increased. Evidence is consistent with literature that suggests that this change is driven by differences in fertility, rather than by religious identity switching. Conclusion and Implications Trends presented suggest that the Muslim-identified population is likely on track to have become an absolute majority of Nigerian adults, possibly within a decade with widespread implications, including for electoral politics.

Biology teaches us that organisms adapt—or don’t; sociology claims that people adapt—or don’t. We know that ideas can adapt; sometimes even institutions can adapt. Or not. Various papers in this issue attest in exciting ways to precisely such adaptations and maladaptations. (See, for example, the articles in this issue by Lelia Green, Leesa Bonniface, and Tami McMahon, by Lexey A. Bartlett, and by Debra Ferreday.) Adaptation is a part of nature and culture, but it’s the latter alone that interests me here. (However, see the article by Hutcheon and Bortolotti for a discussion of nature and culture together.) It’s no news to anyone that not only adaptations, but all art is bred of other art, though sometimes artists seem to get carried away. My favourite example of excess of association or attribution can be found in the acknowledgements page to a verse drama called Beatrice Chancy by the self-defined “maximalist” (not minimalist) poet, novelist, librettist, and critic, George Elliot Clarke. His selected list of the incarnations of the story of Beatrice Cenci, a sixteenth-century Italian noblewoman put to death for the murder of her father, includes dramas, romances, chronicles, screenplays, parodies, sculptures, photographs, and operas: dramas by Vincenzo Pieracci (1816), Percy Bysshe Shelley (1819), Juliusz Slowacki (1843), Waldter Landor (1851), Antonin Artaud (1935) and Alberto Moravia (1958); the romances by Francesco Guerrazi (1854), Henri Pierangeli (1933), Philip Lindsay (1940), Frederic Prokosch (1955) and Susanne Kircher (1976); the chronicles by Stendhal (1839), Mary Shelley (1839), Alexandre Dumas, père (1939-40), Robert Browning (1864), Charles Swinburne (1883), Corrado Ricci (1923), Sir Lionel Cust (1929), Kurt Pfister (1946) and Irene Mitchell (1991); the film/screenplay by Bertrand Tavernier and Colo O’Hagan (1988); the parody by Kathy Acker (1993); the sculpture by Harriet Hosmer (1857); the photograph by Julia Ward Cameron (1866); and the operas by Guido Pannain (1942), Berthold Goldschmidt (1951, 1995) and Havergal Brian (1962). (Beatrice Chancy, 152) He concludes the list with: “These creators have dallied with Beatrice Cenci, but I have committed indiscretions” (152). An “intertextual feast”, by Clarke’s own admission, this rewriting of Beatrice’s story—especially Percy Bysshe Shelley’s own verse play, The Cenci—illustrates brilliantly what Northrop Frye offered as the first principle of the production of literature: “literature can only derive its form from itself” (15). But in the last several decades, what has come to be called intertextuality theory has shifted thinking away from looking at this phenomenon from the point of view of authorial influences on the writing of literature (and works like Harold Bloom’s famous study of the Anxiety of Influence) and toward considering our readerly associations with literature, the connections we (not the author) make—as we read. We, the readers, have become “empowered”, as we say, and we’ve become the object of academic study in our own right. Among the many associations we inevitably make, as readers, is with adaptations of the literature we read, be it of Jane Austin novels or Beowulf. Some of us may have seen the 2006 rock opera of Beowulf done by the Irish Repertory Theatre; others await the new Neil Gaiman animated film. Some may have played the Beowulf videogame. I personally plan to miss the upcoming updated version that makes Beowulf into the son of an African explorer. But I did see Sturla Gunnarsson’s Beowulf and Grendel film, and yearned to see the comic opera at the Lincoln Centre Festival in 2006 called Grendel, the Transcendence of the Great Big Bad. I am not really interested in whether these adaptations—all in the last year or so—signify Hollywood’s need for a new “monster of the week” or are just the sign of a desire to cash in on the success of The Lord of the Rings. For all I know they might well act as an ethical reminder of the human in the alien in a time of global strife (see McGee, A4). What interests me is the impact these multiple adaptations can have on the reader of literature as well as on the production of literature. Literature, like painting, is usually thought of as what Nelson Goodman (114) calls a one-stage art form: what we read (like what we see on a canvas) is what is put there by the originating artist. Several major consequences follow from this view. First, the implication is that the work is thus an original and new creation by that artist. However, even the most original of novelists—like Salman Rushdie—are the first to tell you that stories get told and retold over and over. Indeed his controversial novel, The Satanic Verses, takes this as a major theme. Works like the Thousand and One Nights are crucial references in all of his work. As he writes in Haroun and the Sea of Stories: “no story comes from nowhere; new stories are born of old” (86). But illusion of originality is only one of the implications of seeing literature as a one-stage art form. Another is the assumption that what the writer put on paper is what we read. But entire doctoral programs in literary production and book history have been set up to study how this is not the case, in fact. Editors influence, even change, what authors want to write. Designers control how we literally see the work of literature. Beatrice Chancy’s bookend maps of historical Acadia literally frame how we read the historical story of the title’s mixed-race offspring of an African slave and a white slave owner in colonial Nova Scotia in 1801. Media interest or fashion or academic ideological focus may provoke a publisher to foreground in the physical presentation different elements of a text like this—its stress on race, or gender, or sexuality. The fact that its author won Canada’s Governor General’s Award for poetry might mean that the fact that this is a verse play is emphasised. If the book goes into a second edition, will a new preface get added, changing the framework for the reader once again? As Katherine