Mya Krumac! Hello everybody! E here. Welcome back to another recent read. We're gonna open up this one with a... What am I now reading? Currently reading. So, the... In audiobook, I am reading the first Lucas Davenport... Yeah, Davenport book by John Sanford, which is Rules of Pray. I am currently... I am currently 191 pages into this. It's okay! It's generic thriller territory. It is what it is. Next up, we have another one. I am... This is probably my least favorite read right now. It is Hark the Herald Angels Scream. Christopher Golden edited Anthology and Man Can I Tell. I don't care too much for Christopher Golden. The first two stories, I think, are terrible. I'm sure everybody will disagree with me on this. Also, I'm not in a huge horror mood right now. So, I got this one at the library. I didn't buy it or anything. But Kelly Armstrong, I believe, is the first... She wrote the first story. Kelly Armstrong did Absinthe and Angels. I can't even... I read it yesterday. I can't even remember a thing about it. And then Scott Smith wrote the second one. I love Scott Smith, but his story, man, 20 pages that all came down to the very last line and it wasn't that great of a reveal. Okay. Last, what I'm reading is The Chill by Scott Carson, which is very distracting. I'm enjoying it, but it's very distracting because this is a... As it says in this, the author, BIO, says that Scott Carson is a pen name for a New York Times best-selling author. Isn't everybody a New York Times best-selling author? Anyways, I see you, Booktube Goddess. I see you. But yeah, this comes out February 11th and I'm enjoying it so far, but it is kind of distracting trying to figure out who in the world... Yeah, who in the world it is. But on with the recent reads. Alright, so right off the bat, we're going to be talking about an audiobook. I listened to... it is Bunny by Mona Awad. This is a fantastic, fantastic book. I don't know if it's going to end up on my best of the 2019 list or not, but right now it is. I had no idea what to expect going into this one and I'm really, really glad that I listened to the audiobook version because I feel like it gave that much more to the story. There's a character, a character called Creepy Doll. It's just one of like five very valley girlish college students. For sure, kind of deal. That character, the way the narrator did that character, was very laugh-worthy. I had a blast listening to the whole thing, but it takes a turn. I think it's going into part two that just kind of really blew me away. I was expecting weird because my friend Emily at Book Happy, I think it's at book.happy on Twitter and on Instagram. But Emily, Emma friend Tracy, both of them said it was a great book. Check it out and I jumped into it knowing it was going to be weird. They said, prepare for weirdness and boy, I got weird. I enjoyed every single, not page, but every single hour, minute of the audiobook. I will eventually get the hardcover copy of it and I will definitely be looking at anything else by Mona Awad. But right now, I'm going to stick with just the audiobook because the audiobook was such a fun, fun time and I recommend that you check out the audiobook. But definitely give this book a read in any format that you can find it. Definitely expect some bizarre occurrences. It is written in such a style as like a Caroline Keptness or maybe an Amin Octah or an Erin into Hall or that kind of way, but there is definitely a weird supernatural otherness to it and that's what I like the most about the book overall was how weird it was and how I had no idea what this author was going to do to me next. There are several fantastic things like little pieces, slices of life sections and some words and turns that the author comes up with like gossip glow, the glow that someone will get while they're gossiping about somebody. I just enjoyed the way that the author saw things and there's a heavy theme of writing and creativity throughout the book and as an author myself as a creative person myself I really enjoyed the book for that aspect also there's writer circles in the book and those are some of the best parts of the book other than the weirdness that you're going to go through and the whole, not the reveal because it's very early on but how that theme evolves throughout the book is really amazing and I highly recommend this book to anyone. If you've read Bunny by Mona Awad I'd love to hear from you down there in the doodly doo, let me know what you liked let me know exactly what you like don't just say I loved it or I hated it let me know what you loved or what you hated.  Anyways, on to the next one ok, so before we get on to the next review I'm going to put to pause take a break I'm going to show you some stuff that I picked up recently since I'm not doing book calls anymore or now reading we are doing the recent reads but I'm pretty much compiling all the stuff into one video maybe not every week but definitely at least twice a month you're going to get one of these videos from me I got Michael Morkock's fourth book in his Elric Saga now I own all of these there's a video on the channel called Unexpected Collection where I talk about my collection of Michael Morkock books this is The Vanishing Tower which is book 4 in the original Elric Saga I do not have this cover it's only a quarter at the library so I went ahead and got it along with that I got Peter Tremain's Blood Mist a booktube goddess if you want this one I think you were the one that mentioned Peter Tremain if you want this one let me know and I'll send it to you for Christmas or any of these books really if anybody wants these books let me know because I probably won't get to them I bought these as gifts for friends kind of deal because I've seen some of my friends talk about them in their own videos and I got this by Peter Tremain which has got a great cover with a sword I think and then some kind of water dragon next up we have Yellow Fog which is definitely a vampire novel there's a woman laying here looks almost like a Christopher Lee kind of Dracula back here in the background and then we have The Well Wolf's Kiss you're not going to be able to see it but the stamping on here it's supposed to match this guy and this lady and it absolutely 100% doesn't anyways but this is by Sherry Scotch yeah so Sherry Scotch if anybody wants this one anybody who wants any of these let me know down there in the doobly doobly okay and so the second review here on recent reads we are talking about the fifth book in the Charlie Parker series by John Connolly The Black Angel yeah I know it looks like it just says black but it does say The Black Angel this one and it keeps on happening aside from the second book in the series every new book in the series has become my favorite in the series and this one is my favorite in the series so far this one has a lot of historical fiction in it, it has World War II elements it has Biblical elements, it has a bunch of stuff in here that I oddly enough I normally don't enjoy but with John Connolly's writing he can make damn near anything interesting I've really enjoyed the World War II aspect and some of the history there and come to find out that a lot of the stuff he talks about actually happens now I've heard so many so many different opinions from people on when the supernatural aspect of these books gets really really heavy this one is where it jumps into a whole other level there is really it's not that you could have the story it's not that you couldn't have the storyline in this one without the supernatural but I think it'd be very difficult you can take the supernatural aspects out of the first four novels and I don't think you would lose a whole hell of a lot he goes all in both feet all the way up to his neck in supernatural content I don't care too much for angels and demons in my fiction mainly because I'm not a believer I'm not Christian I don't follow that train of thought but in this one it didn't feel like some of those stories tend to like the angels are this all good power the devil and his demons are this all evil power and there's no gray area in this one there's definitely 100% gray area everything is gray area in this one it does have probably my least favorite villain of the series I think he thinks what black well something well bright well that's it bright well I didn't care too much for him it was just another one of those lackey villains that you know like the side not the side character but he's just a basic minion kind of deal but he has main villain qualities also so my least favorite villain of the series so far I really really loved was it named Kiddum K-I-T-T-I-M I really loved him from the last book I loved Mr. Pud I loved the traveling man all Caleb whatever from book 2 once again book 2 I can't even remember the name Dark Hollow that book just kind of is forgettable all around I don't think bright well is really forgettable as much as he just didn't really leave a lasting impression on me other than his appearance everyone else that I mentioned the traveling man even though Kiddum was kind of a side character also other characters I really got to know these villains and I appreciate them for what they were with this guy is kind of felt like a stepping stone you know once again Lewis and Angel have another big role in this book and they were a lot of fun to read they're always fun to read they're the reason why I show up most of the time I am gonna take I am currently taking a week off of the series but I'm already itching to get back into it I'm so used to picking up the next book right after finishing one of these books now that I wanted to jump right into book 6 and I'm kind of getting withdrawals I'm like I want to get back into this hopefully that trends hopefully that keeps up throughout the rest of the series I don't know if it will or not but right now I'm itching to get into the unquiet which is the next book in the series have you read the Black Road let me know down there in the doobly do again if you loved it let me know why you loved it if you hated it let me know why especially if you're kind of indifferent about this book let me know that also but go into detail about those things we'll start a conversation down there in the doobly do okay I almost forgot as a segue going into the last the last review of this video I got another gift from my friend good friend Glenn Krish is it Krish I think it's Krish if I pronounce your name wrong Glenn please let me know down there in the doobly do but he got the painter of Troy Piotrokov I'm not sure I know I'm going to pronounce the wrong and I apologize but it's the painter of this word P Piotrokov I don't know but it's a literary fiction historical fiction kind of deal he's moving away from his horror roots kind of like I am and this I believe is his first take on like a magical realism or literary fiction that kind of thing so it has a beautiful Daniel Sarah cover Sarah I'm not sure he if you're a horror fan at all you've probably seen this guy's artwork around he used to do covers for was it delirium books delirious books I can't remember what it was Shane Staley's project before he did Dark Fuse had a lot of these covers and he's done Hellraiser comic book all different kinds of stuff very very talented guy but also look at the inside hang on let me show you the inside of this book because the this is an independently published book this is a self published book the inside is looks amazing it did such a terrific job I want to give credit where credit is due so you have the cover art is by Daniel Sarah and the interior design is by Michael Bailey fantastic cover I've not read this yet but Glenn was nice enough to book for a review copy so thank you very much Glenn for that I appreciate you last but not least we have a book that was sent to me by my friend Kevin Witton of well read beard here on YouTube and on Twitter you can check him out I'll try to remember leave a link down in the doobly-doo but I've talked about him several times he's a great dude really really good guy and he mentioned he asked me if I wanted to copy this book and I said yes and he sent one over and I read it as soon as I got it