Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2019 May 12

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May 12

Sexual Personae

Was the hardcover version of Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae ever published in an edition without a dustjacket? I'm aware that the paperback version lacks a dustjacket. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 03:07, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

Dream worlds

The idea of a Dream world (plot device) is very common in literature, and astral travel has been claimed in this world and occasionally beyond, but not as a group activity. But has any religious or parapsychological group ever asserted that its members were able to dream of another world or dimension with fixed features viewable to any member who visited, or claimed the ability of members to pass messages to one another by having a conversation via their counterparts in the dream world? Are there any groups that claim affiliation with transdimensional organizations or with parallel universe equivalents of organizations from our world? Wnt (talk) 12:16, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

Australian Aboriginal religion and mythology comes close, although the "Dreamtime" concept may be in part a cultural misunderstanding. —2606:A000:1126:28D:B57F:6BAE:CEA6:C491 (talk) 19:21, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

• Dream telepathy? 67.164.113.165 (talk) 22:11, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

there's an episode of Star Trek Voyager like that. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 02:27, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

You might be interested in scholarship by Carlo Ginzburg, in particular The Night Battles in which he studies claims by benandante that they traveled out of their bodies to do battle with evil witches (who were also removed from their corporeal bodies). 65.201.170.154 (talk) 14:32, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

Other Backward Classes

According to Other Backward Class, these classes included 52% of Indians in 1980 and 41% of Indians in 2006. Moreover, the number of castes included in this designation grew from 3,743 to 5,013 during this time, so during that time the average OBC caste went from representing 0.0139% of the country's population to representing 0.0102% of the country's population. How is such a large decrease explained? The article says There is substantial debate over the exact number of OBCs in India, with census data compromised by partisan politics, so should I assume that skewed data are likely the reason, or are factors like emigration, birth rates, and death rates likely to be the main issues? Also, I can understand debate existing about which castes should be given the OBC designation, but since OBC is a status given by the union government, I don't understand how there can be substantial debate over which castes have been given this designation. Nyttend (talk) 21:26, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

Well the article says:

Lists of OBCs are maintained by both the National Commission for Backward Classes and the individual states. The central list does not always reflect the state lists, which can differ significantly.[citation needed] A community identified as a nationally recognized OBC in the NCBC central list may be so recognized only in specific states or only in limited areas within specific states. Occasionally, it is not an entire community that is thus classified but rather some parts within it.[8][58]

so I'm not convinced it's as simple as you suggest even for government designations. But anyway I think you're misinterpreting the comment. AFAICT, it's not so much referring to debate over the exact number of castes designated by the government, but the size of the population of OBCs, whether only in reference to those designated by the government or simply the general debate (which will likely include those who may not have been designated but some feel should be). Notably the source used to support that sentence [1] talks about the problems estimating the population like opposition to the use of census data. Nil Einne (talk) 12:48, 13 May 2019 (UTC)