Larson has convincingly shown, the paratextual elements that surround a work of literature like this one become a major site of meaning generation. What if literature were not a one-stage an art form at all? What if it were, rather, what Goodman calls “two-stage” (114)? What if we accept that other artists, other creators, are needed to bring it to life—editors, publishers, and indeed readers? In a very real and literal sense, from our (audience) point of view, there may be no such thing as a one-stage art work. Just as the experience of literature is made possible for readers by the writer, in conjunction with a team of professional and creative people, so, arguably all art needs its audience to be art; the un-interpreted, un-experienced art work is not worth calling art. Goodman resists this move to considering literature a two-stage art, not at all sure that readings are end products the way that performance works are (114). Plays, films, television shows, or operas would be his prime examples of two-stage arts. In each of these, a text (a playtext, a screenplay, a score, a libretto) is moved from page to stage or screen and given life, by an entire team of creative individuals: directors, actors, designers, musicians, and so on. Literary adaptations to the screen or stage are usually considered as yet another form of this kind of transcription or transposition of a written text to a performance medium. But the verbal move from the “book” to the diminutive “libretto” (in Italian, little book or booklet) is indicative of a view that sees adaptation as a step downward, a move away from a primary literary “source”. In fact, an entire negative rhetoric of “infidelity” has developed in both journalistic reviewing and academic discourse about adaptations, and it is a morally loaded rhetoric that I find surprising in its intensity. Here is the wonderfully critical description of that rhetoric by the king of film adaptation critics, Robert Stam: Terms like “infidelity,” “betrayal,” “deformation,” “violation,” “bastardisation,” “vulgarisation,” and “desecration” proliferate in adaptation discourse, each word carrying its specific charge of opprobrium. “Infidelity” carries overtones of Victorian prudishness; “betrayal” evokes ethical perfidy; “bastardisation” connotes illegitimacy; “deformation” implies aesthetic disgust and monstrosity; “violation” calls to mind sexual violence; “vulgarisation” conjures up class degradation; and “desecration” intimates religious sacrilege and blasphemy. (3) I join many others today, like Stam, in challenging the persistence of this fidelity discourse in adaptation studies, thereby providing yet another example of what, in his article here called “The Persistence of Fidelity: Adaptation Theory Today,” John Connor has called the “fidelity reflex”—the call to end an obsession with fidelity as the sole criterion for judging the success of an adaptation. But here I want to come at this same issue of the relation of adaptation to the adapted text from another angle. When considering an adaptation of a literary work, there are other reasons why the literary “source” text might be privileged. Literature has historical priority as an art form, Stam claims, and so in some people’s eyes will always be superior to other forms. But does it actually have priority? What about even earlier performative forms like ritual and song? Or to look forward, instead of back, as Tim Barker urges us to do in his article here, what about the new media’s additions to our repertoire with the advent of electronic technology? How can we retain this hierarchy of artistic forms—with literature inevitably on top—in a world like ours today? How can both the Romantic ideology of original genius and the capitalist notion of individual authorship hold up in the face of the complex reality of the production of literature today (as well as in the past)? (In “Amen to That: Sampling and Adapting the Past”, Steve Collins shows how digital technology has changed the possibilities of musical creativity in adapting/sampling.) Like many other ages before our own, adaptation is rampant today, as director Spike Jonze and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman clearly realised in creating Adaptation, their meta-cinematic illustration-as-send-up film about adaptation. But rarely has a culture denigrated the adapter as a secondary and derivative creator as much as we do the screenwriter today—as Jonze explores with great irony. Michelle McMerrin and Sergio Rizzo helpfully explain in their pieces here that one of the reasons for this is the strength of auteur theory in film criticism. But we live in a world in which works of literature have been turned into more than films. We now have literary adaptations in the forms of interactive new media works and videogames; we have theme parks; and of course, we have the more common television series, radio and stage plays, musicals, dance works, and operas. And, of course, we now have novelisations of films—and they are not given the respect that originary novels are given: it is the adaptation as adaptation that is denigrated, as Deborah Allison shows in “Film/Print: Novelisations and Capricorn One”. Adaptations across media are inevitably fraught, and for complex and multiple reasons. The financing and distribution issues of these widely different media alone inevitably challenge older capitalist models. The need or desire to appeal to a global market has consequences for adaptations of literature, especially with regard to its regional and historical specificities. These particularities are what usually get adapted or “indigenised” for new audiences—be they the particularities of the Spanish gypsy Carmen (see Ioana Furnica, “Subverting the ‘Good, Old Tune’”), those of the Japanese samurai genre (see Kevin P. Eubanks, “Becoming-Samurai: Samurai [Films], Kung-Fu [Flicks] and Hip-Hop [Soundtracks]”), of American hip hop graffiti (see Kara-Jane Lombard, “‘To Us Writers, the Differences Are Obvious’: The Adaptation of Hip Hop Graffiti to an Australian Context”) or of Jane Austen’s fiction (see Suchitra Mathur, “From British ‘Pride’ to Indian ‘Bride’: Mapping the Contours of a Globalised (Post?)Colonialism”). What happens to the literary text that is being adapted, often multiple times? Rather than being displaced by the adaptation (as is often feared), it most frequently gets a new life: new editions of the book appear, with stills from