that's whispers in the dark by Laurel Hightower this book was good from start to finish and one thing that I want to stress here every single independent author I've ever read there has been something that has told me that they're an indie author or that they're a small press author Laurel is not an indie author she is a small press author this was published by journal stone books and journal stone has a great track record of publishing very high quality books but every single indie or small press book that I come across I can read it and go okay there it is there's that one thing usually there's multiple things but usually there's that one thing that's usually published whether it be spelling errors grammar problems whatever it might be there's always something I said on twitter that I can count on one hand the number of indie small press authors that I have read where I can't find at least one thing that screams this is indie or small press Laurel Hightower is now one of those authors nothing about this book says indie or small press and I felt like I was reading something from Crown Publishing or Scrivner even FSG in fact I would go as far as to compare this book and this is going to sound odd coming from someone who doesn't love Dean Coons anymore but this is almost like Dean Coons wrote a Clive Barker story the story is dark it has supernatural elements there's a lot of Clive Barker in this book but the writing is honed almost perfectly there's an error here or there but it's like 2 or 3 which you would find in a traditionally published book it's not full of errors it's just minor typos that happen to the best of us but Dean Coons has a very polished way of writing you don't find too many errors or problems or anything with his writing that's what I felt here is very technically sound well put together there were some aspects of the story itself that kind of made me not really not really cringe but maybe go eh no I don't like that it had some stuff to do at the end about it like a chosen one kind of deal and anything that has like a chosen one or matrix storyline kind of deal I kind of shut down on so that would be the only thing where I would give any kind of criticism is that there were certain story elements that did not vibe with me and I'm going to give it a very strong 4 stars a Goodreads or Amazon or whatever I would probably give it 4.5 stars only because of certain story aspects like I said completely subjective that I myself didn't like the writing, the publishing, the everything about this book is fantastic there are no problems with the technicalities of this book like I said it's just that one story element now if I'm going to talk about criticisms another thing is that we didn't get to know the kids all that well in fact right now I just got through finishing the book tonight I don't remember the kids name oh Lily, Lily is one of the kids name and not Sam, Sam's name, Tommy Lily and Tommy, we didn't get to know them as much as I would have liked I don't know if there was even time for that kind of development so maybe not and yes I am being overly critical here because that's how I am you are probably not going to notice any of this stuff if you are just an average reader coming across this book you will probably think that this book is perfect that is fantastic and you would not be wrong I've had, I've read so much indie small press fiction that I have become hyper critical of anything that comes out from that market and it's just the way I am. This book is perfectly fine, there are no problems with it as far as the general public will feel I am very impressed that this is a first book that Laurel Hightower is a new author because it certainly doesn't feel like she's a new author it feels like a book that you would go down to Barnes & Noble or Books of Million or anywhere really any chain store, even Walmart that you would walk in there, go over to their book section this feels like a type of book that you would pick off of the shelf there it is that well done it speaks to the quality of Laurel's writing alone that I would say that because like I said, I can count on one hand I'm not going to say who's who I can count on one hand the authors in small press indie area that I can say that about I do know as a disclaimer, I do know Laurel on Twitter, we're not best friends or buds or anything, but we do talk back and forth, we follow each other, we've had interaction, she's an acquaintance of mine that has not colored my review at all, whatsoever if anything, it probably makes me a little more critical because people will point out hey, you talk to this person every now and again so of course I'm going to be a little more critical because people are apt to say oh you're only saying that because you know this person but yeah, have you read The Whispers in the Dark? let me know what you liked about it what you didn't like about it whatever your feelings about this book down there in the doobly-doo last thing I want to say is thank you so much Kevin for sending me the book because if you hadn't sent me the book I never would have read this so I really do appreciate you man that's Whispers from the Dark by Laurel Hart Laurel Hightower but that's it for this time on Recent Reads if you have any comments about any of the books that I read or any of the gifts that I received or any of the books that I got from the library leave all your comments down there in the doobly-doo you have two weeks of best of stuff coming up so next week and the week after that will be full to the brim and then I'm going to take an entire week off I will continue to warn you guys but after these next two weeks of videos I'm going to take a week off and just go and do absolutely nothing with my family but until next time I have been E, you have been U this has been another Recent Reads video I'll talk to you guys later, bye bye


every human being has a deep deep deep inner call to bend and the bending is not just in the physical like kneeling in the church it's in the emotional it's in the tears of joy in that bending the tears that flow in that moment when the whole system is in surrender surrender to what Namaskar Namaskar Thank you for taking my question. I had this face a few weeks ago where I was drawn to Christian churches even though I'm not Christian and I had this strong urge to sit in there and bend down and Get to my knees physically and just be and I don't know what drew me there because I have no history with with churches or Christianity and At the same time I discovered your teachings and I think that's that impulse draw me to your teachings And I got interested because I couldn't really figure out what what I was doing because it just happened somehow, I don't know and Yeah, my question is I don't really want to be picky with words, but I'm a german speaker as you may Here I'm from Austria and the word surrender in german can mean Different things to surrender could mean to give yourself up in terms of surrender to an enemy Or it could be totally devote yourself So my question would be if you could give me some help with the words because I'm a little bit afraid that I Understand it not in the right way and that might might lead to some problems on my way So the word that comes to me Which helps in the understanding of the word surrender for a german speaker would be Hingabe Demut These two words together Hingabe Demut and The idea of surrender being that you lay down your weapons and you're helpless and defenseless is Not the way it is Used in this context. It's actually comes from the Sanskrit word summer pun which means giving yourself into fully into the experience of truth Every part of your being is given into that experience And when you got pulled into a church and you got You were made in a sense by life to sit To kneel in that church That is life telling you time to start bending Time to surrender How many times in a day do you bend for anything actually? Even to clean the floor you don't bend you don't bend for anything And that is the whole problem that Even that chance and that opportunity to kneel down which was given to your grandfather's generation has been taken away from you Even that is not there And at the same time every human being has a deep deep deep inner call to bend And the bending is not just in the physical Like kneeling in the church It's in the emotional it's in the tears of joy in that bending The tears that flow in that moment when the whole system is in surrender surrender to what to life itself to the truth of this existence Whether it's soul or truth or source It's the experience of the entire system of the materiality of the emotions of the thoughts Of your entire creative ability It's about being in that unity state with life itself with the truth of this living That's why you get pulled into the church because life is telling you so now enough now start bending and then you you you Come across a video of this teaching. Why does that happen to you? Because it's the time And this is a teaching of surrender What is the german Translation in your head for surrender And the one that you used is actually the one that is close to my heart and that i myself would use demo to the hingabe But the other word would be sich ergeben that would be In terms of an enemy attacking you that would render So that's why I was drawn actually to hingabe, but I just wanted to Check in with you and them. Yeah Yes, hingabe has a little tinge of the religious, but we can work with that for the moment Yeah, and when you start learning sanskrit Right But don't worry about it. You know, you have nothing to lose anyway If you look at it from a whole different point of view, I mean, what's the big deal? What is your name? philip philip So what is this philip? What is the big thing that philip is going to lose anyway? If he see her gave into somebody or Surrenders or lays down his weapons or whatever it is which enemy is there that's coming to get you anyway Even if you were see her given to the soul or to source What actually is there that is being given up in that process nothing zero It's a it's a body with a name It's my clean yeah, I'm right There's nothing much more to it if you think about it. Yeah, you know what I mean And I'm not trying to To diminish or to reduce who you are I'm saying that This body has a name and it has an origin And it's comprised of all of this and the surrender process is what brings you to yourself It brings you into the awareness of what this is Yeah, it doesn't take you away from yourself. It brings you to yourself You were pulled into the church and to surrender and it is not a religious thing there That church was just a place which for you is possible. You have a cultural connect with that place You know that you can kneel in a church. It's there in your genetic inheritance. And so you did that, you know Just as a as an Indian would maybe kneel in front of a guru because we have a tradition of living masters in India It is a land of living masters.  So it's easier for you to kneel in front of the cross The point is that something life is telling you Time to bend philip time to bend And bend means bend it means physically bend emotionally conceptually Transformatively Unity consciousness pluriform consciousness the entire system The materiality is the base of it and all that goes with it is in bending.  Or could you just maybe say Give me some advice Yes, I think that's more than enough if you can't make it to an immersive watch the videos None of us are disciplined enough to sit down and do anything So I mean we do we do things but like writing the books and all this just doesn't happen But this is also, you know, it's a teaching that will make its way to everyone Who needs it somehow it'll happen Right now it's this way through the videos you do Whatever the videos speak about when you can come to an immersive you come One day you will be able to attend and that's what you should aim for and then you can learn in the presence Until then you learn from the videos. Actually, you can just do it yourself. Also, you just have to feel that source just Move into that surrender state as I did it before with you. I did you into it Powerful experience, you know You live like that as much as possible And then you won't worry so much about the Semantics of surrender Thank you. Let's go. Namaskar


