Ashish Gupta

Like knowledge systems of ancient civilizations everywhere, ancient Indian knowledge systems have been recognized for their emphasis on sustainable living practices. There is renewed interest in ‘going back to these roots’, a return to and a rediscovery of traditional knowledge and lifestyles, which we identify as neotraditionalism. Neotraditionalism has emerged in the encounter of the customary with the metropolitan colonial West and is influenced by Western Enlightenment’s liberal ethic of equality. It suffers from a blindness to diversity and difference. In this article, we argue that equality as universal feature of neotraditionalism makes it closer to Western consumer capitalism than it does to customary knowledge and practices. We suggest that modern western capitalism combined with Western Enlightenment’s liberal ethic of equality has eroded our appreciation for the link between difference, diversity and sustainability. Western capitalism is not only about changing modes of production but also about changing modes of consumption: the emergence of mass consumption practices with their emphasis on civic equality was a necessary step in the dismantling of aristocratic hierarchy. Restrictions in social structures hinder the emergence of bigger markets for capitalists and manufacturers. We therefore argue that the preoccupation of neotraditionalism with a universalization of tradition that is blind to jati-based differences and diversities undermines the implicit demand– supply balances that were historically at work within the framework of traditional sacred cultural beliefs and practices. Because of this, neotraditionalism errs on the side of promoting consumer capitalism and thereby eroding its ability to further the achievement of sustainability based on tradition. As such, neotraditionalism needs to delink from the liberal myth of equality and embrace diversity of consumption practices in order to truly enable sustainable lifestyles anchored in ancient Indian knowledge systems.

The marketing culture is essential for improving performance in the highly competitive restaurant industry. It investigates the effectiveness of marketing culture dimensions on the performance of restaurants in the competitive restaurant industry. The data was gathered from 298 respondents of managers and employees across 48 restaurants using a structured questionnaire. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to evaluate the connections between these constructs. The measurement model assessment was validated using indicators such as Average Variance Extracted (AVE), Composite Reliability, and Cronbach’s Alpha. The structural model assessment investigation's strategy hypothesized connections were also tested using evaluations of five structural path frameworks. The findings demonstrate that all five dimensions of marketing culture positively and significantly impact restaurant performance. Sales strategy had the strongest influence, followed by innovation potential, quality of service, organizational structure, and leadership-staff collaboration. All hypothesized relationships were supported with significant path coefficients, T-values, and p-values. The study emphasizes the importance of a robust marketing culture in enhancing restaurant performance and suggests that restaurant managers should prioritize the development of effective sales strategies and foster innovation within their marketing culture.

A number of conditioning experiments utilize food as a reward. Hunger is considered to be a critical factor governing the animal's behavior in these experiments. Despite its significance, most theories of animal conditioning fail to take hunger into consideration while analyzing the behavioral data. In this paper, we analyze the neuroscientific data supporting the hypothesis that hunger and food consumption affect the brain's dopamine system, which in turn governs the animal's behavior. According to this hypothesis, chronic hunger results in a decrease in the extra-cellular dopamine levels in the animal's brain. This decrease is believed to trigger a series of reactions that increase the responsivity of the phasic dopamine system. A direct consequence of this is an increased vigor of all dopamine-dependent behaviors. The level of extra-cellular dopamine is also modulated by the process of food consumption via the neurotransmitter Acetylcholine. Food consumption raises the dopamine above the baseline level. This rise depends on the animals' hunger, which when satisfied increases the level of Acetylcholine, which causes the dopamine level to fall back to the baseline. Thus, extra-cellular dopamine governs the response vigor, with an increase in dopamine resulting in a more vigorous response. This paper makes two primary contributions. Firstly, we present an abstract mathematical model based on the above hypothesis. Our mathematical model is able to provide a simple explanation for a number of behavioral findings. Another contribution of this paper is the development of a neurocomputational Leabra model of dopamine and acetylcholine activity in the basal ganglia to incorporate hunger and satiation. The experimental results obtained from this neural model are also largely in agreement with behavioral findings.