the movie adaptation on its cover. But if I buy and read the book after seeing the movie, I read it differently than I would have before I had seen the film: in effect, the book, not the adaptation, has become the second and even secondary text for me. And as I read, I can only “see” characters as imagined by the director of the film; the cinematic version has taken over, has even colonised, my reader’s imagination. The literary “source” text, in my readerly, experiential terms, becomes the secondary work. It exists on an experiential continuum, in other words, with its adaptations. It may have been created before, but I only came to know it after. What if I have read the literary work first, and then see the movie? In my imagination, I have already cast the characters: I know what Gabriel and Gretta Conroy of James Joyce’s story, “The Dead,” look and sound like—in my imagination, at least. Then along comes John Huston’s lush period piece cinematic adaptation and the director superimposes his vision upon mine; his forcibly replaces mine. But, in this particular case, Huston still arguably needs my imagination, or at least my memory—though he may not have realised it fully in making the film. When, in a central scene in the narrative, Gabriel watches his wife listening, moved, to the singing of the Irish song, “The Lass of Aughrim,” what we see on screen is a concerned, intrigued, but in the end rather blank face: Gabriel doesn’t alter his expression as he listens and watches. His expression may not change—but I know exactly what he is thinking. Huston does not tell us; indeed, without the use of voice-over, he cannot. And since the song itself is important, voice-over is impossible. But I know exactly what he is thinking: I’ve read the book. I fill in the blank, so to speak. Gabriel looks at Gretta and thinks: There was grace and mystery in her attitude as if she were a symbol of something. He asked himself what is a woman standing on the stairs in the shadow, listening to distant music, a symbol of. If he were a painter he would paint her in that attitude. … Distant Music he would call the picture if he were a painter. (210) A few pages later the narrator will tell us: At last she turned towards them and Gabriel saw that there was colour on her cheeks and that her eyes were shining. A sudden tide of joy went leaping out of his heart. (212) This joy, of course, puts him in a very different—disastrously different—state of mind than his wife, who (we later learn) is remembering a young man who sang that song to her when she was a girl—and who died, for love of her. I know this—because I’ve read the book. Watching the movie, I interpret Gabriel’s blank expression in this knowledge. Just as the director’s vision can colonise my visual and aural imagination, so too can I, as reader, supplement the film’s silence with the literary text’s inner knowledge. The question, of course, is: should I have to do so? Because I have read the book, I will. But what if I haven’t read the book? Will I substitute my own ideas, from what I’ve seen in the rest of the film, or from what I’ve experienced in my own life? Filmmakers always have to deal with this problem, of course, since the camera is resolutely externalising, and actors must reveal their inner worlds through bodily gesture or facial expression for the camera to record and for the spectator to witness and comprehend. But film is not only a visual medium: it uses music and sound, and it also uses words—spoken words within the dramatic situation, words overheard on the street, on television, but also voice-over words, spoken by a narrating figure. Stephen Dedalus escapes from Ireland at the end of Joseph Strick’s 1978 adaptation of Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man with the same words as he does in the novel, where they appear as Stephen’s diary entry: Amen. So be it. Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race. … Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead. (253) The words from the novel also belong to the film as film, with its very different story, less about an artist than about a young Irishman finally able to escape his family, his religion and his country. What’s deliberately NOT in the movie is the irony of Joyce’s final, benign-looking textual signal to his reader: Dublin, 1904 Trieste, 1914 The first date is the time of Stephen’s leaving Dublin—and the time of his return, as we know from the novel Ulysses, the sequel, if you like, to this novel. The escape was short-lived! Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man has an ironic structure that has primed its readers to expect not escape and triumph but something else. Each chapter of the novel has ended on this kind of personal triumphant high; the next has ironically opened with Stephen mired in the mundane and in failure. Stephen’s final words in both film and novel remind us that he really is an Icarus figure, following his “Old father, old artificer”, his namesake, Daedalus. And Icarus, we recall, takes a tumble. In the novel version, we are reminded that this is the portrait of the artist “as a young man”—later, in 1914, from the distance of Trieste (to which he has escaped) Joyce, writing this story, could take some ironic distance from his earlier persona. There is no such distance in the film version. However, it stands alone, on its own; Joyce’s irony is not appropriate in Strick’s vision. His is a different work, with its own message and its own, considerably more romantic and less ironic power. Literary adaptations are their own things—inspired by, based on an adapted text but something different, something other. I want to argue that these works adapted from literature are now part of our readerly experience of that literature, and for that reason deserve the same attention we give to the literary, and not only the same attention, but also the same respect. I am a literarily trained person. People like me who love words, already love plays, but shouldn’t we also love films—and operas, and musicals, and even videogames? There is no need to denigrate words that are heard (and visualised) in order to privilege words that are read. Works of literature can have afterlives in their adaptations and translations, just as they have pre-lives, in terms of influences and models, as George Eliot Clarke openly allows in those acknowledgements to Beatrice Chancy. I want to return to that Canadian work, because it raises