So how advanced are you in preparation towards that seminar? It is March 1st week that means two-third of the semester is practically over or at least half. So have you already completed your literature survey? Have you started? Ah, not that. So someone who said yes, can you define what exactly have you done? Can you say you have started? Somebody? Okay, how many of you have started working on your seminar? Ah, there was a loud yes. Okay, so the last man, can you tell us what exactly you have done so far? So you have read, you said you have read many research papers. The key areas of research. Can you define many? I mean there is one, two, three infinity if you know, one, two, three infinity of the book in my childhood. By the way, although I am having a dialogue with him, please consider this discussion to be generic enough because this happens with all of us and that's the point I wanted to make. So how did you pick up these four papers? A, the guide told you that these are the references you should read. B, you search. So to start your literature survey, a good starting point is, your guide tells you that look, there is a lot of literature here. This is one paper, which can be the starting point. So you read that research paper. Ah, whether you understand that research paper completely or not is not very relevant but you should understand the gist of what that paper says. But more importantly, that paper would in turn have a whole lot of references. Now how many references did that paper have? 35 references. And yet you choose only three of these. So no, that is okay but how did you choose these three? So only about 12 are relevant. Yet you chose to study three. So was the choice decided by the fact that these three were easily available on the net or in the library? No. So how? Okay. Let's take some other case study from this side. So how many of you have started working towards your seminars? One, two, this is very funny. Initially when I asked there were about 50 hands raised. Now when I am asking you to define what do you mean by having started, now suddenly only one or two, there is a confident hand at the back. Yeah, topic is answer extraction from query. You might help our friend there who went just by the three top searches. So depends on what query he asked maybe or he just looked at those references. But can you elaborate? So did you also get a list of papers from your guide to look at? So how many references were there in each of the two papers? One five. In each? How many overlapping? 15 plus 15 instead of 30 they were 20 or 25. So you had a total of 22 references. Now did you search for all of them? So how many papers did you actually look at? 10 papers. You selected 10 more or less looking at the title. Deciding that this would become, this would be available. So these 10 papers have you studied or you are still in the process of studying them? So you read abstracts and decided that 4 to 5 were not relevant. So the remaining five were relevant. So now have you read these five or you are in the process of reading them? Out of five you have read two. You found them to be relevant? Would you agree friends that in general if I as an M.Tech or Ph.D. student approach the initial job of literature survey more or less I would tend to do one of these two things or something similar to this. There is nothing wrong in this. In fact when you listen to Professor Sanna Murthy's talk the first talk is actually important because it tells you how to read a research paper and the talk certainly does not suggest that you should read only abstract and conclusion. I have underlined three things here is the third one. Title, abstracts and conclusion. You might not all say this explicitly but roughly these are the three things that anybody will first look at. What should it tell us is that when we write the title of our seminar report when we write the abstract and when we write the conclusions how careful we have to be. In my experience of 40 years whether it is seminar report or M.Tech stage one, stage two report the meat of the report is always ready it goes through some iterations at least the abstract and conclusion nobody writes till end and that gets written hurriedly. Forget the English language mistakes so creep in but the abstract and the conclusions often do not capture the essence of the work and the reason is not that you are not aware of those but the fact that you did not plan to give adequate time to write these two things. These are the smallest paragraphs in the entire report you will agree and they are the most difficult to write. I do not know whether I said this but Professor Prakash Vaidya wrote a message on my board when he saw a very long mail I had sent to someone he says I wanted to write a short letter but I did not have time so I wrote a long one. You realize the funny thing in this this is a fact writing something short like you wrote the summary and critique it would have taken you longer than if you were to write it as a story. So this happened but please remember that since the whole world like you will concentrate on looking at the title on the abstract and on the conclusions you better write them well. Having said this what is the record that you have kept of the papers which you have read not referred to in your report that will come later what is the written record that you have? You have downloaded those papers you have access to full papers you are obviously not read full papers suppose later on you decide to choose one paper as our friend seems to have done for a few two papers maybe you have read and they may get referred to cited in his reference in his seminar report. How long will it take physical time to describe the citation correctly in his own section on references and bibliography should be 30 seconds at that time when you are submitting your report or wanting to submit your report. Please understand what I am saying you have written the complete seminar report or the stage one report and you are compiling the bibliography or you are compiling the references at the end. You have cited them somewhere appropriately while writing the thing one two three four five six and you have to write. It appears to be the extremely silly activity it should be done just like that it indeed gets done just like that meaning the details which are required in the citation are rarely complete in each and every reference. So, how many of you are familiar with the citation rules which are followed let us say in either IEEE or ACM or department of computer science standards. How many of you have read the specifications of writing a seminar report or writing a mtextage one report. It is available in the department. You have read that? One person. Why? Okay. So, let me explain why I would also probably do the same thing and that is based on the mistaken assumption that first I have to complete my work then only I will start writing it and when I start writing it I will bother about the format. Is that right? Because the writing stage has not yet come. That is where the problem is after I complete my work then I forget that I have forgotten to I forget that I have forgotten to see that description therefore I start writing and then just few days before either a colleague of mine or my guide tells me this is not as per the department of format you would have to write it like that and then I go back there and then I suddenly find amongst other thing that references have to be written in a specific fashion. So, since you have read that can you tell us exactly how a reference is cited if you recall that. Okay. Number of chapters or sections or whatever but you do not know how for example if in some text I have said let us say the such is a sentence which appears in my writer the book by Ders Ders is the Chancellor of Buckley University those of you have heard him he has written an extremely interesting book on how the he calls it the scandal in India and the building of the British Empires very interesting book but forget that so I have given this reference now somewhere in my last portion of my report I will be writing references and I will be writing one two three four like this where I have used one two three four as citation I could use the year of publication some short name there and arrange these on alphabetical order or whatever or order of appearance or order of appearance in my report or order of appearance in the literature either the small point I am saying is how do I write what do I write here you have read research papers some you have read references apparently because from the reference only you find another reference how many of you remember how exactly was that reference written in any other paper now you have you seem to be much familiar with this let's understand from yeah so one is title then name of the author is that correct no no no is the sequence correct do the authors come first or do the title come first so there is a convention it doesn't matter you write in one way but since there is a convention that needs to be followed and that needs to be understood and appreciate so it has to sink in our minds actually anytime either I am quoting a reference or I am reading a reference without somebody telling me that this is author this is title I should automatically see that that's the advantage of everybody following that convention alright so is there a general agreement that the names of the names of the author should come before the title okay fine then title next so publication I will say sometimes year and place is also written it is not optional it is not optional if the year of publication or time of publication is not written it's an academic crime crime do you understand crime so if you find a reference like that somebody has been as sloppy as we generally are why is it relevant because that date of publication tells me whether this material belongs to a time period before much of the work happened or it belongs to a latest occurrence or it is somewhere in between that year immediately gives me a signal in my mind about the relevance of that work unless it's a very old paper but a seminal paper a seminal paper is one which has maximum impact on the field it starts a new theme somewhere then such papers could be fifteen hundred sixteen hundred seventeen hundred doesn't matter in fact if a very old paper is cited in the literature you can actually assume that to be a seminal paper so the year of publication is not sometimes written many of you might have this this notion it is always to be time so and if it is a conference then usually if it is one of the recent conferences or whatever you generally also write the month if it is a journal publication you write the issue number volume ok what else if it is a printed publication it is common to write page numbers if it's a book you may say just chapter or section or whatever is only the name of the publication written or publisher is also written so enough details about it anything else sorry so can you explain what is a so it tells you what so it tells you what ok there could be other numbers such as ISBN there could be other classifications the moral of this entire long story is that this entire thing you would expect to find in any reference obviously therefore this entire thing in a suitable format has to be written by you in the references that you would list agreed now the main question when you read those papers any one single paper also do you always note down these details about that paper note down or type somewhere there you don't take it from me you don't I did when I was a student till my research guide fired me once in those days there were no computers we used to have index pages we had to carry those index pages to library and I used to carry a notebook he took that notebook and kept it with him and gave me a set of index pages and he says this is how you will write the literature that you survey so it would have exactly these things I am talking about 1972-73 I had to write these