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In order to provide a nuanced understanding of early modern religious history, the metaphors of 'border' and 'layer' have proved particularly useful. This article proposes utilizing Nicolai Hartmann's ontology and Helmuth Plessner's anthropology to deepen our comprehension of these metaphors. It also highlights the existence of competing metaphors, such as 'confessional osmosis,' which can mislead or downplay personal agency. To test the efficacy of stratigraphic metaphors, two case studies are presented: the multi-confessional city and multiple conversions. These case studies demonstrate how stratigraphic metaphors can capture the simultaneity of the simultaneous, commonalities and differences within the lives of historical agents. The conversions of the nun Martha Zitter provide a particularly insightful illustration for the use of such metaphors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this viewpoint article, we analyse the heated controversy that unfolded in 2022 over who should be considered Goa's patron saint: St. Francis Xavier or Bhagwan Parshuram. The controversy was sparked by a Hindu right organization named Hindu Raksha Maha Aghadi and its release of what it – with allusions to Vivek Agnihotri's blockbuster 'The Kashmir files' – presented as 'the Goa files'. These files ostensibly sought to bring to light the forced conversion of Goans to Catholicism under colonial rule, alongside other atrocities committed by Portuguese colonialists during their 450 years of rule in Goa. Taking our point of departure in an analysis of the contemporary symbolisms and political uses of Lord Parshuram both within and beyond Goa, coupled with an examination of the activities of Hindu nationalist groups in the state, we show how the campaign centred on Lord Parshuram and the 'Goa Files' were intended to produce communal polarization and further the Hindutva agenda in Goa. In this regard, political developments in India's smallest state mirror broader national trends where the line between the mainstream Hindu nationalism of the BJP and the more radical 'fringe groups' is becoming increasingly blurred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The western region of Kenya is experiencing remarkable land changes resulting from population growth and related impacts. The study used remote sensing and GIS techniques to analyze the land use/cover changes in the years 1995, 2001, 2010 and 2017. Multi-spectral Landsat (TM, ETM + and OLI) images were pre-processed and classified using maximum likelihood algorithm in ENVI version 5.4. The overall classification accuracies in all the images were more than 80%. The results revealed major conversions of each land use/land cover type in varying trends and magnitudes. Between 1995 and 2001, there was an increase in built-up areas by 71%, forest cover by 43%, farms by 5%; and decrease in grassland by 47%. By 2017, the built-up areas had increased by 225% and farms by 17%; the forestland, grassland and water reduced by 38, 10 and 11%, respectively. The observed changes are characterized by increased settlements and encroachment of sensitive ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the 2017 Jewish conversions in Côte d'Ivoire, and explores some of the Ivorian Jewish-related efforts in their historical context. The article addresses cultural, gender, and various political aspects of the issue arena. It also considers the changing relationship between Israel and the Israeli embassy with these communities. Finally, this work contemplates issues related to North-South Jewish relations and, more generally, the discourse concerning conversion as an option for people who are involved in this phenomenon. The context of the 2017 Ivorian conversions is an excellent example of numerous and crosscutting pressures as well as aspirations that are operative today in relation to the Jewish phenomenon in sub-Saharan Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural Muslim atrap communities in the eastern part of the colonial Bengal Presidency were the target demographic ofChristian conversion efforts in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Debates (bahas) between Muslim preachers and Christian missionaries, as well as religious meetings (waz mahfils), characterized these apologetics. Disseminated through street-market chapbooks in Musalmani-Bengali or dobashi Bengali, such polemics translated the cultural valences of Christianity and Islam both as personal faith and as communitarian identifying markers. In this paper, I analyze a selection of such pamphlets authored by an itinerant tailor called Munshi Meherullah, who spearheaded the atrap Bengali reaction against missionary efforts. Meherullah understood that the theological debates between Christian missionaries and Muslim alims was colonially and racially inflected and pre-determined, and the very act of engagement in apologetics was merely a performance of social, racial and theological superiority. As this paper exhibits, Meherullah’s distinctive approach towards social reform, religion and religious identity played a very important role in defining the parameters of being a good Bengali Muslim. Religious conversion, as a result of his intervention, became a techne, a phronetic device that operated in excess of the real boundaries of its perceived threats, to enable self-examination and analysis of their immediate social milieu for Bengal’s Muslims, in order to resist colonial religious and political subordination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conversion of customary land into leasehold tenure has sparked intense debates in Zambia and beyond. Growing interest in land in the last decade and half has led to a spike in demand for land across Africa, especially land adjacent to major cities, towns and developed infrastructure. This growing demand for land is gradually being directed at customary land, which well-resourced urban and local elites, as well as foreign investors, are converting from customary to private tenure, raising serious questions about the future of customary land in Africa. This paper discusses the emerging dynamics around customary land conversion drawing from a case study conducted in Chongwe and Chibombo districts in Zambia. Evidence gathered in this study suggest that while the conversion of customary land to leasehold tenure is generating opportunities for the urban elite, a few traditional leaders and international investors, it is, at the same time, creating serious challenges for the majority of the people in the local communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extending the paradigms of Subaltern Studies, this paper takes up three disparate sites—didactic Hindi literature, conversions and army discourses—to provide a perspective on the disjunctive forms of representation that signified Dalit bodies in colonial north India. Through different arenas, it shows how representations constituted, and were reflective of, the power relationships between upper and lower castes, in which the former reinstated their dominance. At the same time, the paper challenges straightjacketed links between representation and domination by expanding its archival arenas, and argues that Dalit bodies were not just screens on which high castes and colonial authorities projected their own caste, racial and gender anxieties. Rather, Dalits too represented themselves in different ways, conceiving a gendered sense of self in social, religious, public and political spaces. Such contested practices of representations produced creaks and dislocations in dominant embodiments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It is an irony of history that Dalits who have been victims of Brahmanical social structures are now victims of Brahmanical regimes of representation in various avatars like postcoloniality and subaltern studies. Mulk Raj Anand's novel Untouchable illustrates these politics of representation. This essay attempts to read Anand's Untouchable from the perspective of Dalit discourse amplifying the novel's silences and contradictions. It seeks to problematize the writer's treatment of the theme of untouchability in the context of the Gandhi–Ambedkar debate on untouchability and the problematics of Christian conversions in India. It also argues that Untouchable, despite its canonical status as a novel about untouchability, in fact fails to comprehend and articulate the lived experience of Dalits' struggle for equality and justice and instead perpetuates the hegemony of Gandhian reformism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The concept of opioid equianalgesia, limitations in current dose conversion systems, equianalgesic dose tables, and computer assisted dose conversions are discussed. Conversions for methadone, fentanyl and hydromorphone are described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]