for me many of the issues about adaptation and language that I see at the core of our literary distrust of the move away from the written, printed text. I ended my recent book on adaptation with a brief examination of this work, but I didn’t deal with this particular issue of language. So I want to return to it, as to unfinished business. Clarke is, by the way, clear in the verse drama as well as in articles and interviews that among the many intertexts to Beatrice Chancy, the most important are slave narratives, especially one called Celia, a Slave, and Shelley’s play, The Cenci. Both are stories of mistreated and subordinated women who fight back. Since Clarke himself has written at length about the slave narratives, I’m going to concentrate here on Shelley’s The Cenci. The distance from Shelley’s verse play to Clarke’s verse play is a temporal one, but it is also geographic and ideological one: from the old to the new world, and from a European to what Clarke calls an “Africadian” (African Canadian/African Acadian) perspective. Yet both poets were writing political protest plays against unjust authority and despotic power. And they have both become plays that are more read than performed—a sad fate, according to Clarke, for two works that are so concerned with voice. We know that Shelley sought to calibrate the stylistic registers of his work with various dramatic characters and effects to create a modern “mixed” style that was both a return to the ancients and offered a new drama of great range and flexibility where the expression fits what is being expressed (see Bruhn). His polemic against eighteenth-century European dramatic conventions has been seen as leading the way for realist drama later in the nineteenth century, with what has been called its “mixed style mimesis” (Bruhn) Clarke’s adaptation does not aim for Shelley’s perfect linguistic decorum. It mixes the elevated and the biblical with the idiomatic and the sensual—even the vulgar—the lushly poetic with the coarsely powerful. But perhaps Shelley’s idea of appropriate language fits, after all: Beatrice Chancy is a woman of mixed blood—the child of a slave woman and her slave owner; she has been educated by her white father in a convent school. Sometimes that educated, elevated discourse is heard; at other times, she uses the variety of discourses operative within slave society—from religious to colloquial. But all the time, words count—as in all printed and oral literature. Clarke’s verse drama was given a staged reading in Toronto in 1997, but the story’s, if not the book’s, real second life came when it was used as the basis for an opera libretto. Actually the libretto commission came first (from Queen of Puddings Theatre in Toronto), and Clarke started writing what was to be his first of many opera texts. Constantly frustrated by the art form’s demands for concision, he found himself writing two texts at once—a short libretto and a longer, five-act tragic verse play to be published separately. Since it takes considerably longer to sing than to speak (or read) a line of text, the composer James Rolfe keep asking for cuts—in the name of economy (too many singers), because of clarity of action for audience comprehension, or because of sheer length. Opera audiences have to sit in a theatre for a fixed length of time, unlike readers who can put a book down and return to it later. However, what was never sacrificed to length or to the demands of the music was the language. In fact, the double impact of the powerful mixed language and the equally potent music, increases the impact of the literary text when performed in its operatic adaptation. Here is the verse play version of the scene after Beatrice’s rape by her own father, Francis Chancey: I was black but comely. Don’t glance Upon me. This flesh is crumbling Like proved lies. I’m perfumed, ruddied Carrion. Assassinated. Screams of mucking juncos scrawled Over the chapel and my nerves, A stickiness, as when he finished Maculating my thighs and dress. My eyes seep pus; I can’t walk: the floors Are tizzy, dented by stout mauling. Suddenly I would like poison. The flesh limps from my spine. My inlets crimp. Vultures flutter, ghastly, without meaning. I can see lice swarming the air. … His scythe went shick shick shick and slashed My flowers; they lay, murdered, in heaps. (90) The biblical and the violent meet in the texture of the language. And none of that power gets lost in the opera adaptation, despite cuts and alterations for easier aural comprehension. I was black but comely. Don’t look Upon me: this flesh is dying. I’m perfumed, bleeding carrion, My eyes weep pus, my womb’s sopping With tears; I can hardly walk: the floors Are tizzy, the sick walls tumbling, Crumbling like proved lies. His scythe went shick shick shick and cut My flowers; they lay in heaps, murdered. (95) Clarke has said that he feels the libretto is less “literary” in his words than the verse play, for it removes the lines of French, Latin, Spanish and Italian that pepper the play as part of the author’s critique of the highly educated planter class in Nova Scotia: their education did not guarantee ethical behaviour (“Adaptation” 14). I have not concentrated on the music of the opera, because I wanted to keep the focus on the language. But I should say that the Rolfe’s score is as historically grounded as Clarke’s libretto: it is rooted in African Canadian music (from ring shouts to spirituals to blues) and in Scottish fiddle music and local reels of the time, not to mention bel canto Italian opera. However, the music consciously links black and white traditions in a way that Clarke’s words and story refuse: they remain stubbornly separate, set in deliberate tension with the music’s resolution. Beatrice will murder her father, and, at the very moment that Nova Scotia slaves are liberated, she and her co-conspirators will be hanged for that murder. Unlike the printed verse drama, the shorter opera libretto functions like a screenplay, if you will. It is not so much an autonomous work unto itself, but it points toward a potential enactment or embodiment in performance. Yet, even there, Clarke cannot resist the lure of words—even though they are words that no audience will ever hear. The stage directions for Act 3, scene 2 of the opera read: “The garden. Slaves, sunflowers, stars, sparks” (98). The printed verse play is full of these poetic associative stage directions, suggesting that