and I had to read the index card was a sort of page full of things I had to write the complete abstract that was written there by my own hands the advantage he mentioned I said I am reading it so I understand it he says no you should write it down because you should read and write and that goes into your mind so you will remember the abstract most of the abstract practically forever and since you have written the name of the author the name of the journal etc etc your mind can correlate the occurrence of that name and that abstract much later as well this was the discipline that was you are now computers so what happens is you have access to information very easily but because you have access to information you have perhaps forgotten to organize that information properly as you deal with it because later on you will have to spend much more time in re-looking please understand that the reference to a paper cannot easily be constructed from the paper itself if you have downloaded a research publication it will of course have the title it will have authors where will you find where this paper was published in some papers you would find it in the bottom line IEEE, Journal, whatever but in some papers in the web you won't find that if if it's a manuscript submitted you won't find any reference at all will you find the year the publisher, the conference where it was held, the month the page number of the proceeding you may not find that even though you have a full paper with you so to assume that I have these 20 papers downloaded which I have used in my research and therefore in my report I can easily cite them is an incorrect notion believe me when you have three days to submit your report you have these 20 papers with you but your reference page will look obnoxiously bad you may wonder why I am spending so much time on such a small thing these small things together make the big hole and I am mentioning that small thing already in the really is left out by you most of the other things you would be capable of looking at, writing, we are looking at how to write properly etc in a separate issue so will you please do that now before it is too late whatever papers you have studied I still feel that although I also use computers as heavily as you do now but I still feel like writing down a few lines on a page, I may not refer to that page later but I have found that the act of writing enforces memory to some extent but of course different people would have different style, in any case whether on a computer or elsewhere there is absolutely no excuse for all of you not to have this information about each and every paper that you read collated separately and kept separately as a growing list then you can pick up whichever you want and it would be nice if you could link those to the abstracts please understand that if you have downloaded papers, you have downloaded what may be 20 papers as someone said these 20 papers will exist as 20 different files now I want to quickly peruse the abstracts of these 20 papers I will have no way out except to open each file look at the abstract, keep it in mind, close it, open another file look at the abstract etc don't you think it would be useful if these 20 abstracts were just cut and pasted in a single file with these kind of references so what I was told to do by hand in those days you can automate that process to some extent and create a single document which is some kind of a reference sheet for you which would contain the reference in exactly this fashion and just below it it will contain the abstract which is there from the and now you would have all the abstracts there and I would recommend one more thing, when you write the list of such 20 abstracts or 30 abstracts you might want to put some keywords many times you will find the keywords as a requirement in most of the recent publications earlier publications did not have that and these keywords need not be the standard keywords which are published but the keywords which pertain to your work so you are looking at let's say some broad area and you have some 4, 5 or 6 attributes around which you want to hunt for the research papers then along with the reference you might just write this keyword, this keyword, this keyword so for you the quick search is better in general as somebody pursuing PhD who is supposed to do a much more exhaustive literature survey he might, he or she might read some hundred abstracts before coming down and remember as the number increases beyond 5 its organization becomes difficult so I would suggest that you should do that in any case the point is that you must write the references correctly and you cannot do that easily at the end unless you have noted them down in the first place now this is an exercise that I would like you to do I will be discussing with Professor Prakash Vaidya the work that you will do in the next two lectures because next two lectures I am not here I am in Berkeley attending a conference online education so Professor Prakash Vaidya will handle some assignment but one assignment which I would like you to do which is strictly pertaining to your own literature survey related activities for your own seminar how many of you are not doing a seminar this semester not doing a seminar are you doing any other formal activity like some R and D project or stage one or or something like that is there any other formal thing nothing so you do not have to write anything in this whole semester except the exams is it very what should I say fortunate lot they do not have any work so how do we go about it then because this activity that I am going to suggest pertains to the literature survey if you are not required to do any literature survey alright I will give you a task that will be actually longer than the that will take longer than the other people do a literature survey on MOOCs how many of you are not doing any seminar can you raise hands again 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 and approximately 5 more from those who are absent right so about 20 people I would not like you to waste a lot of your time but if each one of you can just glance through the MOOCs please remember I am not specifying any special activity or concentration MOOCs is massive open online courses whatever material you come to your mind do a blind search but each one of you get down some 4 or 5 references okay and just glance through those abstracts and write one or two keywords but write the references properly just this task nothing else you are not required to study those papers thoroughly or something like that okay if you can actually download, cut and paste abstracts and form a glowing list I will be thankful you will benefit from that this is a method and these 20 people could form a group could somebody offer to coordinate activities of this group they are not very heavily loaded this semester no coordination is difficult Firuja can you coordinate alright so all such people please send an email to her she will make a group of all those people in the moodle and then she will make a sort of submission thing where you can just upload it and she will coordinate so let us these 20 of us let us undertake an exercise of doing a literature survey ourselves and using that to explain to our other colleagues in the class how good literature survey is done and reported would we like to take the challenge none of you will have to do anything you will have to only look at the references cut and paste the abstracts write the references properly and submit your tasks then Firuja and I will do the literature sir and we will present that literature survey to everyone how do you like that idea when I say Firuja and I will do the literature survey it actually means she will do the literature survey and I will take part of the credit you agree Firuja so this is what we will do now I need to leave now because I have but I will request professor Prakash Vaidya to just try and outline the kind of activities of correction work that is going to be you have done some correction work for their submissions so that statistics would you like to present today or next lecture next lecture now in that case let us use these there has been a mishap in the family and I have to rush to Pune but we still have about 10 more minutes 12 more minutes so let us spend these 12 more minutes in listening to your endeavours in technical communication now we are coming to technical communication not generic communication so any questions or any doubts that you have or any comment that you would like to make on effective communication from your side communicate see when I ah so he is telling you roughly the same thing that I am suggesting ok is there a methodology that you use in creating the google doc so this is a good technique he is suggesting that create a google doc in advantage of google doc you can also share it with people so things become automatic good point anything else that somebody would like to observe he seems to have done something concrete so far towards his seminar whereas others appear to have appear to be claiming that they have started are they right I must of course I have nothing to do with your research seminars your guides and you are capable of handling that but as it occurs to an outsider let me suggest to you very politely that the semester started in the first week of January and we are in the first week of March two full months have gone and the month of April half of it at least is end same exam what is your submission date for seminars now I understand you are all waiting for the department to announce the submission date then the activity will start so how like a typical IIT the life has not changed in 45 years that I can remember so that's ok but I would I would suggest that you need not wait for such an announcement please start now because independent of what you do in your seminar your assignment submissions here depend very much on your working on your research seminar you won't be able to submit the assignments here proper unless you work ok so one assignment is going to be as I said I will provide the links so will not waste the lecture times in listening to process but you should listen to her lectures outside there are two lectures as I said one on how to read a research paper and second on how to conduct a literature survey both these lectures in my opinion are good for you at this juncture itself since many of you have not started on so those links will be put up by tonight or tomorrow morning because I will be back only late night so tomorrow morning first thing will be there right the third set of lectures I would like you to look at those of you are serious about it is there are lectures did I mention these lectures earlier in the course no Professor Sripath Karmalkar is a professor of electrical engineering at IIT Madras and for several years he has been giving talks on how to do research we had invited him Professor Sachin Patwardhan of chemical engineering had invited him here to talk to our research scholars how many of you are research scholars PhD students here a large number so all of you have seen these lectures or no you are not those were absolutely extraordinary lectures covering all topics of introduction to research how to do research what kind of problems you face how to do rigorous experimentation how to resolve arguments and fights between you and your guide how to resolve depression issues all kinds of things excellent lectures so I had got those lectures recorded then and requested him whether he could release them in open source he agreed later on we conducted a program for 10,000 teachers training them on to research methodology introduction to research methodology and we again invited Professor Karmalkar to come and repeat those six lectures because teachers in engineering colleges you would know you would many of you would come from large number of engineering colleges where not all teachers have done PhDs many in fact are actually registered in working so to introduce them to research we had organized this course and all those lecture now are recorded topper videos and those videos exist on the enemy ICT website so remember to