Browsing by Subject "Consumption"

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Open Access
Food, Fetish and Public Display: A Sociological Analysis of the Performativity Involved in Consumption of Food
(University of North Bengal, 2024-03-31) Sinha, Titasha
Food is basic, natural and private. But when it comes to “eating” it essentially intertwines the notion of “performance” as eating is the “act of having food”. It involves an attention towards the performance of the act while eating. Now when this act of having food takes place in “public” the performative notion provides a space for the individual agency to translate this mundane, bodily need of having food to the act of consuming food in turn relegating it to an altogether different status. The sites of eating transform into a single site that becomes the theatre of “action”, the action is that of consumption. The social categories that previously dictated food choices, cooking and eating were largely found to be dictated by the social categories of caste, religion, culture etc. Contemporary urban settings have emphasised the performative dimension of all the activities related to food and eating. The foci of food are seen to traverse between hunger, appetite and “appetite appeal” making people wander in a state of trance to figure out the primacy between “real” and “symbolic” values attached to food. Analysing Goffman’s concept of performance as a theoretical framework together with the concept of panopticon surveillance of Foucault we have tried in this paper to develop a deeper understanding of the theme. Among 70 Hindu, educated, urban, middle and upper-middle class youth in Kolkata questionnaire as part of the quantitative study as well as qualitative method of observation was employed to figure out and analyse the contemporary situation. Participants were found to be strongly motivated by the “performative” dimension involved in food and its related activities. Tendencies of fantasising about food by performing the act of eating are popularised among people. Food has been treated as a fetish that is manifested with the symbolic association of food that goes well beyond the realm of hunger to the realm of “social appetite”.
Open Access
Leisurely Consumption and Freedom in Everyday Life
(University of North Bengal, 2024-03-31) Bhowmick, Arunima
This paper comes as an initiative to unravel the areas, like leisurely and especially leisurely consumptions, popularly associated with freedom and show how those could become the very source of unfreedom. Upon discussing the nuances of the neoliberal society and its entwined practices of consumption, I have tried to highlight the dialectical relation between freedom-dependency. The desire to be free is universal and perpetual, but this very desire is fraught with tendencies of dependency. Therefore, metaphysics and science both together have tried to explore the desire to be free and consequently encountered conditions and notions of the unfree. This paper wants to unclog notions of “absolute freedom” and “relative freedom” from the popular imagination, hinting at the everyday sources of unfreedom and associated negotiations to secure either form of freedom. Thus, build a commentary that reflects as it recites the micro experiences of remaining vulnerable to power, both normative and culturally transpired, and then finding counter-power positions of liberation—as mere illusions leading to further unfreedom.
Open Access
Tax Liability Issues of Transfer Pricing in International Transactions with specific reference to the Partial Intellectual Property
(University of North Bengal, 2024-03) Ragu Balan, P.; Prema, E.
The Government acts as the parent and protects its people like children. Initially, Government was entrusted with the duty of protector but now the government functions for the development of people and to increase the standard of living. Government is a welfare state and utilizes all money for the development of its people. The government may accumulate revenue through different methods such as fees collected for government, direct tax, indirect taxes, providing license for business or individual performance, fines collected for the violation of traffic rules, etc., and collected revenues spent for people. The tax is one of the major sources of revenue collected based on income and consumption. Intellectual property is the property created by human intellectual, skill and intellectual labour, etc., The present research plans to drive the study towards how partial intellectual property escapes from tax liability. Generally, these transactions are done between two custom frontiers of different territories. As per Income Tax Act-1961, these transactions are covered under the name of transfer pricing. But, it covered tangible property, services, and financial transactions. Income tax provisions and methods are not useful for levy tax on the transfer of partial intellectual property and other intellectual property. Multinational companies have appointed technical experts to exclude tax liability by invoking tax loopholes. There are various methods used to evade the tax liability of the above- mentioned transactions. The research will identify the research gaps and fill those gaps with appropriate suggestions.