despite his protestations to the contrary, Clarke may have thought of that version as one meant to be read by the eye. After Beatrice’s rape, the stage directions read: “A violin mopes. Invisible shovelsful of dirt thud upon the scene—as if those present were being buried alive—like ourselves” (91). Our imaginations—and emotions—go to work, assisted by the poet’s associations. There are many such textual helpers—epigraphs, photographs, notes—that we do not have when we watch and listen to the opera. We do have the music, the staged drama, the colours and sounds as well as the words of the text. As Clarke puts the difference: “as a chamber opera, Beatrice Chancy has ascended to television broadcast. But as a closet drama, it play only within the reader’s head” (“Adaptation” 14). Clarke’s work of literature, his verse drama, is a “situated utterance, produced in one medium and in one historical and social context,” to use Robert Stam’s terms. In the opera version, it was transformed into another “equally situated utterance, produced in a different context and relayed through a different medium” (45-6). I want to argue that both are worthy of study and respect by wordsmiths, by people like me. I realise I’ve loaded the dice: here neither the verse play nor the libretto is primary; neither is really the “source” text, for they were written at the same time and by the same person. But for readers and audiences (my focus and interest here), they exist on a continuum—depending on which we happen to experience first. As Ilana Shiloh explores here, the same is true about the short story and film of Memento. I am not alone in wanting to mount a defence of adaptations. Julie Sanders ends her new book called Adaptation and Appropriation with these words: “Adaptation and appropriation … are, endlessly and wonderfully, about seeing things come back to us in as many forms as possible” (160). The storytelling imagination is an adaptive mechanism—whether manifesting itself in print or on stage or on screen. The study of the production of literature should, I would like to argue, include those other forms taken by that storytelling drive. If I can be forgiven a move to the amusing—but still serious—in concluding, Terry Pratchett puts it beautifully in his fantasy story, Witches Abroad: “Stories, great flapping ribbons of shaped space-time, have been blowing and uncoiling around the universe since the beginning of time. And they have evolved. The weakest have died and the strongest have survived and they have grown fat on the retelling.” In biology as in culture, adaptations reign. References Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975. Bruhn, Mark J. “’Prodigious Mixtures and Confusions Strange’: The Self-Subverting Mixed Style of The Cenci.” Poetics Today 22.4 (2001). Clarke, George Elliott. “Beatrice Chancy: A Libretto in Four Acts.” Canadian Theatre Review 96 (1998): 62-79. ———. Beatrice Chancy. Victoria, BC: Polestar, 1999. ———. “Adaptation: Love or Cannibalism? Some Personal Observations”, unpublished manuscript of article. Frye, Northrop. The Educated Imagination. Toronto: CBC, 1963. Goodman, Nelson. Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968. Hutcheon, Linda, and Gary R. Bortolotti. “On the Origin of Adaptations: Rethinking Fidelity Discourse and “Success”—Biologically.” New Literary History. Forthcoming. Joyce, James. Dubliners. 1916. New York: Viking, 1967. ———. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. 1916. Penguin: Harmondsworth, 1960. Larson, Katherine. “Resistance from the Margins in George Elliott Clarke’s Beatrice Chancy.” Canadian Literature 189 (2006): 103-118. McGee, Celia. “Beowulf on Demand.” New York Times, Arts and Leisure. 30 April 2006. A4. Rushdie, Salman. The Satanic Verses. New York: Viking, 1988. ———. Haroun and the Sea of Stories. London: Granta/Penguin, 1990. Sanders, Julie. Adaptation and Appropriation. London and New York: Routledge, 160. Shelley, Percy Bysshe. The Cenci. Ed. George Edward Woodberry. Boston and London: Heath, 1909. Stam, Robert. “Introduction: The Theory and Practice of Adaptation.” Literature and Film: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. 1-52. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Hutcheon, Linda. "In Defence of Literary Adaptation as Cultural Production." M/C Journal 10.2 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0705/01-hutcheon.php>. APA Style Hutcheon, L. (May 2007) "In Defence of Literary Adaptation as Cultural Production," M/C Journal, 10(2). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0705/01-hutcheon.php>.

IntroductionWe are increasingly being told to make ethical food choices, often by high-profile chefs advocating what they view as ethical consumption habits. Some actively promote vegetarian or vegan diets, with a growing number of high-profile restaurants featuring only or mainly plant-based meals. However, what makes food or restaurant menus ethical is not assessed by most of us using one standardised definition. Our food values differ based on our outlooks, past experiences, and perhaps most importantly, how we balance various trade-offs inherent in making food choices under different circumstances and in diverse contexts.Restaurants can face difficulties when trying to balance ethical considerations. For instance, is it inconsistent to promote foraging, seasonality, local products, and plant-based eating, yet also serve meat and other animal-derived protein products on the same menu? For example, Danish chef Rene Redzepi, co-owner of the Michelin-starred restaurant Noma in Copenhagen who recently had an extended stay in Australia (Redzepi), recently offered a purely vegetarian menu featuring foraged native ingredients. However, Redzepi followed this with a meat-based menu including teal, moose leg, reindeer tongue, and wild duck brain. These changes make clear that although Redzepi was still conflicted about serving animal products (Ankeny and Bray), he thinks that options for ethical eating are not limited to plants and that it is important to utilise available, and especially neglected, resources in novel ways.In this article, we argue that celebrity and other high-profile chefs have roles to play in conversations about the emerging range of new meat consumption norms, which might include humanely produced meat, wild meat, or other considerations. However, we contend that restaurants and popular media may be limited spaces in which to