include that website also okay the reference to that those lectures are downloadable you can download them they are released in open source and you can actually listen I would strongly suggest that all research scholars would find it very very useful to listen to his lectures there is a complete course of many two weeks and lot of other lectures by other people but his lectures introduction to research lectures I think there are five or six lectures absolutely top to us and very useful and I would suggest that even for empty students who actually at the end of first year are getting into the beginning of their research because your research project will start now might find it useful some of you have time might just listen to them now some of you do not have time now might listen to them in Mejoo when you actually start your project so that you will find very useful Professor Sripath Karmalkar so both these links will keep there any other query or observation nobody has a question on effective communication okay some observation some comment so I am not asking you to ask a question make some comment your technically is statistically proven how do you say that he is saying that when we have not done much work we remain highlighting the class but when we do some work we are happy to present you recall when I asked for submissions and then I requested for presentation people without any hesitation came here and made presentation because they had actually worked so what he is observing is when I have work then I hesitate in communicating that is what he means by saying statistically proven but the last five minutes I am not asking you to say anything about any work that you should have done nothing just general comments on effective communication you have no comment to make any weakness that you perceive any suggestion that you have anything no observation I have to pick up someone to say okay okay you lady you say something whatever comes to your mind whatever comes to your mind doesn't matter and tell us a story for example no her she is being shy that's why I want her to speak yeah I wonder do you hesitate so much when you are in a group and there is some something going on and you are asked to contribute you are asked to say something do you hesitate so much before opening your mouth among your friends no they are all your friends you can include me in a moment why is it taking so long to just make any observation okay you can speak on anything under the sun and even beyond because sun controls only this part of the solar system any quick observation somebody I I am surprised that people hesitate in speaking okay can you say something yeah you no no you only say something oh I am delighted to find a human being among us who has nothing to say you are so happy with the world or you are so unhappy with the world this is too extreme you would have something isn't there anybody in the class something to say yes you would like to say something sorry parable of key okay so can you just elaborate in two sentences on that did you hear about he has stated some very profound things about the philosophy of knowledge how many of you have read this parable one two three four not bad come again in the class of philosophy oh the fine but shouldn't we be glad that people actually remember a few things about what happens in a class now that is very effective communication I would say okay alright we have one more minute but I will tell you something this is not on you will have to speak now since you speak better you present better when it is in the context of an assignment please take this down as an assignment next two sessions they will conduct but before that I would like you to read both the lectures by you should have seen them but on the session on is it 13th of March right 13th of March session I will be inviting people to speak I will be selecting people randomly to speak on anything of their choice for three minutes no slides no write up no nothing they will have to speak three minutes and I will choose people randomly so you are almost ten days to prepare on what you want to say in those three minutes completely open ended you can tell a short story okay the only thing you are not permitted to do is come here and stand like this for three minutes without speaking you will have to speak is that okay with you fine so that is an assignment prepare for it thank you so much


All right then. Hello everyone. I chose that you are well and I chose that you are safe wherever you are. It is my pleasure to welcome you to the 19th webinar in the economics of COVID-19 series. Today's series is co-hosted by SOAS Economics Department and SOAS Open Economics Forum. SOAS Open Economics Forum is part of the global retreating economics that aims to promote pluralism and heterodoxy in economics. You can follow SOAS Economics and SOAS Open Economics Forum on the social media platform as pinned in the chat box on the right side of your screen to catch up with previous webinars and to stay up to date with upcoming webinars. By introduction, my name is Taibat Izain. I am a master of development economics student here at SOAS. I am also a member of the SOAS feminist network, a network of SOAS students and alumni that discuss research and their ideas about feminist and gender issues within the realm of economics. I also empower young African women to use their voice through an online platform called Women's Speaker Tribe. Today's webinar is on the theme economics of COVID-19 in Africa, an African feminist perspective. It is a topic that I'm very excited about and I hope you're also excited. And unlike previous webinars, this session we take a form of conversation among three remarkable women in the feminist economic space. We have Sonia Palasi, we have Lynn Osome and Christa Simione. Before I hand over to Sonia, who is the moderator for today's session, I will briefly read out their bio so we know the speakers. I'll start with Sonia. Sonia is a researcher and economist at the Institute for Economic Justice. The IEJ is an economic think base in Johannesburg and works at the intersection of policy, research and activism. The IEJ's core objective is to provide policy makers with, is to provide policy makers and progressive social forces in South Africa with access to rigorous economic analyses and well thought through policy options as a basis for concrete interventions. Sonia's research interests include the role of private finance and development, climate justice, and feminist economics. Lynn Osome is a senior research fellow at the McCarrere Institute of Social Research where she teaches politics and political economy. As specializations are in the field of feminist political economy, feminist political theory with research interests in land and agrarian studies, gendered labor, and the political economy of gendered violence. She is the author of Gender Ethnicity and Violence in Kenya's Transitions to Democracy, State for Violence. She's also the co-editor of the forthcoming volume, Labor Questions in the Global South. She has been a visiting scholar at Nakiana-Chiantung University and Witte University. She's also a resident fellow at Yale University. She serves on several institutional boards, among them is the International Association for Feminist Economics. Krista Simeoni is the director of the Nawee African Microeconomics Collective. Her work revolves around macro-level economic inequalities through a pan-African feminist lens. This entails policy advocacy at regional and global policy space. A lot of her work is around ensuring government and women's right organizations understand and demystify economics, social and political policies from a pan-African perspective. She champions for women at all levels to be able to influence macroeconomic policy decision making and therefore giving balance of power within these platforms and processes. Please feel free to drop any questions that you may have during the conversations in the chat box and the speakers will address them accordingly and if you would like to sweep this conversation please use the hashtag economics of COVID. At this juncture I'll hand over to Sunia. Thanks Taiwit for the introduction. Good afternoon to everyone and thank you for joining us. I hope you can hear me okay Crystal and Lin. Awesome, I am delighted to be moderating this conversation with two remarkable feminists who have both been guiding lights for me and thinking through what it means to be a feminist economist and in today's conversation I will pick their brains on their thoughts and experiences of the pandemic so far and hopefully we can also get into what a feminist response to the the pandemic would look like and whether this moment presents an opportunity for our feminist alternatives to take center stage particularly in economic policy making. As Taiwit mentioned please feel free to ask questions in the comment section and after about 30 minutes into the conversation I will field these questions to both Crystal and Lin. Please also feel free to include your name and where you are in the world currently and so to begin I would like to take a step back just a little bit to think through how we got here and Lin a lot of your work on feminist political economy has been very intentional in reckoning with the past and reckoning with our histories that are by no means accidental to what we're currently facing now and so to start off I wonder if you could highlight what key aspects of the pandemic have been foregrounded for you and what role you think history particularly African feminist histories should play in our thinking around policy responses to to the crisis. I was muted I admitted myself sorry about that so I mean thanks Sonya for the for the question in in terms of the crisis it has highlighted me a number of of issues and I'd like to highlight four one is is it possible to get rid of all this sound coming in I don't know. One is I've been struck by the ways in which the capitalist state I'm not capital I'm talking of the state itself so I've been really struck by the ways in which the capitalist state reaches for women and gendered labor in terms of crisis in during times of crisis like this and so food access to food and survival itself has become synonymous with women's labor or gendered labor that is one and two it has also for me raised the specter of the sort of infrastructures that make poverty liveable and I mean this in an ironic sense and make suffering bearable because this is something we know you know everyone who has been waging a critique of capitalism has you know thinks about it in in terms of in time in in relation to dignity and suffering and so on so in our thought are not about what are these structures that make this kind of you know poverty and suffering bearable and liveable and one of it of course is housing because the immediate response that we saw in many places was you know it's as if the crowd conditions of housing in informal settlements and in slums just became apparent these have been with us but during this time when we needed to practice physical distancing then it became you know a question that we were discussing alongside the crisis that covid had produced and you know another you know such infrastructure or condition is just the ability to go to work the idea of working itself so and in a lot of people see it as you know to go to work is to leave the house or to go somewhere and get you know so even the self-employed I know a lot of the trade that women do in informal settlements you know where you live is where you work you know you sell your tomatoes or onions out there but still that even that was truncated for a lot of people so this idea of working itself even when you're not earning sufficient income entirely it has for me also highlighted the fundamentally agrarian character of this crisis and I'll talk about this later and fourth of course this is something that is widely remarked that these features have not have not been produced by covid itself what covid has done is that it has highlighted the gendered and exploitative structure of the capitalist society in which we live right and all of these have