engage consumers in these conversations. Ultimately, celebrity and high-profile chefs can help us not only to reflect on our eating habits, but also to engage us in ways that help us to ask the right questions rather than encouraging reliance on set answers from them or other supposed experts.Chefs and New Meat NormsChefs are now key voices in the politics of lifestyle, shaping both the grammars and the practices of ethical consumption, which is further reinforced by the increasing mediatisation of food and food politics (Phillipov, Media). Contemporary trends toward ethical consumption have been much critiqued; nevertheless, ethical consumption has become a dominant means through which individuals within contemporary marketised, neoliberal economies are able to invest lifestyle choices with ethical, social, and civic meanings (Barnett et al.; Lewis and Potter). While vegetarianism was once considered a central pillar of ethical diets, the rise of individualized and diverse approaches to food and food politics has seen meat (at least in its “ethical” form) not only remain firmly on the menu, but also become a powerful symbol of “good” politics, taste, and desirable lifestyles (Pilgrim 112).Chefs’ involvement in promoting ethical meat initially began within restaurants catering for an elite foodie clientele. The details provided about meat producers and production methods on the menu of Alice Waters’ Californian restaurant Chez Panisse and her cookbooks (Waters), or the focus by Fergus Henderson on “nose to tail” eating at his London restaurant St. John (Henderson) has led many to cite them as among the originators of the ethical meat movement. But the increasing mediatisation of food and the emergence of chefs as celebrity brands with their own TV shows, cookbooks, YouTube channels, websites, sponsorship deals, and myriad other media appearances has allowed ethical meat to move out of elite restaurants and into more quotidian domestic spaces. High profile UK and US exposés including “campaigning culinary documentaries” fronted by celebrity chefs (Bell, Hollows, and Jones 179), along with the work of popular food writers such as Michael Pollan, have been instrumental in the mainstreaming of diverse new meat norms.The horrifying depictions of intensive chicken, beef, and pork farming in these exposés have contributed to greater public awareness of, and concern about, industrialised meat production. However, the poor welfare conditions of animals raised in battery cages and concentrated animal feeding operations often are presented not as motivations to eschew meat entirely, but instead as reasons to opt for more ethical alternatives. For instance, Hugh’s Chicken Run, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s 2008 television campaign for chicken welfare, resulted in making more free-range products available in British supermarkets (Johnston). More recently, there have been significant expansions in markets for variously defined categories such as grass-fed, free-range, organic, welfare-certified, humane, and/or environmentally friendly meat products in Australia and elsewhere, thanks in part to increased media attention to animal welfare issues (Arcari 169).As media has emerged as a “fundamental component of contemporary foodscapes, how they ‘perform’ and function, and the socio-material means by which they are produced” (Johnston and Goodman 205), ethical meat has increasingly been employed as a strategic resource in mainstream media and marketing. Ethical meat, for example, has been a key pillar in the contemporary rebranding of both of Australia’s major supermarkets (Lewis and Huber 289). Through partnerships that draw upon the “ethical capital” (290) of celebrity chefs including Jamie Oliver and Curtis Stone, and collaborations with animal welfare organisations such as the RSPCA, ethical meat has become central to supermarket advertising campaigns in recent years. Such campaigns have been especially successful for Coles supermarkets, which controls almost 30% of Australia’s highly concentrated grocery market (Roy Morgan). The retailer’s long-term sponsorship of MasterChef Australia (Network 10, 2009–)—a show that presents meat (or, as they term it, “protein”) as an essential component of most dishes and which regularly rates in the top 10 of Australian television programs (OzTAM)—further helps to emphasise that the solution to ethical problems is not to avoid meat, but to choose (Coles’) “better” meat (see fig. 1). This is promoted on the basis of a combination of ethics, price, and taste, and, remarkably, is able to deliver “better welfare at no extra cost to you” (Parker, Carey, and Scrinis 209). In short, chefs are making major contributions to awareness of ethical norms relating to meat consumption in a variety of settings. Figure 1: An example of a current meat product on the shelf at a major Australian retailer with packaging that makes a range of claims relating to production practices and quality, among other attributes. (Emily Buddle)“The Good Life”Lifestyle media has been a key site through which meat eating is normalised and recuperated into “ethical” frameworks (Arcari 169). Utopian visions of small-scale animal agriculture are a key feature of popular texts from the River Cottage Australia (Foxtel Networks, 2013–) series to Gourmet Farmer (SBS, 2010–) and Paddock to Plate (Foxtel Networks, 2013–). These programs are typically set in bucolic rural surrounds and centre on the host’s “escape” from the city to a more fulfilling, happier existence in the country (Phillipov, “Escaping”). Rural self-sufficiency is frequently framed as the solution to urban consumers’ alienation from the sources of their food, and a means of taking responsibility for the food they eat. The opening credits of Gourmet Farmer, for instance, outline host Matthew Evans’s quest to “know and trust what [he] eat[s]”, either by growing the food himself or being “no more than one degree of separation from the person who does”.This sense of connection to one’s food is central to how these programs make meat consumption ethical. Indeed, the production of animals for food reinforces particular notions of “the good life” in which the happiness of the animal is closely aligned with the happiness of its human producer. While texts sometimes show food animals’ full lifecycle from birth to slaughter, lifestyle media focuses mainly on their happy existence while still alive. Evans gives his pigs names that foreground their destiny as food (e.g., Prosciutto and Cassoulet), but he also pampers them as though they are pets, feeding them cherries and apples, and scratching them behind the ears much like he would his dog. These bucolic televisual images serve to anchor the programs’ many “spin-off” media texts, including blog posts, cookbooks (e.g. Evans), and endorsements, that instruct urban audiences who do not have the luxury of raising their own meat on how to source ethical alternatives. They also emphasise the deliciousness of meat raised and killed in humane, “natural” conditions, as opposed to those subjected to more intensive, industrialised production systems.Some argue that the notion of “ethical meat” merely masks the realities of humans’ domination over animals (Arcari). However the transition from “happy animals” to “happy meat” (Pilgrim 123) has been key to lifestyle media’s recuperation of (certain kinds of) meat production as a “humane, benevolent and wholly ‘natural’ process” (Parry 381), which helps to morally absolve the chefs who promote it, and by extension, their audiences.The Good DeathMeat consumption has been theorised to be based on the invisibility of the lives and deaths of animals—what has been termed the “absent referent” by feminist philosopher Carol J. Adams (14; see also Fiddes). This line of argument holds that slaughter and other practices that may raise moral concerns are actively hidden from view, and that animals are “made absent” within food consumption practices (Evans and Miele 298). Few meat consumers, at least those in Western countries, have seen animal slaughter first hand, and a disconnect between meat and animal is actively maintained through current retail practices (such as pre-packaged meat with few identifying cues), as well as in our language use, at least in English where most of the names of the meat are different to those of the animal (Plous; Croney) and where euphemisms such as “harvesting” abound (Abrams, Zimbres, and Carr). In many locales, including Australia, there is squeamishness about talking about slaughter and the processes by which “animal” becomes “meat” which in turn prevents open discussion about the origins of meat (Bray et al., “Conversation”).Campaigning culinary documentaries by chefs, including Matthew Evans’s recent For the Love of Meat (SBS, 2016), aim to reconnect animal and meat in order to critique modern meat production methods. In addition, Gourmet Farmer and River Cottage Australia both feature depictions of hunting (skinning and butchering of the animals is shown but viewers are rarely exposed to the kill itself) and emphasise the use of highly skilled hunters in order to bring about a quick death. By highlighting not only a good life but also what constitutes a “good death”, celebrity chefs and others are arguably generating discussion about what makes meat ethical by emphasizing that the quality of death is as important as the quality of life. In many of these programs, the emphasis is on more boutique or small-scale production systems which typically produce meat products that are higher priced and more difficult to source.Given that such products are likely out of reach for many potential consumers because of price point, convenience, or both, perhaps unsurprisingly the emphasis in many of these programs is on the consumer rather than the consumed. Hence these programs tend to be more about constructing an “ethical meat consumer”, defined implicitly as someone who acknowledges the meat/animal connection through conscious exposure to the realities of animal slaughter (for example, by watching a documentary), by “meeting your meat” such as in the BBC series Kill It, Cook It, Eat It (BBC, 2007; Evans and Miele), or by actively participating in the slaughter process as Evans did with his own chickens on Gourmet Farmer. As anthropologist Catie Gressier notes in her study of wild meat consumers in Australia, “hunting meat is seen as more noble than purchasing it, while wild meat is seen as preferable to farmed” (Gressier 58). Gressier also describes how one of her participants viewed hunting (and eating locally) as preferable to veganism because of the “animal violence that is the inevitable outcome of mass-crop agriculture” (58). However some scholars have argued that highly graphic depictions of slaughter in the popular media are becoming more commonplace as a masculinised type of “gastro-snuff” (a term referring to food-related visual depictions of brutal killings) (Parry 382). These types of efforts thus may fail to create dialogue about what constitutes ethical meat or even an ethical meat consumer, and may well reinforce more traditional ideas about human/non-human hierarchies.In contrast to coverage in popular media, detailed descriptions of commercial slaughter, in particular pre-slaughter (lairage) conditions, are yet to make it on to restaurant menus, despite the connections between meat quality and pre-slaughter conditions being well recognised even by consumers (Evans and Miele). Commercial slaughter conditions are one of the reasons that hunting is framed as more ethical than “ethically farmed” animals. As an Internet post, quoted in Adams (“Redneck” 50), puts it: “Hunting? A creature is peacefully in its own domain, it is shot. How is that worse than being carried for hours in a truck, being forced into a crush, hearing the bellows of other creatures, being physically restrained at the peak of terror, then culled?” Although determining precise rates of consumption of wild meat is methodologically difficult (Conservation Visions 28), available rates of hunting together with limited consumption data indicate that Australians currently eat less game or wild-caught meat per capita than those in Europe or North America. However, there is a sector of the community in Australia who pursue hunting as part of their ethical food habits (Bray et al., “Ferals”) with the largest proportion of wild-meat consumers being those who hunted it themselves (Gressier).In many cases, descriptions of animal lives (using descriptors such as “free range” or “grass fed”) serve implicitly as proxies for assurances that the animals’ deaths also have been good. One exception is the increasing awareness of the use of halal slaughter methods in part due to more transparent labelling, despite limited public awareness about the nature of these methods, particularly in the Australian context where