historical these are historical continuities they have roots you know we we've been here before in a sense african feminists would say that when you know in our studies of the colonial political economy you know so I for one believe that there's not much we can understand about these contemporary manifestations outside of the set of institutional and structural legacies that configured gendered labor and women's labor as and you know I sort of it was the unnecessary condition of the stabilizing political stabilization of of the colonial political economy of the first migrant labor regime right and so the postcolonial near liberal state has failed to break with this model this model of dependence on a non-capitalist at that time rural realm of subsistence which supplements you know poorly paid wage labor but this is no longer in the current times is no longer just a rural kind of relation of supplementing wage labor we are also seeing an urban manifestation so there's now an urban demand for say land so all these struggles we see around housing with the shaft dwellers movements and so on there are demands around land there they are articulated to questions of food and subsistence people are saying we need to be able to eat we need to be able to feed ourselves I know in South Africa made many third fourth fifth generation of urban dwellers don't really have concrete links with with rural domain but this is also an urban seriously urban manifestation so that is one with the historical you know the role of history in thinking this thing and another thing for me has been in that gendered labor has really feminist critics have understood it in this wage wage labor capital relation so within the idea of exploitation as you know saying gendered labor or women's labor contributes to surplus value the production of surplus value but the reality that we are dealing with today is you know at least in the last two decades has been a massive attrition of industrial of labor from industry and from manufacturing and in fact there are large sections of the of the working population of labor force that capital doesn't actually need anymore they just you know surplus and and so the question that we have to ask ourselves is what is happening what has been happening to those those masses of people that are being expanded from industry who is looking after them when they are no longer being needed and this is a question that remains current in fact under covid you could multiply this by you know you know really exponentially because apart from those who are already kind of floating and latent labor now we have people who have been you know millions of jobs have been lost and we'll have to think about that not just who is looking after them but even post covid period these are not all those people who will simply not be going back into employment they just will not happen you know so we need to think about what kinds of social reproductive structures are going to be needed to look after that population and that is to reflect on the the social question this is a useful where found of thinking through the classes that covid is producing is to reflect on the social question that is being raised by covid in terms of you know as a as a political it's political manifestations and i'm saying this again in relation to history so it's political because historically when you looked at the forms of resistance that were waged by african women you know what we think of as anti-colonial struggles um women were under nine those struggles were usually a critique of social problems of the ways in which women were experiencing the colonial state and the colonial political economy in very specific ways so women were you know they were involved in peasant struggles uh you know struggles over land and this was because women could see very clearly that a lot of the land with with the you know with primitive accumulation a lot of the land that was used to reproduce communities and families was being taken away you know that i've learned redirected towards cash crop farming women were protesting against labor because they could see very clearly that their labor and their time was being redirected from the production of you know sort of food crops into not only cash crops but into other structures you know soil erosion and that kind of thing and of course there were protests over taxes the protests over you know women wanted over the you know efforts to control women's sexuality so this again so all of these were articulated to a question of you know the social reproduction women's relations to their communities and today again we are seeing in this COVID period an increase in in reports from violence right in domestic violence which is already imploding into the public and and of course we have to see this under the kinds of resistance that accompany it as sort of political response that is that is needed right economic problems tend to or economic crisis tend to manifest a social crisis that did political solutions so this i i leave it there for now in terms of thinking of the key aspects of the crisis and the sort of historical um re-articulations that we're seeing in relation to to COVID and the forms of social you're breaking we can't hear you internet I'm not still there because she has sent me a question so I can see her but she's breaking so I'll give her two seconds okay hi but okay I'll go ahead um so I'll pretend I'm Sonia and read her question she had sent me sort of a directive around what she wanted to ask and her question to me was um many were saying that the economics fall out of the pandemic will be seismic and then many countries particularly African countries will particularly be affected tied to this that our debt levels will reach unsustainable levels for example many in South Africa are lamenting the possibility of South Africa's debt to become larger than 70 percent of our GDCs there's this a historical narrative that African economies are constrained by high levels of debt and this will inevitably set us back uh you have spoken I have spoken a lot about peace public private partnerships and illicit financial flows and how these issues are also feminist issues how is the conversation about debt also feminist issue a link to this what role does the state and private sector have in advancing a feminist alternative so I will hand over to myself um and so I'll start off with a quote from a song that says some words change some more they say the same um Lynn has spoken about forms of land resistance and resistance that women have have been putting forth against colonialism around against capitalism against um new new liberal forms of capitalist intervention and things that are constantly so violently in our spaces both as we're trying to make a living and trying to exist on the continent uh the work that I do straddles two fights which makes it very complicated sometimes it straddles a fight against new liberal new colonial new liberal models but it also straddles a fight against new colonialism and so it's one against the patriarchy and at the same time once again one against capitalism and so I'll start off by saying that by May East African countries had borrowed nearly 2.3 billion dollars in loans in less than three months and reporting our first covid positive cases and this is just in addition to all the loan benefits that you've been seeing against the backdrop of a tax revenue that is drastically dropping not only is our tax revenue dropping but our export earnings and our gas remittances are also in trouble and so this is really working together to paint a really dire picture for the continent um just this this last week we learned that the African Union COVID-19 special envoys have raised about 30 billion US dollars for the continent's response to the pandemic but again the devil is in the details we have no idea of whether this money and these resources are in loans and grants and if any of the above what terms we're taking the money and the resources from and this again poses a huge problem we're celebrating as a continent but at the same time are we really celebrating there's been calls around debt and beyond debt moratoriums the call for debt cancellation should be a priority and we remember Thomas Sankara saying at the African Union in his address in the 80s well if we decide to pay back our debt we definitely will be killing the people of Africa our government's the states of Africa we will not be able to provide for our citizens in terms of healthcare in terms of food in terms of education but if we don't surely nobody dies and I'm paraphrasing his words which was very powerful and can be found in YouTube and so I wonder if we should be going back to those those words of his and I wonder what a cancellation of debt would look like but we need to also start asking deeper questions about what debt we're taking and how we're not putting or putting citizens at the center of decision making and policies that affect ourselves. Sophie Kenya is an example and I've been writing a paper on what they're calling managed a Christian scheme project that's been running for the last five years it's got two years left in its lifetime and the program was to borrow money to take to lease specialized equipment for hospitals across the country specialized equipment for ICU facilities for dialysis for theater and the budget for the health sector in the last two years this was the fourth highest spend in terms of what the health budget had as a priority the fourth highest spend to lease out specialized equipment three quarters of which is still lying unused in in hospitals across the country because hospitals have three phase electricity to run the equipment didn't have running water to run the equipment didn't have doctors and sometimes specialized doctors or doctors at all to run this very specialized high-tech equipment and so it brings into question what priorities our state are putting at the center and who's driving these priorities how many IMF World Bank decisions are really pushing what our countries our states are taking into consideration of the prioritized funding and debt that we're taking and so we say that the clocks in time where it's important to begin to reimagine the role and the character of the African state to reimagine it through the social contract and open up what this contract means for us the rise of what many call the Wall Street consensus taking over from the Washington Consensus through the World Bank's cascade approach that is pushing our African economies to deregulate and change legislation and policy for the ease of private finance to come in because we are told this private finance will be the silver bullet to solve our development gaps with efficiency we have seen over and over how it does the complete opposite we signed deals for white elephant mega infrastructure projects that our people don't use but who will be paying for generations to come we have trains in Kenya that are big and and have spent so much money and taken so much in terms of loans but yet our taxpayer is what this who will be paying for generations to come a train where majority of our food is grown by small holds of farmers who will never get on that train and never use a train to transport their food and their commodities yet we'll be paying through vat through commodity tax and all the forms of taxation and so i question how we can disassociate ourselves from the policy making i question how many of our central bank governors how many of our ministers of finance are ximx x world bank and what that means for the development of our state for the development of our state that also lack a political project to drive our policy and development agenda that is so inextricably linked to our debt to conditionalities that come with our debt and what that means for the future of our continent i will stop here i wonder if funna is back on hi sonia i think she's back okay but i don't think she's connected sonia if you could drop your questions in the chat box and i will be out to the speakers i hope she can hear me i can add one little bit as she comes back okay then sure um so i just wanted to add as