they in fact comply with standard animal welfare requirements such as pre-slaughter stunning (Bergeauld-Blackler). Detailed descriptions of post-mortem conditions (e.g., aging conditions and time) are more common on restaurant menus, although arguably these no longer draw attention to the connections between the animal and the meat, and instead focus on the meat itself, its flavour and other physical qualities, rather than on ethical attributes.Thus, although it would seem obvious that ethical meat consumption should involve considerations about slaughter conditions or what makes a “good death”, most efforts have focused on encouraging people to make better and more reflexive consumer choices, rather than promoting deeper engagement with slaughter processes, perhaps underscoring that this domain may still represent one of the final food taboos. Although it might seem to be counterintuitive that wild or hunted meat could be viewed as an ethical food choice, particularly if vegetarianism or veganism is taken as the main point of comparison, these trends point toward the complexities inherent in food choice and the inevitable trade-offs in values that occur in these processes.Problems with Promoting Ethical Meat Norms: Ways ForwardIt is undeniable that many people are reflecting on their consumption habits in order to pursue decisions that better reflect their values. Attempting to be an “ethical meat consumer” clearly fits within these broader trends. However there are a number of problems associated with current approaches to ethical meat consumption, and these raise questions as to whether such efforts are likely to result in broader changes. First, it is not clear that restaurants are the most appropriate spaces for people to engage with ethical considerations, including those relating to meat consumption. Many people seek to try something new, or to treat themselves when dining out, but these behaviours do not necessarily translate into changes in everyday eating habits. Reasons are varied but include that people cannot reproduce the same types of dishes or concepts at home as what they get at restaurants (or see on TV shows for that matter), and that many products may be out of an acceptable price range or inconvenient for daily consumption. Others want to escape from ethical decisions when dining out by relying on those preparing the food to do the work for them, and thus sometimes simply consume without necessarily investigating every detail relating to its production, preparation, and so on.Perhaps more importantly, many are sceptical about the promotion of various meat-related values by high-profile or celebrity chefs, raising questions about whether ethical categories are merely packaging or window dressing designed to sell products, or if they are truly tied to deeper values and better products. Such concerns are reinforced by tendencies to emphasize one type of meat product—say free-range, grass-fed, or humanely-raised—as better than all others, or even as the only right choice, and thus can at times seem to be elitist in their approaches, since they emphasize that only certain (often extremely expensive boutique products) count as ethical. As scholars have noted about the classed nature of many of these consumption practices (see, for example, Bell and Hollows; Naccarato and LeBesco), these types of value judgments are likely to be alienating to many people, and most importantly will not foster deeper reflections on our consumption habits.However it is clear that celebrity and other high-profile chefs do get the public’s attention, and thus can play important roles in shaping conversations about fostering more ethical ways of eating, including meat consumption. We contend that it is important not to emphasize only one right way of eating, but to actively consider the various trade-offs that we make when choosing what to buy, prepare, and consume. Promoting answers by nominating certain meat products or production methods as always better in all circumstances, no matter how these might be in conflict with other values, such as preferences for local, organic, alignment with cultural or religious values, sustainable, fair trade, and so on, is not likely to result in meaningful public engagement. Critiques of Pollan and other food activists make similar points about the potential elitism and hence limited value of promoting narrow forms of ethical eating (e.g., Guthman et al.; Zimmerman).In addition, such food categories often serve as proxies for deeper values, but not necessarily for the same values for all of us. Simply relying on categories or types of products thus fails to allow engagement with the underlying rationale for various choices. More generally, promoting individual consumer decision-making and market demand as the keys to ethical consumption overlooks the broader systemic issues that limit our choices, and in turn limits attention to changes that might be made in that system (e.g., Lavin; Guthman et al.; DeLind; Ankeny).Thus instead of promoting one right way of eating meat, or a narrow number of acceptable choices, celebrities, chefs, and restauranteurs should consider how they can help to promote dialogue and the posing of the right types of questions to consumers and diners, including about trade-offs inherent in meat consumption and choices of other products, ethical and otherwise. They also should use their roles as change-makers to consider how they might influence the broader food system, but without promoting a single right way of eating. Parallel to recent calls from scientists for a new planetary health diet which promotes increased vegetable consumption and reduced meat consumption for environmental, health, and other reasons, by providing a range of trade-offs to support a diet that that allows individuals to make personalised choices (Willett et al.), hybrid approaches to ethical eating are more likely to have influence on consumers and in turn on changing eating habits.ReferencesAbrams, Katie M., Thais Zimbres, and Chad Carr. “Communicating Sensitive Scientific Issues: The Interplay between Values, Attitudes, and Euphemisms in Communicating Livestock Slaughter.” Science Communication 37 (2015): 485–505.Adams, Carol. The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist Vegetarian Critical Theory. London: Continuum, 2000.Adams, Michael. “‘Redneck, Barbaric, Cashed Up Bogan? 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