well as our african states are really pushed toward the private financing mechanism for development it's important to remember that this is happening against the backdrop of a narrative that tells us that the african state is incapable of providing for her citizens is incapable of providing for me to ensure that i am able to take any children that i have to a decent and quality i can hear anything or have children in a safe hospital um and be able to access that universally um against the backdrop of the fact that Africa loses about not less than a hundred billion dollars to relift financial flows by these very same multinationals that we're then turning to as you know as a silver bullet for our developmental gaps and i think that contradiction is something that we need to really put at the center of our thinking and really inform who we get help from what we decided help and how we interact with debt okay so unfortunately um we thought this out i'll just take it up from the depth that you mentioned um we know that the there's more adverse consequence on debt especially in africa could you suggest or recommend alternative to this debt if we're not um if you're not going to rely on it because it it's always difficult because of the vices um associated with the debt could you recommend or suggest other opportunities so we can policy makers the government can look into um i think that's a multi-layered question that is not easy to answer but i'll try um i think there needs to be a lot more to implement our agenda 2063 and really own our own processes narratives and frameworks i think we have we've got great minds on the continent that can give us direction um and give us direction in terms of development um we the global south produces over 60 percent of raw materials over 60 percent of labor but we only accrue less than five percent of global wealth and this i think is something that needs to be at the back of our heads um some have called it a global apartheid of decision-making in the global economic landscape and i think we have to remember that as much as there has to be local solutions for local problems we exist in a very hyper-globalized world where there is indeed global solutions to very very local problems so case in point is our tax our tax base um and are we able to follow the guidance of the african tax administrators forum for example who have given models recommendations and frameworks of tax models that are retrofit for african economies so that we are maximizing our tax revenue from multinational that have found all sorts of ways to find new polls to ensure that they're not paying their their fair share of tax in the space and in the countries that they're operating in i go back to the fact that we're losing not less than a hundred billion dollars in illicit financial flows and we get less than half of that in development for the system simple mathematics is that we can pay for our own development i think the concept of economics needs to be demystified too many a time economists sort of paint this picture as if economics is overly technical and really too hard for most of us to understand i think we need to politicize it to come back to a space where it is really about power it's about who gets to decide what the quality of my life is how dignified my life is and i think that needs to be put at the front and center of those i don't understand why the iamf in the world bank should be making decisions about an african woman's life in rural africa and she's living it and understands and knows what needs to change um for her for her life i think there needs to be a more participatory approach um with citizens for women for example to be able to sit at decision-making tables and contribute to making decisions that really affect their lives but at the same time i call for solidarity across the world the oecd which is really a group of rich countries sit and make tax regulation and framework for all of us that we should all implement on the forefooting i think this is highly unsustainable and the crisis has really brought forth you know the fact that this new liberal very capitalist space that falls consciousness of what we've been living is completely not sustainable and something has to change i think decision-making in terms of global economic structures needs to change be more inclusive and really have us sitting at the table on fair on fair grounds and and and be more inclusive as a space as well um i think with all these as i as many have said all oppression is linked and with a more just framework i think issues such as debt issues such as trade justice tax justice will begin to to readjust to a more fair system but that includes a lot of people letting go of a lot of privilege um and that's not easy thank you so much i don't know if it is back uh if she's not back i will quickly pose this question to me um lean you're quite aware of the adverse effect of COVID-19 on women in Africa we can see um increase in domestic violence we can see in Nigeria they're recording increase in teenage pregnancy sexual violence rape cases do you think or can you give a case study of Kenya or Uganda is there a gender response strategy put in place by the government or is there something that the government should be doing but they're not doing well um i can't speak of specific interventions um you know what i could try to do is generalize um what we are seeing a trend that we are seeing and that as you say is um an increase in the levels of of of violence not just domestic violence but you know femicide what we are seeing in South Africa and i've i've been reflecting on this in in a in a broader way you know what especially how it um it articulates this question that i was talking about earlier you know the economy the questions of social reproduction and one way we could think about these kinds of violence that we are seeing is you know what happens when the you know the conjuncture between social welfare and the economy you know that the collapse of social welfare and the collapse and economic collapse what results out of it right and you know what in a sense what resources remain or become available or unavailable to people with this kind of these two pillars um of the market itself collapses and one of the things we are seeing now in a very real sense is a contestation between the state the the the the the capital estate but the state itself there's a contestation between the state and the family household you know the domain of when we think of social reproduction we are thinking of three domains of the market the family household and the state and so what this economic crisis has done is to diminish the role of the market so we are seeing a real contestation between the state and the household uh as as the primary domains of social provisioning you know and the state's response in that sense has been almost you know there's a direct intervention and and this this kind of direct intervention is actually part of the the solutions the proposals that are being put forward by economies right whether it is cash transfers and all these kinds of things but apart from that the state by its nature and its character is going to take advantage so we are seeing um the an increased intervention of the state into this you know so-called private I'm saying private in quotes because feminists have reached a long and sustained critique about the ocean the division between the public and the private we know it is not so so one of the things that feminists and the continent are thinking about is that what kinds of policy interventions would be acceptable without rolling back the gains that you know feminists have made and women have made over a very long period of time uh critiquing violence resisting violence whether it is through laws whether it is through policies and if we are not watching this we cannot watch this clash between the state and the household and the family we are going to go back to to square one in essence in the post-covid period if we can imagine such a period but also is you know the thing I mentioned uh earlier uh in term in the key aspects of the crisis that have stood out for me and one one was the ways in which the state has been reaching for for you know women's labor and gendered labor so in Uganda for example the one sector that was not shut down even when we were under total lockdown was the informal sector not just informal generally the food you know so women who are selling food uh there was a direct i directive that you know markets would remain open but on sale of food and I I did go to the market on a weekly basis because there are things I need from there and predominantly it was women you know selling food you know it really was the condition for that opening up of the market was that they would sleep there so in fact certain organizations like CIHA have shown how many women were being rendered homeless at the same time you know so here is the state pulling you and saying look we need that labor we need you to keep the link between the the rural food the food that is coming from the rural areas and urban consumption but we need you to do it in a certain way we need you your body's the physical presence in those markets we're not going to let you move but you're going to provide you with more bitterness and and so on nobody was talking about testing these women in those markets right they were just really quarantined in there you know when you think about it is the state really literally holding a gun on the heads of women which which it has been doing capital has been doing this this has been it's it's it's bold but now we see it in practical terms that you know market women could continue to sell and we could continue to get our food so we have to think of you know this the informal economy itself which in many countries across the continent constitutes you know 52 in Uganda it has been even estimated at 85 to 90% of the economy right and of the working population and many of these are women right and you know there is going to be forms of legal discrimination because a lot of these people are also not being even the way the government here responded a lot of people are not going to be recorded as a point you know so if you're going to be coming out with policies about uh some kind of recovery to people who have been contributing formally to the economy we are going to leave out a lot of what is actually sustaining our economies and what has sustained them in this period of of crisis you can't record gender bias if you're not looking for it in a sense and the last thing I'd like to say about this then is tied to the question and I think for me this is the most important question you know we talk about social reproduction and social reproduction happens all the time whether people are employed or they are not employed so it is not something again that is being produced by crisis it's being intensified as a in this period so it it it takes place whether a lot of people are people are employed and of course also the structures and the resources that support social reproduction differ across continents and countries so in the west we'll be talking about you know you know sort of securing some you know safety net you know in universal basic income which has been a conversation in South Africa not so much in other parts of the continent and so on but for much of the agrarianized continent the land remains central so whether you're thinking of petty commodity production or subsistence production even some forms of wage labor now really depend on land access to the commons and access to private land so if you're going to deal with these things structurally we have to deal with those kinds of resources structural resources that support you know social reproduction and care labor whether the state exists or not because as I said earlier there's just there's such a huge section of the labor force that that doesn't matter to captain anymore and it won't be accounted for even in the post you know like crystal was saying there's a lot that is going to be left out there's a lot of people that are not going to be seen because you're simply not looking for them so so so land remains relevant you know this is why I was saying for me it has asserted that there's been a fundamentally agrarian character to this crisis and so we need to be thinking of access we need to be thinking of laws and economic policies that support this kind of access many feminists have mentioned the idea of you know food self-sufficiency how do we create self-sufficient communities and part of this really is we have to think seriously of the linking basic livelihood from wage labor right as we go ahead and what that looks like actually thank you so much um please if you've got questions for the speakers can you drop them in the chat box and I will read them out to the speakers while we wait for questions um crystal you work with government you work with human and women rights organizations and do you think if we have women at the center of you know decision-making in Africa the response to COVID would be much better than what it is right now uh thank you wow what a question um so evidence has shown in countries where women are taking the lead like New Zealand response definitely is better um I also think um it's about systems and structures and so neoliberalism patriarchy are systems and not really individuals and so there's two points to this um one definitely representation is greatly lacking on the continent um and that I mean it's unacceptable Kenya where I live still hasn't accomplished it's two-thirds majority which is by constitution with our government and and that's a fight that we is still incredibly amazing that we're still fighting so that's the first um second is leadership has to be feminist and not just women um and and there's a difference there um but definitely I think from what we are seeing responses are different um and framing and and the political project backing that is different and you can tell um there is feminist framing in in the success stories of policy interventions that have been successful in response to um the crisis I also think the politics of narrative and language are important and as uh Lynn um spoke about informal a question who determines what informal is and how can it be informal if close to 80 percent of your economy close to 80 percent of your labor is in this informal and what we consider informal and how we address it and if you you can't address it if you're not looking for it like Lynn says so a lot of African countries Kenya included have given tax relief um but I question who this tax relief for is the majority of the people that are taking the burden of the ground of an economic slowdown are in the informal and outside of tax brackets um suddenly we're all talking about the care economy again the politics of language this term of care economy is really unpaid labor um care sometimes gives this idea of warm and fuzziness where a lot of the time it's back breaking work it's nurses taking care of patients it's women uh going to fetch water and carry loads of of of firewood on their backs literally breaking their backs and so I question the politics of these narratives and language that are so unfit for the realities of what happens in terms of social production but I think still relining to this is this crisis has turned all of that upside down and suddenly essential workers are not bankers and tax planners and all of those who create value out of literally the air essential workers are front-line workers it's the nurses it's women who are taking care of sick people it's women who have and always have been the backbone of our economy of our society and suddenly the world is coming to the realization that that's where importance is I wonder if that will mean you know how how do we make sure that that momentum turns into policy change policy change that is the responses and transformative for this body of work um but at the same time it also speaks to the power community and organizing of which women at least on the continent have been doing so wonderfully and and in spite in despite of government and capital and private sector upholding our economy and our society up and keeping people fed and healthy and I wonder how the power of community organizing meets state policy making and what that means Yeah, Sonia is back so there are a lot of questions. Thanks for sorry about that internet issue who there are quite a few questions in the chat box. There's one from Michelle that I'll address to you Lynn and the question is has COVID given us an opportunity to find more fertile ground for ideas that might have been seen as too radical before the crisis? Yeah, and I think that's part of what I was speaking to earlier is and Crystal has said this also. I think for the first time it's not just women but you know the idea of gendered labor which is unpaid labor and it's not a conversation that is abstract anymore and it's not a conversation that we have to have in relation to the sort of exploitation and surplus value production that you know has made it so problematic and has you know feminist economists have received a lot of pushback you know from the mainstream probably because demonstrating the contribution of this labor to you know to suck to value to surplus value has to remain difficult right but you know in many many realms just today I was reading I think in Kenya that they've resorted now to home-based care I don't know what this will look like and how it is you know you know partly because the health system is not coping it cannot cope right not even just in the present but with what is coming in the future so here is the government just plainly saying we are going to this is this is the route we are going to take of course without mentioning any of the actual labor and resources that are going to be needed to to implement that and so that is an opportunity you know there are real opportunities for us to stay toe to toe with all these responses that are being dished out and to say but we have because we have the theories around this we have the practice around this African feminists have been talking about this for a really long time so we have the and I think part of our task is to put the evidence in in stark relief crystal and I have been part of a collective of African feminists who who wrote out an African feminist response economic response and part of the work we need to do and what we are doing around that is to tell the political leaders and those in power and the opportunity to agree with with crystal that we have to deal with the question of power this the economic crisis is really you know the response has to be a political response so all all across the world we are seeing different forms of resistance and they are manifesting in their intersections not just with gender but with race and with class and there is a real opportunity is a real you know if you scroll through social media people sharing resources that had been forgotten after the at the you know not you know at the end of the Cold War at the collapse of the Berlin Wall there was some literature you know you know radical political economy Marxist literature that people are having back that something right conversations I think there's a real opportunity and we have to to kind of uh remain vigilant because we love that we're done when we're not paying attention so up to response uh yes um and similarly for crystal I wonder how you how you whether you think that the pandemic is is an entry for four alternatives to emerge yeah definitely I'll take on Lynn said it all most of the time I sit here like you know the crisis is is horrible and the lost life the economic downturn everything but at the same time it's sort of it keeps forcing us to rethink it's a moment where with all our everything this little virus has brought us to our needs us our economies our way of doing things and I said this over and over again so apology that this is said again but we can't go back to normal because normal was the problem um but we're at a point of we're at a point in the fork of the world where we need to decide collectively which we were going to go and I don't think we can think about the corona crisis in absence of what's happening with Black Lives Matter and this global push against an imperialism and the solidarity that's happening just yesterday I was told about a rural town in Kenya that has an ethnic name that translates to breathing and they've now nicknamed this place George Floyd and I think that that's something around how we can see our oppression across global across borders across oceans we are the same we have the same oppressive all oppression is linked and I think as as Lynn said issues around power need to be centered power around race around class around geographic location taken to consideration our histories we can't let go of that and our histories that have been formed where we are today um has to be at the center of our thinking so I sit here sometimes sort of amazed that the world is coming around to concepts that just about eight months ago seemed completely radical completely outlandish by you know a group of you know crazy activists who nobody you know really had the time to listen to but suddenly we're talking about government policies around home-based care and yes we need to question like Lynn says what that means but for sure 10 months ago I would never have thought my government would be talking about home-based care and it's time for us because we've been developing this these ideas for so many years tirelessly women before us have been talking and setting you know creating these ideas that have always seemed crazy and outlandish and those ideas are all around us we all only need to pick them up now and they're slowly by slowly they're getting picked up but I think there's still such a fight in making sure that they're not just picked up but picked up in the way that we were meant because so many a time the IFIs you know multi nationals will pick up all of our language and the women's movement knows this and suddenly the IMF is talking about care work and the words they're saying are the same the meaning behind it is completely different so we have such a battle to still you know make sure that the meaning is kept true to what we were writing for and how we defined it and that we're also sitting at these tables of power and making sure that we are informing what the same normal will begin to look like so definitely the silver linings yeah thanks crystal and thanks Lynn and on that note I will close the meeting and hand it back to tibet thank you thank you so much for the wonderful conversation we're really sorry about the next walk break but you cannot group me that it was still a very insightful one especially with the new issues that I probably didn't know about thank you Lynn thank you crystal thank you Sonia please um you can stay up to the week upcoming event the next webinar is on Wednesday 24th June and the team is on how to build a new society after the COVID-19 crisis with Arjun Chang we hope that you will be able to join us on on Wednesday same time 3 p.m. same platform thank you so much thank you thank you thank you time bye thank you


Studying Ozymandias? Here's how you can analyse this poem. In terms of structure, this poem is written as a sonnet. Remember, a sonnet is one stanza of 14 lines. The speaker opens by telling us they met a traveller from an antique land which is a reference to ancient Egypt. The Sazura after the words, who said, signals a turning point. The Anjomon after trunkless legs of stone brings attention to the fact that this statue has been demolished. Alliteration here emphasises that this statue is of a powerful person who was horrible to his subjects. Also, this verb emphasises that this person was quite a cruel leader. The title of the poem is repeated here, and this is contextually a reference to King Ramesses II, who was an Egyptian pharaoh. The imperative sentence in line 11 shows just how arrogant Ozymandias was. He thought everybody would remember him. Yet the hyperbole here shows that his statue was abandoned to nature. The alliteration here emphasises how nature is what destroyed his statue. The sibilance shows that sand was more powerful than Ozymandias.